Failed billing process

[#1]

I had a problem this weekend trying to help out with my mother-in-law's broadband account. She had recently changed her bank account, but her direct debit mandate had not been transferred to the new account in time to meet her next monthly payment, and consequently the payment failed.
Her account was restricted, and she could not change the direct debit details (or anything else on her account) without first clicking on a 'Make a DIrect Debit Payment' button. Whilst this had the effect of freeing up her account and allowing her to change payment details, the DD authorisation from this process is still based on the old payment details for the old account, and so it is very likely that this payment will also fail.
It would have been better if even though her account was restricted, she should have the option to change payment details before authorising the payment.

[#2]

Hiya,
Does she have any card details on her account?  If so I should be able to use those details to take payment - as you say, it'll fail again if it's trying to use the old DDI.
It does seem a touch odd that you have to reauthorise payment before being able to change the details.

[#3]

Hi James,
She doesn't have any credit cards, so we can't take up your (much appreciated) offer of help. If the account gets restricted again I'm hoping that now the DD information is updated she can simply click the 'Make Payment' button and the new info will be used.
It's just unfortunate that the payment request fell into the no mans land period between cancelling the old current account and setting up the new one, but never having had to use the failed billing process before I was surprised that the facility to first edit payment details wasn't available. If this is in fact possible it may be that we missed it!

[#4]

A long time ago I raised a number of issues with the failed billing process, and one of the things I noted at the time was that it was so restrictive, one couldn't actually have access to most of the member centre. In my case I was trying to check my invoices before making a payment as I believed there might've been a problem, but I couldn't have access to that - it therefore doesn't surprise me that maranello's mother-in-law also didn't have access to change her DD details. Perhaps the whole process needs a bit of a rethink - is it really necessary to block off the important parts of the member centre in such a situation?

[#5]

I believe we currently have a project under way, which is reviewing our Failed Billing processes and how the information is displayed to the customer should failed billing occur.

[#6]

Quote from: Be3G

A long time ago I raised a number of issues with the failed billing process, and one of the things I noted at the time was that it was so restrictive, one couldn't actually have access to most of the member centre.

Yup!  it was PUGIT 396  Thomas   Checking the status, most of the items were cleared fairly quickly, but it remains Open because the restriction you highlight above was not cleared.  Comments can be made here
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