Question

Why do I often see billing errors minutes after a trial conversion?

  • 22 May 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 71 views

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I regularly find that a billing error is triggered within minutes after a user converts to a subscription from a trial. This is problematic because we send emails based on billing error events, and in many cases this is one of the first communications our users receive from us. Any idea why the billing error could be happening so soon after the subscription payment is successfully charged?


1 reply

Userlevel 4
Badge +8

Hi, this will happen if the subscription has not been successfully paid for at the time the receipt is sent to RevenueCat. We will as a result send a billing_issue/cancellation event. Then when the payment is complete, RevenueCat will be updated via the receipt so we will not send an expiration event. At this moment we do not have an event for grace period resolved, but you can assume if you do not get an expiration event after a billing_issue/cancellation that the user’s subscription is still active.

 

Sometimes the billing issues are resolved very quickly. For example, with Stripe I have seen where the payment has failed, and then ~20 ms later it succeeds, but this is enough time for Stripe to tell us that a billing issue has occurred. 

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