Ask HN: Should I remind users that their card is about to be charged?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7108168

by grinnick • 13 years ago

70 68 13 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I have a SaaS app with a 14 day free trial. I take CC details as part of the signup process so I have card details for users who are in the trial recorded in Stripe.

Currently, if a user doesn't unsubscribe during the trial then they are automatically charged for their first month once their trial has ended.

Is it proper etiquette to warn them about this or should I just charge them and say nothing? Should I be sending them an email which says something along the lines of "Hope you enjoyed your trial. You card will be charged tomorrow."?

Edit: Just to stimulate the discussion a little bit more because it seems like the responses are one sided...

The reason I'm asking is because Optimizely recently charged my card for €168.00 after a free trial ended on me. No warning was issued. We all know how much money they make so perhaps this works out ok for them?

For completeness, they refunded immediately once I challenged the charge.

onion2k• 13 years ago

Warn them.

etanazir• 13 years ago

Disable the free trial service until they confirm purchase.

lauradhamilton• 13 years ago

Definitely warn them. And make it very easy to cancel (e.g., 1 click).

codegeek• 13 years ago

Please inform the user. It is called "being nice" even though you probably are not legally bound to. In fact, you could very well be within your terms to charge them because that's what free trials are for right ? If I was that user and you sent me the email, I will do these things:

  1. Be really happy that you informed me. 

  2. Cancel my subscription if i really don't need your service. Renew it *happily* if I want your service.

But the most important thing that will happen is that I will remember you/your company that you employ good practice. If it comes down to choosing b/w you and someone else and the difference is marginal, guess who will I choose ? If a friend asks me for a service similar to yours, guess who will I recommend ? Happy customers (even ex-customer) can help you in many ways even if they are not paying you.

Now, let's look at the other side of it. If you do not email me, you will make some money from me in the short term. But I will ensure that I remember you for the wrong reasons. I will also ensure that if someone asks me about you, I will tell them to stay away. Heck, if I really took it personally, I will even write a hate blog and submit it on HN. Imagine the PR issues you could potentially have.

So be nice and it always comes back to help you. Even if you are not making money from a user in the short term, who knows that user might be able to help you indirectly in securing a lot more users who will pay. May be.

mknits• 13 years ago

Yes, of course.

robhu• 13 years ago

I agree with the other comments that it would be 'nice' to warn them (and give them a 1 click unsubscribe)... but most companies (in the UK) allow you to sign up to free trials online but to unsubscribe you have to call them.

I presume this is because by making the barrier to unsubscribe higher you get fewer people unsubscribe, and probably some people who don't use a service but remain subscribed because they don't notice.

It's also common to require x (where x is 28?) advance notification for unsubscribing, so even when you do so you usually end up paying for another month anyway.

Some services (e.g. The Times Online) give you a free (or reduced price) trial, after which you agree to a 12 / 18 month subscription. This seems even more evil, but I guess they do it because it 'works' and they're about making money rather than being nice.

jlees2• 13 years ago

I really dislike services which make you call to cancel. There are some in the US, too.

The OP could use the Times model to try and convert folks to a longer-term, discounted plan if they are enjoying their trial. But too much upsell and your conversions will drop.

linuxlizard• 13 years ago

Yes, please!

Even with recurring annual charges (e.g., DropBox), I like getting notification that I'm about to be charged. With new charges after a trial, it's even nicer because it's a reminder that this thing is about to start costing me money. Sometimes I sign up, try it, and then forgot about it (usually something I need occasionally like proXPN).

DrJokepu• 13 years ago

This is super simple. If you're ok with taking people's money who wouldn't pay for your service otherwise, go ahead and don't send a reminder. If you prefer to only take money from customers who are satisfied enough with your service to pay for it, send a reminder. Only you can decide which type of business you want to run.

PinguTS• 13 years ago

Take an example with Squarespace. No CC details just for the trial and if CC details then just end the trial without going directly into the subscription model.

martswite2• 13 years ago

This is something I'd love, great idea.

japhyr• 13 years ago

If a small percentage of your users end up feeling tricked into having their card charged, it's going to be bad PR. It seems much better to lose some conversions, but keep your integrity.

If it motivates you at all, anyone who cancels after receiving this notification was not likely to be a long-term customer anyway. So all you will be losing is a month's paid service from the people who don't really want to pay for your service. That's not good money to try and hold onto.

I prefer the suggestion by another person that recommends simply disabling the free trial until the person chooses to have their card charged the first time. That seems the most honest way.

binarymax• 13 years ago

Warn them and give them a link to unsubscribe easily, but don't miss out on the opportunity to collect a single data point on why they are unsubscribing (checkboxes or buttons for 'Didnt use it', 'Didnt find it useful', 'Too expensive', 'Buggy', etc...)

bdunn3• 13 years ago

When I collected cards upfront for Planscope, I sent out an email 3 days before their 14 day trial ended. The next email they'd get would be an invoice email when their trial expired, and they'd continue to get these emails each month when they were billed.

When Gmail rolled out tabs, I started getting a lot of people who were unexpectedly billed. My "trial expired emails" were usually lumped into the Promotions tab, which doesn't have as much urgency attached, and thus there was definitely a spike in cancelations after that first invoice (people always see those invoice emails; they sometimes miss the "trial expiring and your card will be billed" emails :-)

When you take cards upfront:

* You'll get much higher trial to paid conversion rates. Mine was about 45%

* You'll get a lot of cancellations after that first bill goes through. If you calculate churn based off of "paid accounts who cancel", it will be artificially inflated. Try tracking it against customers who have paid you at least 2x.

* If you want to make your life a bit easier, automatically refund people who cancel within a given window after their first bill.

* Please don't bill people without sending them an email invoice. It's just wrong.

* Don't stake your business on one-off customers. If someone wants their money back, give it back (within reason, obviously. I'll by default refund the last month.) I've had people come back when they really needed Planscope, refer others, etc. And plus, chargebacks are messy.

I'm no longer collecting cards upfront, and I've finally got MRR growth back on track. I made the mistake of simply changing the signup form / billing code without making heavy modifications to the marketing site and onboarding flow, which caused a huge drop in growth after that change.

dangrossman2• 13 years ago

I'm no longer collecting cards upfront, and I've finally got MRR growth back on track. I made the mistake of simply changing the signup form / billing code without making heavy modifications to the marketing site and onboarding flow, which caused a huge drop in growth after that change.

That'd be a great topic for a blog post. I don't know how to make that switch myself; I tried once and it wasn't a success.

bdunn3• 13 years ago

Great idea.

I ALMOST went back to the safety of CCs upfront (http://planscope.io/blog/why-im-going-back-to-capturing-cred...) but ended up sticking with it. And I'm glad I did, because growth is significantly higher and there are fewer cancelations.

The big takeaway: People do more research before plugging in their credit card. If it's relatively low friction to sign up for a trial of your product, you need to make sure your onboarding flow isn't just about how to use your product, but why (e.g. the typical responsibility of your features / tour pages.)

dangrossman2• 13 years ago

I send the reminder on day 7 of 14. I've tried other schedules, but settled on 7 days as the last automatic mail. By that point in time, everyone's fallen into one of three groups:

1) Those that signed up, set up their accounts and are already getting value out of the service. They don't need the reminder, sending it is just good-will with this group.

2) Those that signed up, decided it wasn't right for them for whatever reason within the first 10 minutes, but didn't take the time to cancel. When they get the reminder and remember they're going to be charged, they cancel at this point. You've avoided the "I forgot to cancel and can't believe you charged me" problems here.

3) Those that signed up, then decided to put off actually using the account they created until later, but do intend to use it. You've reminded them to get to it sooner than later, and they still have a week to try out the service before paying for it.

And always refund customers who cancel right after the first bill. Whether you have the legal right to bill them or not is irrelevant, it's not worth the ill will. Happy ex-customers can become happy customers again in the future.

lucaspiller• 13 years ago

And always refund customers who cancel right after the first bill

This. I signed up for an Amazon Prime trial, and forgot to cancel it (even though I'd setup a calendar reminder I missed). I remembered a week later, and was a bit unhappy that I'd been charged. I logged in to cancel it so I wouldn't be billed again the next year, and Amazon said as I hadn't used the service since they billed me they would provide a full refund.

sophacles• 13 years ago

And as a result of this - I am reading another "good guy Amazon" story on the net. This reinforces my concept that Amazon is reasonable to deal with, and I'll be more likely to buy from them, other things being equal.

Similarly this is why I have a preference for Square and Stripe over other similar services, my local $preferred_brand car dealership (over other local ones) and so on with other reasonable to deal with companies. At the end of the day, I'm willing to pay even a bit more if the hassle is lower, or expected to be lower should I need something 'weird' (defined as: not just purchase and walk away forever).

Generating a little bit of good feeling towards your business is totally worth some overhead cost.

jlees2• 13 years ago

You could segment users based off activity, for example sending:

1) a goodwill email, an up-sell to a longer-term plan or extra features, etc;

2) automatically cancel these folks, and send an email to that effect: "We notice you're not using X, so we won't be charging you at the end of your trial." They will just cause a cancellation anyway, though you will lose some of the 'free money' from lazy or unaware users.

3) Don't bill, but you could automatically extend the trial since they haven't used it, and you'll get more value from people converting to group 1) than 2). Perhaps the free trial starts when they've actually done some impactful action other than create the account.

There's way more segmenting you could do based on the types of users you see, which ones are most enjoying the service, and so on. Just seems odd these days to say "I'll email everyone" on a fixed rule.

notahacker• 13 years ago

Defaulting to (3) is a very good idea, especially if your trial is short and your product isn't friction free to start using or typically used on a daily basis.

It's amazing how often people genuinely need unused trials extending (and buy afterwards) even when it's B2B SaaS and they've already discussed why they probably need it with a salesperson.

andrewingram2• 13 years ago

Interesting example I stumbled across:

Match.com typically take your subscription fee every 6 months, they won't remind you before they take the money. They also won't let you unsubscribe immediately after they take the money, they claim that payment is still in progress, even though the money has already been taken. It's not until a few days later that you can unsubscribe. Essentially it seems that they've realised that the most likely time for someone to unsubscribe is immediately after they pay, because with 6 months of membership it's easy to forget that you've even got a subscription unless you're a very active user.

I consider this to be a dark pattern because it plays on people's forgetfulness.

My Rules:

- Give people enough warning before taking payment that they can reasonably be able to decline the transaction. The only real reason someone should miss this warning is if they're taking a long vacation.

- Don't do evil stuff after taking payment to prevent them from unsubscribing from the next payment

- Have a nice buyers remorse window, allowing a user to reverse the transaction that's already occurred.

imgabe• 13 years ago

I've used match. If you call them they can refund the payment if it's right after the renewal. It's even an automated option on their phone menu. Granted, you have to go through the trouble of calling them, but it's not that hard to get your money back if you forget to cancel.

andrewingram2• 13 years ago

True, but I subscribe to the belief that if I sign up for something online I should be able to cancel online.

ctdonath• 13 years ago

Happy customers bring you more money. Irritated customers go elsewhere.

denizozger• 13 years ago

Let your users know because:

1) Optimizely's bad process is an opportunity for you to have something better. "All our competitors trick you so that's usual and don't be mad at us" kind of attitude is quite mediocre. 2) Showing that you care about customers would improve brand loyalty thus keep users and would benefit you in the long run, than a couple of tricky financial profits 3) It's the nicer thing to do and you'd keep your integrity.

johnmurch• 13 years ago

I would recommend a reminder email as more of a curtsy. In terms of tracking/updating CC when they expire or have issues, checkout http://churnbuster.io/ as a way to help with Churn.

rkalla• 13 years ago

Don't spend the mental energy to try and figure out if you should be "sneaky" or not -- don't be -- be open and honest, users will remember it, appreciate it and if your product is valuable, your business will grow.

If being sneaky with reminder emails is _what_ makes your business successful, then you are standing in quicksand.

Oculus• 13 years ago

If you're a one man show, keep in mind that all those users sending you emails about unwanted charges create a big customer support overhead. That's time taken away from marketing or improving your product. Instead of wasting their time and your's, just send them a heads up email.

martswite2• 13 years ago

I've never understood why any service should need my card details if I'm signing up for a free trial. I now don't sign up to free trials that require payment details up front because, often, there isn't any warning before the trial period ends and a large charge can then get taken.

If I like your service and it's useful to me after the free trial ends I'll sign up and add my payment details.

I'm probably just cynical before my time but I see it as preying on people who are forgetful, to take their money.

In answer to your question though. I'd send a reminder it's polite.

DominikR• 13 years ago

Are you even allowed to store CC details of your customers on your servers?

I know that you are not forced to be PCI compliant by law, but if you are not and your database is leaked, you will be liable for any damages that result from that leak.

Anyways, I wouldn't ask for CC at signup because your business may come across as untrustworthy or a scam when asking for such data when the user is not buying anything at the moment.

Edit: Sorry my fault, somehow ignored the part of his message stating that he is using Stripe.

nmcfarl• 13 years ago

There are PCI compliant ways of storing this data, and even better there are companies you can pay to do it for you (so you don't screw it up) while providing a lot of other goodies at the same time. See: Braintree, and Stripe.

cowls• 13 years ago

A bit like Netflix?

Also he didn't actually say he would be storing the details, in fact he said he was using Stripe to manage the payment side of things.

zorlem• 13 years ago

The poster says in the first sentence of his post that it is Stripe [0] (his payment processor), not him, that stores the CC info.

[0] https://stripe.com/

greenyoda• 13 years ago

I'd much prefer if you would not take my credit card number at all until I confirm that I want to convert from a free trial to a paying customer. I very rarely sign up for free services that require handing over payment information up front. After all, if you're legitimately offering a free trial, there's no reason you'd actually need my credit card number. If I lose interest in your free service after a few days, I don't want the hassle of having to remember to cancel to avoid a charge. I don't want to have to worry about being charged before the free trial is over (I've never heard of your company, so I don't know if you're honest). It just adds too much useless stress to the process. If I keep my credit card in my pocket, I know I'm in control.

Also, I think that the observation that you get much higher conversion rates from people who provide credit card info up front is debatable. It suffers from survivor bias: you might get a lot more paying customers from the group of potential customers who refused to sign up for your trial because you asked for payment info up front. That could be pushing away 95% of all your potential customers, but you'd never know it.

MarkTee• 13 years ago

After all, if you're legitimately offering a free trial, there's no reason you'd actually need my credit card number.

One possible justification: Asking for credit card info can act as a means of verification, preventing people from repeatedly creating new accounts to obtain a virtually limitless trial.

guan• 13 years ago

Does it matter how much the charge is? Personally I would appreciate a reminder of a $100+ charge, but I don’t want 2 emails (reminder + receipt) for every $5 recurring charge.

k2enemy• 13 years ago

As many others have mentioned, the "right" thing to do is warn them. Also, if you don't warn them, you are starting to get into "negative option" territory, and you need to be careful about how you disclose this to your customers: http://www.responsemagazine.com/direct-response-marketing/le...

afhsfsfdsss88• 13 years ago

I don't know a person alive that doesn't like having options. I would appreciate just being asked.

al2o3cr• 13 years ago

Yes, you probably should do this - surprise billing will get you angry didn't-really-want-to-be customers and bad PR.

A nearly-zero-effort way to do this is to listen for the customer.subscription.trial_will_end webhook from Stripe - they'll send it to your app 3 days before the trial ends.

gr2020• 13 years ago

My app has a 7-day trial, and requires a credit card up front. I try not to beat people over the head with a note about an upcoming charge - what I do is, 3 days before the trial ends, I send an email asking how the trial is going, and if they have any questions I can answer.

It serves as a subtle reminder that the trial is about to end, while offering to help at the same time.

thenduks• 13 years ago

The CC-required-for-trial thing is a form of 'negative option billing' and, IMO, it would be best not to do it. Many companies have stopped (a high profile example: 37signals no longer requires credit cards to signup for Basecamp).

Braintree has a good article on it [1]. In that article are some recommendations for when you must do negative option billing - one of which is to send them a warning 5 days before billing.

[1] https://www.braintreepayments.com/blog/negative-option

debacle• 13 years ago

Would you want to be notified? I certainly would.

Linode sends out an invoice email every month, usually a day or so before I see the charge show up. I have no reason to cancel, but I appreciate that they do that.

bhartzer• 13 years ago

Sending them a reminder seems fair. And as dangrossman suggests, sending it on the 7th day is logical. But I would go one step further: take the time to ask the user if they're liking the service and if they have any feedback. I would also remind them in that email that their credit card is going to be charged.

bliti• 13 years ago

Have you tried offering other plans? Your service seems to be one that people could use in the long term. Maybe 3, 6, and 12 month plans. Do like web hosts, and offer a slight discount (over month-to-month plans) as an incentive. Also, I think $29 is a bit too low for this kind of service. That's less than $360 dollars a year from a customer's marketing budget. Which is nothing.

alphaa• 13 years ago

That's funny. I glanced at the headline and then started writing my comment without reading your post. I started writing about how annoying I found it when Optimizely started billing me after my free trial. Yes, I was using the service, but I hadn't made my mind up about. It's just an opportunity to help people trust you. Send them a reminder 24 hours before "we're going to charge you"...especially for a year of service. Come on!

mattmaroon• 13 years ago

My advice: send the notification. It sets the tone of your relationship between yourself and your user. You send that notification (which most companies do not) and you're sending the message that you want to engage in a mutually beneficial relationship with your customers rather than just make a quick dollar.

Yes, you'll make less this way in the short term. Automatically charging but offering a refund if someone is upset will convert more, and automatically charging with no refunds will convert more than that.

But I suspect that if you look five years down the line, setting a good tone between yourself and your users will pay the most. Those who decide not to subscribe immediately are still potential future customers, and know other potential future customers.

rs• 13 years ago

You should send a reminder, even if it's just a few days before you take the charge. It's not just a Good Thing To Do, but it will even reduce the risk of charge-backs.

As your business grows and you take on more payments, you will find there are a small group of your customers who will look at their credit card bill at the end of the month (or months) and just call up the credit card company to charge back items that they don't recognise (due to them not recognising the charge (innocent mistake) or they genuinely didn't use your service and feel "cheated")

On a side note, why do you take CC info at signup ? I've done about 4 SaaS currently live, and not a single one takes CC information upfront, but rather send them a reminder to pay an invoice as their trial reaches it's end.

lgas• 13 years ago

I think the answer to these types of question is usually pretty easy if you just put yourself in your users' shoes. What would you want the company to do if you were the user. Do that.

centdev• 13 years ago

We have a similar setup. 15 day trial with cc as per of registration. We sent a few emails in thos 15 days. 1st is the welcome. If they haven't logged in more than once we send another email on day 7 to be sure see the value and if they need help and about their trial. On day 14 we send a reminder about their trial. Day 15 we charge. We will gladly refund the charge up before their 2nd due date.

lifeisstillgood• 12 years ago

Imagine a situation where you took the card details, but they had to login again after the free trial to keep on using it - re-approve the payment as it were.

You would know then that those customers really wanted your service.

After that it really is just a question of degrees about how far you are prepared to go to make money off people's procrastination.

The fact you ask suggests this troubles you - so be as upfront and honest and clean and clear as you can. And maybe cut back on the food bills...

Ask HN: Should I remind users that their card is about to be charged?

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