Update on Release 88

[news]

Thank you for your continued feedback about our latest release.  Today, we have some small updates to share with you:

• A patch has been released that should address a few of the major bugs with expanding comments, as well as other Ajax features. This should help with some of the functionality issues some of you have been experiencing. 

• All users now

Comments

[astronewt]

It actually is not possible for us to enable payments for any account, or to re-enable automatic payments if someone has turned off the plan. We do not store the full credit card information and authorization in a way that can do that here at LJ at all -- all financial transactions are processed at the time they occur through our secure credit processor. Which means that a person must be actively enrolled in the plan in order for that authorization to exist. Once it's turned off (or if you've never been in it), we simply don't have the information necessary to put through a charge.

If anyone has any questions about their automatic payments in any way, though, they should absolutely contact our Billing department directly, who can provide a detailed response for any account holder.

[radiantsoul]

I am sure this is the case. There seem to be a handful of people who are spreading the rumour though, and without checking their facts it seems. They are probably the same people who are cross with LJ for not full beta-testing and checking the new comment pages...

[an_lagat_glas]

I have never used automatic payments, and yet my account is somehow set to automatic. Maybe that didn't happen with the comment page update fiasco, but my account setting was *definitely* changed without my knowing.

[citymusings]

Is it possible that you renewed at the $19.95 rate to save $5 and didn't realize that the lower price automatically started auto-payments?

[an_lagat_glas]

I renewed normally. But from the confirmation e-mail (which I just glanced at when I got it, to make sure the payment went through) it looks like that still turned on automatic payments, even though I did *not* ask for that to be on. How obnoxious.

[citymusings]

Annoying. At least it's not related to Release 88. Maybe ya just need to go with the auto renewal every time and turn it off after payment processes.

[technicolornina]

Drive-by icon love.

[citymusings]

Hello, icon twin!

[hebitaka]

When I heard that this was going on from ten different people who actually had it happen to them, I thought it was worth posting. And apparently it was, because nice and polite as astronewt has been, the answer doesn't really explain why this would happen to people who have never had auto-payment turned on at all.

[draegonhawke]

Thank you for the quick reply.

[straightrhodes]

Why do you reply to this but not anything else?

Also: I'm canceling my auto payment. I see no reason to keep them when lj has become determined to be as unhelpful, rude, and generally difficult as possible.

[hebitaka]

Thank you for this response at least, people were really panicking over this.

I hope your billing department can explain what's going on with those who have found their payment turned back on.

[astronewt]

From my limited experience with Billing issues, this belief is usually caused by a browser remembering the field values from the last time a person filled in the payments plan information (credit card and payment info, etc).

Some browsers store all information that's put into form fields, locally within the browser. Therefore, even if someone has turned off automatic payments previously, when they revisit the page that has the enrollment information on it, the form is already pre-filled in by the browser -- from the browser's local memory, etc. Which of course makes it look like the person is actually enrolled in the plan. However, when the actual 'are they enrolled in the automatic payments plan' setting is checked for the account, they are not enrolled.

As noted, though, anyone concerned should definitely contact Billing -- they can look up exactly when enrollment occurred, when payments were turned off, current enrollment status, etc.

[hebitaka]

Thank you for your replies here, and elsewhere about the subject lines. I don't know if you've drawn a short straw or what, but you're probably going to get dogpiled...

I hope you can communicate up the command line how disappointed and pissed off your users are. I frankly hope all my comms make the move to Dreamwidth at this point.

I would also like to ask you where we may direct complaints about igrick.

[falenandawn]

^ Agreed. Where can we direct those complaints about Igrick?

[haruno]

No. Please stop. The problem is that setting was turned on again for me, when I'd deactivated it months ago. There was no pre-filled out form. This isn't the problem people have been discussing. More to any point, as you've requested, I've contacted billing about it. I've sent a request in general to LJ support.

The problem is going into My Account Status shows me that automatic payment has been turned back on. That has nothing to do with information being stored by a browser, if I can understand what you're saying, and how that, too, can cause people to panic.