Account autorenewal unwilingly.

[Maurici- CleaR Motorsport]

Hey guys. A few notifications have just woke me up... It were from my Bank informing me of a charge by wscc.

The club's fee has been charged into my credit card automatically... 

Can someone please undo this as i don't remember having ticked auto renewal anywhere... And i have to still figure out what to do with my trader account.

A relatively serious health problem has me out of action and clear motorsport isn't something i can be worried now.

 

I would appreciate if that gets sorted soon ish and i can take it out of my mind till im feeling better.

Thanks.

Maurici.

[Ian Kinder (Bagpuss) - Joint Peak District AO]

@Captain Colonial is this something you can help with, please?

 

@Maurici- CleaR Motorsport Sorry to hear about the health issues. Here's wishing you a full and speedy recovery!

[Captain Colonial]

@Maurici- CleaR Motorsport I echo @Ian Kinder (Bagpuss) - Joint Peak District AO’s sentiments, sorry to hear you’re unwell and wish you a speedy recovery.  I’ve instructed Stripe to refund your £53.00 club membership fee.

 

The potential explanation of why it happened that follows may be less speedy…

 

We had a similar problem back in 2013 (get off my lawn, kids these days, etc.) where memberships started renewing automatically one evening, which caused @ACW and I a massive 48-hour headache finding those affected, refunding those who had paid twice and shutting this feature off.

 

Fast-forward to 2025 and history appears to be repeating itself, but sporadically.  The forum software has moved on considerably and the ability to turn on or off the auto-renew feature backstage from membership packages has disappeared from the visible membership package settings some time ago, so the problem hasn’t reared it’s ugly head again until recently.

 

Each membership package has the option to renew turned on, as you would expect, except Paid 60-Day Membership, as paying £60 per year (£10 every two months) versus £35 per year makes no sense and renewal isn’t available.

 

After a lot of head scratching and low-level confusion, the only reason I can see that this might be happening again is that the club changed its payment portal from PayPal to Stripe at the end of 2024.  That payment method has (now “had”) the option for the purchaser to retain their payment card details on their club account, ie. they could tick a “Retain card details” box at point of purchase.

 

I’m making an assumption here that club member accounts with stored payment card details have been automatically renewing memberships on membership packages where renewals are allowed and at the point when 30-day renewal invoices are generated.  Again, I can find no auto-renew settings backstage.

 

The reason I’m assuming it’s been sporadic is that a percentage between 1% and 99% of members did not tick the box to store their payment card details, therefore there was no way the renewal payment could be automatically taken for their accounts.

 

I have adjusted the backstage settings in Stripe to turn off the option for members to be able to store their card details against their accounts.  I do not know if that will turn off the details of members who have already chosen to save their details or not - hopefully it will and the issue is now resolved.  However, I request @WSCC Webmaster to conduct a sanity check on my reasoning please.

 

I hope the reader stayed awake through this explanation, which is as simple but complete as I could make it.

 

 

[WSCC Webmaster]

18 minutes ago, Captain Colonial said:

However, I request @WSCC Webmaster to conduct a sanity check on my reasoning please.

Will do that tomorrow 👍

[Maurici- CleaR Motorsport]

Thanks so much Scott @Captain Colonial

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman)]

So sorry to hear you’re not well Maurici. I do hope you are feeling better soon.

 

I did have a very quick Look backstage last night before bed, as I remembered the auto renew that Scott was talking about from way back. Equally though, I couldn’t find any setting for it anymore, and nothing on our end suggesting an auto renew. I did wonder if it was something set up at the Stripe and of the portal. But just turning off the stored cards feature will hopefully sort it out, too.