Failed payments and dunning
A failed payment is not a lockout. When a charge does not go through, your account keeps working while the system tries again and gives you about a week to update your card. Nothing you have made is deleted, and the moment your payment clears, everything picks up right where it was.
What it is
Sometimes a subscription charge does not go through. A card expires, a bank declines the transaction, or a temporary hold gets in the way. When that happens, your account enters a short recovery window, sometimes called dunning, instead of shutting off.
During that window two things run at the same time:
- Your card is retried automatically, so many payment problems clear on their own without you doing anything.
- You get a clear heads-up and a few reminders, each pointing you to your billing page so you can fix the card yourself if the retries do not succeed.
The goal is simple. Give you room to sort out a payment hiccup without losing access or losing any of your work.
Who it is for
Individual loan officers who pay for their own subscription. If you are on an enterprise seat, billing runs through your organization, not through you, so you will not manage a failed payment yourself.
Enterprise seats do not handle their own payment issues. Because the organization is the billing account, a failed charge is resolved at the organization level by an admin, not on a personal billing page. If you are on an enterprise seat, reach out to your admin.
What happens, step by step
The charge fails
As soon as a payment does not clear, your subscription is marked as having a payment problem and you receive a notification along with an email letting you know. Your access does not change yet. You can keep creating and publishing as normal.
The recovery window opens
Your account moves into a grace period that runs about seven days. Throughout this window your card is retried automatically, and you can update it yourself at any time to settle the balance right away.
Reminders arrive
If the payment still has not cleared, you get a short series of reminders spaced across the window, each one nudging you to update your card. They grow more direct as the deadline nears, ending with a final notice before access would pause.
Access pauses if it is still unpaid
If the grace period ends and the payment has not gone through, your workspace pauses. This is not a deletion and it is not permanent. Creating new content and publishing stop until the balance is settled, and once the subscription finalizes as unpaid or canceled, your public website is taken offline too. Everything you have already built stays saved and comes back when the balance clears.
You recover
The instant your payment clears, whether from an automatic retry or from you updating your card, your subscription returns to active, your monthly credit allowance is restored, and full access resumes. If your public website had been taken offline, it is republished automatically. You get a confirmation that the payment recovered.
The recovery timeline
Here is roughly how the grace window unfolds once a charge fails. Because reminders are sent on a daily schedule, the exact timing can shift by a day.
| When | What happens |
|---|---|
| Right away | The charge fails, you are notified by email and in the app, and automatic retries begin. Access is unchanged. |
| Around day 3 | A reminder that the payment still has not cleared, with a link to update your card. |
| Around day 5 | A final notice that access will pause soon if the balance is not settled. |
| About day 7 | If it is still unpaid, the grace window closes and your workspace pauses. Once the subscription finalizes as unpaid or canceled, your public website goes offline as well. Your content and settings stay intact. |
At any point in this window a successful charge ends the whole sequence at once. There is no penalty for recovering early or late, and the reminders stop the moment the balance is paid.
How to fix it
Open your billing page
Go to your billing page in the app. If there is a payment problem, it is shown there with a prompt to update your payment method.
Update your card
Enter a working card or fix the details on your existing one. This is the fastest way to settle the balance rather than waiting on the next automatic retry.
Confirm it cleared
Once the payment goes through, your billing page returns to normal and your access is fully restored. If your workspace had paused, it comes right back, with your monthly credits refreshed.
What stays safe
A payment problem never puts your work at risk. Throughout the recovery window and even after a pause:
- Your creations, media, and website content are all preserved. Nothing is deleted because of a failed payment.
- Your TrueTone Profile, voice settings, and preferences stay exactly as you left them.
- Your website stays published throughout the recovery window. It only goes offline if the window closes and the subscription finalizes as unpaid or canceled, and even then the site and its content are kept, not deleted.
- Recovering restores everything at once, including your monthly credit allowance and your public website, with no re-setup and no lost history.
A pause is reversible by design. It is the account switching to inactive while a balance is outstanding, not an account closure. Settling the payment flips it back to active. For how credits behave across a pause, see Credit packs and top-ups.
Good to know
- Automatic retries do a lot of the work. Many failed payments, especially temporary declines or holds, clear on their own before you ever need to touch anything.
- Updating your card is always faster than waiting. If you know the card is the problem, fix it on your billing page instead of waiting for the next retry.
- The reminder emails are billing notices, not marketing. They are tied to the actual state of your account and stop as soon as the balance is paid.
- If you started signing up but never finished checkout, that is a separate flow. You may get a gentle reminder or two to pick up where you left off, roughly an hour after and again a few days later. It is not a failed payment on an active account.
A payment problem is different from a canceled subscription. If your account is scheduled to cancel, updating your card is not the fix. See Cancel, save offer, and reactivate.