1Password won't accept my payment

11 points by Champagn3Papi 2 years ago | 27 comments

Hi!

I've completed the process of transferring all my passwords over to 1password. I'm loving 1password from the start, as a developer myself they did such an amazing job on the usability part that it's a no brainer to use. I even managed to convince my non tech girlfriend to use it and she does!

Now the tedious and bad part:

I've been trying to subscribe to 1password for over 12 days now and my card keeps getting "declined". I contacted support explained them the issue and they told me its my card and I need to verify with my bank. So I did and the bank is telling me the transaction is getting declined because they are not properly validating the CVC number on their end. Fast forward a bit and I'm in contact with 1password support again. They ensure me nothing is wrong on their end yet I'm showing them proof that there is.

I'm lost here because in about 2 days I'm getting locked out of my account and I need it for work. As a potential customer I'm at the end of what I can do and this whole deal has been a very frustrating experience.

So please 1password (if any of you reads this) help me out, because you are making it really difficult for me to spend my money.

mtmail 2 years ago |

Could https://1password.com/giftcards/ work in the meantime? That seems to be powered by shopify thus another separate payment processing backend.

Champagn3Papi 2 years ago | |

Do you have an idea how the gift cards work? Is it like credit that's stored on your purchase?

Because I hate to buy a gift card for 100$ and needing to do it again because I'm just not reached the next amount due to pricing schemes

1p_erik 2 years ago | | |

You can purchase a gift card and use it as your primary payment method, yes. The gift card is redeemed on your account as credit and we will periodically deduct the subscription cost from this credit ammount.

dkjaudyeqooe 2 years ago |

One of the reasons I have a lot of credit cards and bank accounts is to work around this sort of problem. It happens a lot. Between the bank, the vendor and the (possibly many layers of) payment processors inevitably something goes wrong in the plumbing.

Instead of wasting my time with CS bots I just try another card.

(The other reason to have multiples of everything is to take advantage of the slightly different features they have.)

sshine 2 years ago |

I really like software that is "offline first".

This is how everyone used to make software, before SaaSS became a thing.

(SaaSS: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s...)

It basically means your software works as intended without an internet connection.

You don't get the "reduced version" without internet, it does exactly what you expect it to and does not complain.

A password manager should be offline first, because what if you need to use a password offline?

1p_erik 2 years ago | |

Hello @sshine! Erik from 1Password here.

> your software works as intended without an internet connection.

1Password works both online and offline. An internet connection is required to sync passwords across devices and to periodically verify the status of an account subscription. Besides that, the application remains fully functional when in an offline state for all intents and purposes.

Brian_K_White 2 years ago | | |

If it needs to periodically verify account status to enable any features, it is not fully functional offline and certainly not "offline first".

It doesn't matter what the offline grace period is. The problem is that it's a grace period.

There may be reasons to use 1password, but being functionally equivalent to keepass or such is not something it can claim.

sshine 2 years ago | | |

I use another tool / service with similar capabilities and limitations as 1Password.

You say fully functional, but can 1Password sync between devices if I don't have internet?

An example: GitHub is not offline first, but git is.

Champagn3Papi 2 years ago | |

I've looked at bitwarden which is completely open source and is self-hosted. I tried it, but I'd rather pay a "premium" for someone that gets paid to upkeep the application to the newest standards.

Bitwarden sometimes has troubles with filling in forms properly which 1password more often does the correct thing saving me seconds / minutes every day.

sshine 2 years ago | | |

Self-hostable is a good quality to reach offline first.

And open source is a good quality in general.

But software doesn't need to be self-hostable or open source to be offline first.

Being capable of running offline is the most premium feature you can give me.

For example, you can have an app on your phone that is closed source and costs money, but you can still access it without internet.

An example of an "offline first" feature that does not depend on open source or self-hosting is: Can you sync your password database to another device without internet? (A more interesting one you can't even take for granted nowadays: Can the program open if you're offline?)

Blake_1P 2 years ago |

Hey there! Blake from 1Password here.

We use Stripe as our payment processor, and ultimately that's what handles the credit card validation side of things. If you're seeing yourself routinely declined with the same card, there's likely something going on with that particular payment card that's outside of our control.

If you're already in touch with us via email, feel free to send us another follow-up message and be sure to mention me by name -- I'd be more than happy to take a second look at things with you.

Champagn3Papi 2 years ago | |

Yes I know you guys are using Stripe that's why its so odd that it doesn't work. I pay perfectly fine with Stripe on other platforms thats the odd part.

I understand that multiple layers can screw over the payment flow, but I'm a technical user and for someone who's non technical they will just leave the product all together because they are unable to pay the subscription like it should.

I love the product and I want to pay, it's just a very frustrating experience if it doesn't work.

The bank is telling me its not on their end. 1Password is telling me its not on their end. Stripe is not gonna release any info to me related to my payment on 1password and I need to go through 1password support to get to that information.

The card I'm using is a company card and I only have 1 Visa Business Card which is a typical situation for businesses in Belgium.

I'm not gonna get another card for the sake of having a subscription on 1password. I'm more then happy to purchase the gift cards through shopify if that solves my issue thought.

Blake_1P 2 years ago | | |

For what it's worth, I'm not aware of there being multitudes of people running into the same thing you're seeing -- it's part of why this particular case is so odd to me.

I do see that you're in touch with Erik regarding gift cards, though, and that's definitely an alternative that should get you back into a workable state!

1p_erik 2 years ago |

Hello @Champagn3Papi, my name is Erik and I work on the Billing team here at 1Password.

First thing - I'd like to reassure you that we will never locked you out of your account. You will always have access to your passwords, even if your account becomes frozen. You will still be able to view all of your items and copy your passwords. There are restrictions on frozen account which mean you won't be able to add new items to vaults, edit items, invite people to your family or team, or autofill items in your browser until the account becomes unfrozen.

As another commenter here mentioned, there are a number of potential points that can cause a payment failure like this. The absolute quickest approach to resolve this would be to try using a different payment method. I know that isn't ideal.

As for the current payment method problem, can you please respond back to our support team and mention that I reached out to you here? It will help me to connect some dots and look into your issue specifically, and we can communicate through more official channels.

Thanks, Erik

Champagn3Papi 2 years ago | |

Hi Erik!

I'm trying again to contact support and get this finished. In the meantime I could try using a giftcard purchase since this uses shopify I heard?

My question here is if I purchase 100$ gift card and apply it to my account I'll be able to purchase my subscription for the first year, but what about the next year? Does the remaining credit get transferred to the next year? By that I mean is it reduced from total new amount if I change my payment method to creditcard next year?

Kind regards

1p_erik 2 years ago | | |

Yes, that is absolutely an option. Your credit will remain on your account through the lifetime of your subscription, so long as you have available credit that can be applied towards a subscription. We will always draw from available credit first. So if you apply a giftcard to your account and later add a payment method, we would charge the difference between the remaining balance on the gift card and the standard price to the payment method.

sparrish 2 years ago |

What country is your credit card from? I know many customers from India are struggling to pay for SaaS subscription services since banks there started rejecting all recurring charges.

Champagn3Papi 2 years ago | |

I'm from belgium so that won't be an issue since it's in Europe.

sparrish 2 years ago | | |

Some European cards have geographical blocking on them and can't be use for subscriptions to US companies without removing the blocking.

drudoo 2 years ago |

Could you try another card ? or get a giftcard from 1password? Can you pay via their app using Apple/Google Pay?

I've used 1password for 10+ years without any billing issues at all.

myassin 2 years ago |

An alternative is subscribing through the AppStore or Google Play

jrm4 2 years ago |

"No brainer" is not a word you want associated with password management in any context

Please don't carry this idea into your development.

Champagn3Papi 2 years ago | |

Care to explain this a bit more?

Having decent password hygiene, password rotation, secure password generation and all of that available via browser, apps and commandline IS a no brainer to me.

From a security standpoint you could say they are storing and keeping your passwords all in 1 bucket, while that is true it is encrypted and can be changed / tracked way easier then you would be able to without it.

What's the alternative? Keeping those passwords in your brain and create variants on that password? Sticky notes with passwords?

What about a NEED to share passwords with team members securely? Do you send them over slack / imessage / whatsapp?

Next to that it also functions as a database of accounts where you can see where you have an account with a password that has potentially be leaked and for "known" big providers they forward you to the change password screen in an instant.

To me having a proper password management tool that warns you if any of your passwords get leaked is really worth the price they are asking. Without it a lot of best practices often get lost due to time constraints.

jrm4 2 years ago | | |

Sure. A long time ago, I had a gut feeling that 3rd party password management across the board was a bad idea. Three parties having secrets is objectively worse than two. I quieted that notion in my head owing to "experts" giving bad ideas (like yours above.)

The fallouts are happening andI was right. Ledger, was it 1Password? Whoever.

"Hygiene" and "User experience" and whatnot are dangerous weaselly ideas used by "security" companies to convince themselves that what they're doing isn't inherently a bad idea.

"No brainer" should never be used because security is inherently hard. As we have fully seen, you can't "easy user experience" it away. It's difficult.

Right now - every old person that y'all make fun of with their passwords in a little notebook? They're doing better than most.

Now. I do believe there is room for companies. But with the following example I'm going to prove how absolutely full of crap most of these security companies are and it's REALLY simple.

Indemnify me.

I will pay for your product that saves passwords if you IDEMNIFY me. You can have 10? 30? bucks a month if and only if when I get breached you pay me $100,000.

No one's going to take this deal, proving that they're mostly worthless.