Billing errors and how to clear them

What the red dot means

A billing profile is either usable or it is not, and the dot is the whole status. A red dot means the profile cannot be used for an entry. No dot means it validated and is ready. There is no partial state to interpret and no amber middle ground.

Validation runs when you create a profile and again every time you edit one. It normally finishes within sixty seconds, and the screen closes on its own when the profile is created, with the card then showing on the Billing page.

The timing matters more than the mechanics. Errors spike during heavy traffic, and heavy traffic means the hour around a release. Validate the night before and a slow check costs you nothing. Validate at four minutes to the window and it can cost you the release. The drop day checklist puts it in order.

The four errors the app names

Each one is set out below, under “If something goes wrong”, with what causes it and what clears it. Two notes that apply across all four.

Read the specific error before changing anything. The most common way a five second fix becomes a twenty minute one is retyping every field at once, saving, and then not knowing which change mattered. Fix the field the error names, save, and wait for validation.

And do not edit a profile while a Draw window is open. Editing restarts validation, and a profile that is revalidating is a profile that is out of play. Full detail is in what happens during a drop.

The declines the app cannot explain

This is the honest part, and it is the reason a lot of support threads end unsatisfyingly.

Some attempts fail without a named error, or keep failing on a card where every field is demonstrably correct. When that happens, the decision was almost certainly made by your card issuer. The app receives a rejection. It does not receive a reason. We cannot see why your bank said no, and neither can anyone answering your email.

Banks decline for reasons that have nothing to do with you: an unfamiliar merchant, a cross border transaction, a fraud rule that fired on the pattern rather than the purchase, a card freeze you set and forgot. Retyping the same card will not change a decision made on their side. Two things will. Call the number on the back of the card and ask them to allow it, or add a different card as a second profile and use that one.

The same limit applies to the card itself. Laced does not store card numbers, in the app or on our servers. The address on a profile is held encrypted on your own device, and the card data is not kept anywhere, so there is no record here for us to inspect on your behalf. That is a deliberate trade and it cuts both ways.

When to write to us

Write to hello@lacedentries.com when a profile fails validation with the same named error after you have corrected the field it names, or when setup sits on Setting up or Stopped for more than a few minutes with no release in progress. Include which error you see and what you have already changed.

Do not write to us about a card your bank is declining, because there is nothing on our side to look at. And if you are adding more profiles so you have more entries in play, the plans are auto-renewing subscriptions managed through the App Store or Google Play, so billing questions about the subscription itself go to them.