My payment failed

Most failed payments are a card problem rather than anything to do with your booking, and most of them take a minute to fix.

• Your card expired or was replaced. This is by far the most common one. Banks reissue cards and the new details do not carry across automatically.

• Not enough available funds on the day the payment ran.

• Your bank blocked it. Recurring payments are sometimes stopped by fraud filters, particularly on a new card.

If a payment does not go through, we try again over the following days. You are not charged anything extra for a retry and there are no late fees. If the retry succeeds, nothing else is needed from you.

Log in to your account and you can:

• Update the card on file, or add a new one

• Press retry payment on the existing card

• Pay the outstanding instalment manually

Updating the card is usually the fix. Retrying a card that has expired will keep failing.

A card that cannot be charged at all is treated differently from a one-off failed payment, because retries will never succeed. We will email you asking you to update your details, and we keep asking for about three weeks. If we still cannot take payment after that, the booking moves to a cancellation warning and then to cancellation.

That whole sequence is avoidable by adding a working card. If you are having trouble adding one, message us with your booking reference and we're happy to help.

Two payments close together: We charge each instalment separately, so if you have caught up on a missed payment shortly before a scheduled one, both will appear on your statement as separate charges. That is two instalments, not a double charge.

A payment you did not expect: If you have had an extension approved, the payments that were moved land together on your new date, along with anything already due that day.

You have paid but it still shows as due. Card payments can take a day or two to settle. If it has been longer, send us the date and the amount and we will check it against our records while you wait.

A charge you do not recognise at all. Contact us before contacting your bank. Disputing a charge may cancel your booking. We can almost always sort it faster.

Your booking reference, the date, and the amount. If it is a card problem, tell us what your bank said, because the message they give you usually tells us what happened.

We will never ask for your full card number by phone, email or chat. If you need to update a card, we will send you to your account to do it yourself. If anyone asks you for card details another way, it is not us.