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Test mode: no way to simulate a failed subscription renewal (dunning untestable) #162

Feature Request

The documented failure test cards (4507 9900 0000 0028 / 0010 / 0044) are rejected by save-time card verification everywhere they could attach to a subscription. The customer portal's "Update Payment Details" and even a $0-due trial checkout both decline them. That makes them checkout-only simulators, and leaves no way to take a healthy test sub into past_due/dunning to verify what customers experience (emails, retry cadence, webhook sequence) before going live. Request: either a test card that succeeds on first auth and fails on subsequent charges (à la Stripe's 4000 0000 0000 0341), or a dashboard/API "simulate renewal failure" action in test mode.

Posted by jayrabe ·
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  • jayrabe

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    Aug 12

    Following up after a call with the team, with a smaller version of this ask and some evidence that narrows it.

    The smaller ask: rather than a new succeed-then-fail card, just let a documented failure test card be SAVED to a subscription in test mode - skip or soft-pass the save-time verification auth for test cards in test mode. The card then fails the next renewal on its own and dunning proceeds naturally, with no new card semantics to build.

    Why we think the verification auth is the only blocker: we tried the trial route specifically because a failing card can never start a subscription through a normal checkout - a trial should start one without a successful charge, leaving the first real pull as the thing that fails. We built a $1/day product with a 1-day trial and the failure card was declined at the $0-due signup. So the obstacle isn't charge mechanics, it's that these cards decline every auth including a $0 verification.

    One question that might make this free: can a trial start with no payment method at all? If so, that alone produces a real failed first charge and real dunning with no platform change. We couldn't tell from the docs - trials aren't documented (the only mention anywhere is trialing in the status and webhook event lists).