Below you will find instructions on how to manage payment declines and collect on Unpaid reservations. Before diving in, please be advised how the Dockwa System works when attempting to collect outstanding balances.
When a payment is declined upon confirmation, Dockwa will automatically send instructions to boater on how to update payment in their Account. Once a new card is added the payment will attempt to re-run automatically to collect the outstanding balance.
When payment is declined on manual edits and rebills to collect the remaining balance upon arrival, they will not update automatically and require the marina to Manually Re-Process.
All reservations with Unpaid balances will be listed on your Marina Dashboard
From our experience, we advise marinas to take one of three approaches to Manage Payment Declines:
- The most common way is by sending a message via Dockwa Chat to re-notify them of the payment decline and give them some options:
- "Enter new card into Dockwa account (Instructions on how to do this were sent to you by Dockwa)"
- "Call the marina and we will add a new card into your reservation"
- "If bank flagged charge and you have approved it, chat us back and we will Manually Re-Run the charge with the card on file"
- Provide the customer an ultimatum. We have seen marinas give customers 24-hours or 1-week, depending on how far in advance of arrival the reservation is. The best medium to communicate this is Dockwa Chat.
- The least common way is to cancel the reservation and send a message via Dockwa Chat to notify them that they must resubmit their request with a valid payment source.
If you or your team have any questions or concerns regarding payment declines or the suggested process, please let us know below in the comments or by emailing mayday@dockwa.com
Related Articles:
- Re-Run Payment after Payment is Declined (Marina)
- Why was a Customer's Charge Declined?
- Payment Decline Information (Marinas)