Better Error Messages

In the past few weeks, I've received a number of emails from members who had trouble making their renewal payments online. They get an error, which is either not apparent enough to see, or the completely non-specific "The transaction was unsuccessful. If you need assistance please contact the club."

In many of these cases, the member was simply entering the credit card expiration in the wrong format (to be fair, "MM-YYYY" is a rather uncommon format, and no amount of instruction next to it will help certain people). 

Is there any way to fix the payment page so it gives more specific and helpful error messages? Is there any way to put an error-check in that would not let them attempt the transaction if the date is in the wrong format? Is there any way to replace that date field with the more traditional drop-downs for month and year - like many other eCommerce sites have these days? I think that each of these changes would really help reduce the frustration that our members have been having with payment - and would also reduce the number of times I need to copy and paste my answers back to them. 

3 Votes