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Payment Failed or Card Declined — What Happens | Telm

What happens to your Telm subscription when a renewal payment fails: retries, the grace window, when the group drops to Free, and how to fix it.

5 min read
In short

If a renewal charge fails, the subscription goes past due and paid features pause right away — but nothing is deleted. The payment provider retries the card for up to about three days, and there's a 72-hour window after the period ends before the group actually drops to Free. Fix the card, the next successful charge flips everything back on.

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1The moment a charge fails

The subscription is marked past due and the group temporarily loses plan privileges — limits and Pro features behave as if the group were on Free. Settings, rules and history are untouched: it's a pause, not a reset.

This is deliberately conservative: paid features stop until payment is sorted, so there's never a surprise bill for time you didn't intend to pay for.

2Automatic retries

The card is retried automatically by the payment provider over roughly the next three days — declines are often temporary (limits, expired card, bank checks). If any retry succeeds, the subscription returns to active on its own and features resume immediately.

Telm doesn't currently send a DM about failed charges, so it's worth checking the billing page if features seem to have paused unexpectedly.

Most declines are fixed by updating the card or raising the online-payment limit with your bank — then just wait for the next retry or pay from the billing page.

3How long before the group is on Free

The group keeps its subscription row through a 72-hour grace window after the paid period ends. If no payment lands in that window, the subscription expires and the group continues on the Free plan.

Dropping to Free changes limits, not data: what's in each plan shows exactly which features pause. Your configuration survives and reactivates with the next subscription.

4Fixing it

Open the billing page in the dashboard: update the payment method in the payment portal, or simply start a new checkout for the plan. As soon as a charge succeeds, the plan is active again — no support ticket needed.

If the card was charged but the plan still shows Free, give it a couple of minutes for the payment webhook to arrive; if it doesn't settle, see refunds and disputes or contact support.

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