Unusual Billing

[anielloverde]

Hi Support,

I have a Team Plan with one collaborator. I paid an annual fee last month but I was just billed again another annual fee. Can you please help to understand what is happening?

It is unfortunate Airtable has been giving us quite an unique experience. Two months of activity and two major issues. Hopefully it will improve soon enough.

[Kyrstin_Graves]

Your best bet at getting this resolved is to contact airtable directly. To contact Airtable support directly: 

1. Visit your Airtable homepage. 

2. Click Help in the top-right corner. 

3. Click Message support.

[anielloverde]

It appears quite difficult to receive effective support. The standard method relies exclusively on AI (calling that "intelligence" is at least optimistic). I wrote an email to support but it does take a while to get a response which significantly contributes to make the support experience particularly weak. Unlike last time, I hope at least they will read the email with due attention making the long waiting time worth. In any case, I would recommend Airtable to strengthen support services.

[Kyrstin_Graves]

Are you on the team plan or enterprise? I haven't had any AI support, but I have enterprise. 

And when I use the help feature in airtable, I usually get to the point where I can tell the bot they're not giving me what I need so I can fill out a form that lets me tell them how important the issue is.

[anielloverde]

I am on Team plan with two users. I was expecting an annual bill of USD 480, but was already charged more than that in though monthly installments, despite having chosen an annual payment plan.

[Kyrstin_Graves]

I reached out to support on your behalf, since I've never had an issue with their support team being responsive. I've asked that they either provide me with a more direct way for you to reach billing support or that they respond here/reach out to you directly. I'll reply here if they answer me, rather than reaching out to you directly.

[anielloverde]

I have received the following reply from Support:

"

Hi Aniello,

Thanks for contacting Airtable Support. We want to help you as quickly as possible.

Here's some information from our help center that might help resolve your issue, or answer your question.

I understand your concern regarding the unexpected billing amount. Based on our records, the Team plan is priced at $20 per user per month when billed annually. For two users, this would indeed total to $480 a year as you expected.

Regarding the charge in EUR and the amount of EUR 223.47 monthly, it's important to note that Airtable invoices are issued in USD. Currency conversions are handled by our payment processor, Stripe. If there has been an error or if further clarification is needed about your bill, please provide us with details of the charge (date, amount, and last four digits of the credit card) so we can assist you more effectively.

In order to resolve this issue promptly and avoid any long back-and-forth communication like before, I recommend contacting us directly with these details so we can validate whether this bill is correct or not.

Your case number is: 00762116

– Airtable Support"

I struggle to understand how USD 480 monthly becomes EUR 223.47 monthly. If billed monthly, the cumulative price Airtable is charging for one year would exceed USD 2.6k. Additionally, I would like to inform Support that their invoices are regularly issued in EUR.

[Kyrstin_Graves]

It sounds to me like they're charging you the yearly price every month, which likely means something got messed up when you upgraded to a Team plan in your settings. The charge for 2 users is $480/year or $40/month. I'd send back the invoices you've received as attachments to their email, with any additional information that isn't on the invoices. 

I'd also verify you really were charged twice. When I first switched my company over to the Enterprise plan, our IT team thought we were getting charged multiple times, but when they really looked at the invoices, we had actually only been charged once. Sometimes they send the same invoice twice. If however they have charged you twice and your invoices show that, they should refund you the money and figure out why yours is set to pull the yearly charge on a monthly cadence instead of yearly. 

[anielloverde]

I was really charged, and shared with Support the data they asked. However, regardless of whether the charge went through or not there are aspects of great concern:

- The Support email displays an unusual understanding of basic mathematics, which worries me greatly as a client. My impression is that such a level of approximation and - let me call it - "oversimplicity" applies to the way support requests are handled, based on what I can see so far.

- Airtable is definitely weak when it comes to such instances. We have been clients for two months and had two separate never-seen-before issues. Is this sustainable? It seems to me it's not.