PayPal membership subscriptions question ...

My wife and I run a successful membership site and fortunately get very low unsubscribe rates. However, each month there are always a certain number of subscriptions that PayPal reports as having 'failed'.

It seems that they try to collect the money again a few days later and if it fails again, they automatically delete the subscription.

While a few of these failures can be traced to subscribers having forgotten to renew their credit card details when their cards expire, the vast majority are more mysterious.

We regularly get people asking why we have thrown them out, and how can they get back in to our site!

In these cases, their credit cards are current and within their balance, their bank accounts are fine and in several cases, customers report that their banks or credit card companies deny having refused the transaction.

PayPal, of course, have nothing of any consequence to say on the matter.

Has anyone else experienced this phenomenon? And do you have any idea why these payments fail - and is there anything that can be done to minimise the problem?

Mostly our customers can eventually rejoin us, but it puts everyone - us and them - to an unnecessary fuss and bother.

Martin