dunning emails not sending: payment recovery workflow broken

TL;DR

Dunning that never sends is a workflow break, not a copy problem: the payment-failed event stopped triggering, the workflow's entry filter excludes the segment, or the sending domain lost authentication. Trace one real failed payment through trigger, workflow, and mail logs in that order.

dunning emails not sending: payment recovery workflow broken

Use this when

• Failed payments occur but no dunning sends appear in mail logs
• Customers reach cancellation claiming no warning
• A billing or marketing-automation change shipped recently

Not for this skill when

• Emails send and deliver but customers ignore them
• Only one template in the sequence is missing

Steps

1. Take a recent failed payment and confirm its event reached the automation platform. Verify: the trigger event is present or its absence is the finding
2. Walk the workflow's entry conditions against that customer's attributes. Verify: any filter that excludes them (plan, region, status) is identified
3. Check send logs and suppression lists for the customer's billing contacts. Verify: sends, bounces, and suppressions are accounted for
4. Fix the trigger, filter, or suppression cause and reprocess the missed dunning queue with a shortened, honest sequence. Verify: affected customers finally get a clear payment warning with time to act
5. Add a daily reconciliation: failed payments yesterday versus dunning sends yesterday, alerting on mismatch. Verify: the next break is caught in 24 hours, not at cancellation

Variant phrasings

dunning emails not sending

A related phrasing for the same underlying problem.

payment recovery workflow trigger broken

A related phrasing for the same underlying problem.

failed payment customers not notified

A related phrasing for the same underlying problem.

Compatibility: Compatibility: dunning in billing platforms or marketing automation (HubSpot, Marketo, Customer.io) fed by payment events, current versions.

Why it happens

Payment events and email platforms meet through integrations that fail silently: a webhook retired, a filter inherited from a campaign, a suppression list that swallowed billing contacts. Reconciling event counts against send counts daily makes this class of break impossible to miss for long.

Edge cases / pitfalls

• Billing contacts are often suppressed after one marketing bounce. Sending domains for billing mail should be separate from marketing, with separate suppression handling.
• Reprocessing missed dunning needs a compressed schedule; sending a 21-day sequence to someone whose final retry is tomorrow helps no one.
• Check in-app and SMS fallback paths before declaring total silence; sometimes email broke but another channel fired.

Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_qFt5qU32DdC54mWhgH3WhA