Read the complete live customer thread and trusted billing policy. Identify the latest inbound message, current draft, requested outcome, and any ambiguity about timing, amount, product, or account.
Search mail and Codex tasks by normalized email, account id or UID, billing customer id, subscription id, invoice id, charge or payment-intent id, mail thread/message/draft ids, and issue phrase. Keep one canonical case.
Reconcile three systems without substituting one for another:
- payment provider: customer, subscription, invoice, payment intent, charge, refund, amount, currency, and status;
- product: auth account, profile, plan, entitlement, and access state;
- email: complete thread, existing drafts, prior sends, and current approval.
Match the persistent product account to the provider customer/subscription and the exact transaction. Stop when identifiers disagree, multiple live subscriptions qualify, or test/live environments are ambiguous.
Record the proposed mutation as action + exact target + timing + amount and currency when applicable + customer-visible effect.

Read-only investigation and unsent drafting are allowed when requested. Cancellation, refund, void, credit, invoice, charge, retry, and subscription changes always require explicit current approval for the exact action. Approval to investigate, send a reply, or perform one billing action does not approve another.

Flow: Cancellation request

Evidence — Verify the active subscription, product account, plan, collection method, cancellation state, current period end, latest invoice, payment/retry state, and entitlement behavior.
Match — Require one exact subscription linked to the verified account. If immediate versus period-end cancellation is unclear, ask; do not infer the more destructive option.
Allowed action — Explain verified options and prepare an unsent draft. Do not cancel or change invoices during triage.
Approval gate — Request approval naming subscription, immediate or period-end timing, invoice/retry treatment, and expected access end. Treat cancellation as a financial mutation.
Customer communication — Before action, acknowledge the request without saying it is canceled. After action, state the effective date and access result shown by read-back.
Post-action verification — Re-read subscription status and cancellation fields, current-period end, latest invoice/payment intent, retry schedule, product profile, and entitlement. Confirm no unintended second subscription remains.
Closure — Close only after the approved cancellation and reply state are verified. Keep open when access timing, invoice state, or customer confirmation remains unresolved.

Flow: Unpaid or failed-payment cancellation

Evidence — Verify subscription state, latest invoice, payment intent and charge history, attempt timestamps, retry schedule, and the total actually collected.
Match — Link the failed payment and subscription to the verified product account. Distinguish a failed attempt followed by later success from a still unpaid account.
Allowed action — Draft a factual acknowledgement. If collected amount is zero, record no_refundable_payment; never create a fake refund.
Approval gate — Obtain exact approval to cancel the subscription and to void an open invoice, cancel a payment intent, or stop provider retries when each action is needed. Do not bundle unstated financial actions.
Customer communication — Say that cancellation or retry prevention is being checked until the provider read-back proves it. Do not say "no charge" unless transaction evidence shows zero collected.
Post-action verification — Re-read canceled subscription state, invoice status, payment intent, charge total, next retry, product plan, and entitlement. Require no live retry path for the canceled obligation.
Closure — Close after the canceled/no-retry state and customer reply are verified. If a later successful charge exists, route it to the refund or accidental-renewal flow.

Flow: Refund request

Evidence — Identify the exact captured transaction, amount, currency, date, invoice, charge/payment-intent status, existing refunds, dispute state, policy eligibility, and linked subscription.
Match — Require the transaction-to-customer-to-product chain. Do not refund from email, name, amount, or last-four data alone. Stop on multiple plausible charges or an active dispute that requires a separate workflow.
Allowed action — Investigate and draft without mutation. State the exact refundable amount and whether the customer also asked to end the subscription.
Approval gate — Obtain explicit approval for full or partial amount, currency, transaction, and reason. For every subscription refund, cancel the verified subscription first and read back cancellation before creating the refund. A one-time purchase refund has no invented subscription step.
Customer communication — Before action, say the request is under review. After read-back, state the actual refunded amount and provider-confirmed status; qualify settlement timing instead of guaranteeing it.
Post-action verification — Re-read refund id/status/amount/currency, charge refunded totals, payment intent, invoice, subscription, product profile, and entitlement. Verify the mutation did not target another transaction or leave a subscription active.
Closure — Close after refund and subscription/product state are verified and the approved reply is sent. Keep open for pending/failed refund state or missing customer-visible confirmation.

Flow: Accidental renewal

Evidence — Verify the renewal invoice, transaction timestamp, captured versus pending state, amount/currency, subscription term, prior cancellation signals, existing refunds, and current access.
Match — Link renewal, subscription, and product account. Check for duplicate subscriptions and distinguish a new purchase from an automatic renewal.
Allowed action — Explain the verified state and draft the proposed remedy. If payment is pending or uncaptured, do not create a refund.
Approval gate — For a captured renewal, separately name cancellation timing and refund amount/currency in the approval request. Cancel first, verify cancellation, then refund. For a pending payment, request only the provider-supported cancel/void/release action actually required.
Customer communication — Acknowledge the unintended renewal without promising reversal before approval and read-back. Afterward, report cancellation, access, and payment outcomes separately.
Post-action verification — Re-read subscription, invoice, payment intent, charge, refund, product plan, entitlement, and any retry or next-renewal fields. Confirm no duplicate refund or active renewal remains.
Closure — Close only when all approved remedy components and the final reply are verified. Leave open if the refund is pending, the provider action failed, or another subscription still qualifies.

Exclude Trustpilot review requests

Never add a Trustpilot review invitation to any flow in this skill. Refunds, failed payments, cancellations, accidental renewals, disputes, complaints, and mixed account-plus-billing cases remain ineligible even when the customer is polite or later acknowledges the result. Close the verified case without review outreach.

Send, archive, and handoff

Use customer-email-draft-threads for mailbox operations. Re-read the full thread before send, verify the approved message in SENT, and only then perform an authorized archive by removing INBOX from every message and proving inbox_remaining: []. Do not confuse a provider mutation, sent reply, mail archive, and resolved case.

Finish with:

Case:
Evidence across provider/product/email:
Account and transaction match:
Canonical mail/Codex threads:
Financial action taken:
Approval used or still needed:
Customer communication state:
Post-action read-back:
Archive state:
Closure state and next step:

Run customer-support-verification before claiming completion.

handle-saas-billing-cases

Handle SaaS Billing Cases

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