So…Mattel and Digital River struck again yesterday. I thought everything was fine and all set. I was wrong.

At 3:45pm EDT I received an email saying Mattel/DR “were unable to renew [my] subscription due to a credit card authorization failure.” Sure, that made perfect sense since the orders for Webstor went through fine last month on the exact same card.

The first thing I did was put in an order for two Teelas in case my subscription order issue couldn’t be rectified. Then I called the customer service number provided. The clearly outsourced CS person basically told me this was a problem with my credit card and to “talk to my bank.” Right. I called my credit card company and they told me that while they saw the charge for the emergency order I’d made, there was nothing else–not even a declined charge–meaning Digital River hadn’t even tried to charge my credit card before sending an email about a “credit card authorization failure.”

So I call CS back, and this time they tell me they see THREE orders–the one I made around noon for Zodak and so forth, the “emergency” order, and a third order that appears to be THE SUBSCRIPTION ORDER.

What. The. F***?

I tell them to cancel the emergency order, but that, apparently, was already in process so I’d have to send the figures back and so forth. The subscription order, however, hasn’t gone through, so I ask them to cancel that. Now, in my order history, that order says “Order Unsubmitted.”

What will arrive in the mail next week? Your guess is as good as mine!

Here’s what I think MAY have happened, though. As I was perusing my account information at Mattycollector, I noticed under “Payment information” I had no default card selected–there was nothing under “default.”

I think what happened last month was that Webstor was charged to whatever card had been used to originally order the 2009 subscription. With this “auto-renewal,” they tried to use the “default” card instead. Since I hadn’t chosen a default card, there was an error that the system interpreted as a “credit card authorization failure.”

My hope, now that I’ve selected a default credit card, is that my sub order will go through as normal next month–IF that order still exists. In the “subscription failure” email they sent, it says my 2009 subscription order’s “Expiration Date” is 10/17/2009. On the other hand, in my order history it says my subscription is “Active.”

What will happen next month? I have no idea. I’m just happy Teela’s still available as of right now, which suggests I’ll have time to order Scare Glow next month if my subscription doesn’t kick in again.