Waitlist offer troubleshooting (member questions)

Symptom-first guide for fielding member questions about the membership waitlist and offer flow (not camp/event waitlists. See Camp and event waitlists for those).

Open Waitlist and filter to offered to find the household.

• Show accept link displays a copyable URL. Text or forward it to the member directly. No re-login is needed to accept; the link itself authenticates them.

• Resend email sends the offer email again.

• Both actions mint a fresh link and invalidate any link from the original email, so if the member says they did get an email but the link fails, don't debug the old link. Just resend or show a new one.

Suggested wording: "I've resent your offer — please use the link in the newest email (or the one I just sent you), since older links no longer work."

Accept links are single-use. This happens when:

• The member already clicked it once (even accidentally, e.g. an email preview crawler).

• They're using a forwarded copy of an old email after staff resent or re-showed the link.

• The offer itself already expired (see below).

Resolution: don't try to debug the old link. Open the household's entry on Waitlist and use Show accept link or Resend email to mint a fresh one.

If your org has an application fee turned on (configured in Settings), applying at /join opens an invoice and sends the applicant to Stripe Checkout: the household is only assigned a list position once Stripe confirms the payment via webhook. There's normally a short lag between paying and showing up on the list; ask the member to check back in a few minutes.

Applicants get a portal sign-in provisioned at apply time, so a member who closed the Stripe tab before paying can just sign in and resume payment, they don't have to start over at /join. Resuming reuses the same household, so it won't create a duplicate.

If the invoice shows void, the application window (configured in Settings, default about a week) lapsed before payment was completed. The application was automatically expired. The member needs to reapply at /join; there is no way to revive an expired application.

Suggested wording: "Payments can take a few minutes to show up on the list after Stripe confirms them. If it's been longer than that, or if your invoice shows as void, the application window closed before payment went through: you'll need to reapply."

The offer and waitlist entry move to expired when the window (configured in Settings) passes, and the household is emailed at that point by the hourly sweep. Note: this email was broken until 2026-08-19 (ticket #268): a household whose offer expired before then was never notified, so treat pre-fix expirations as unannounced.

Since the #268 fix, expirations do email the household automatically. But that email is best-effort (a delivery failure is logged, not retried), so a member can still have missed it. Confirm the entry's status on Waitlist (filter to expired) rather than assuming the email landed.

Suggested wording: "Your offer did expire on [date], and our system does email when that happens. It may have landed in spam, or the send didn't reach you. I'm sorry you didn't see it. I can [reopen at staff discretion / explain next steps] from here."

Accepting an offer creates the initiation invoice (fee + bond + first year's dues per your org's Settings amounts) and a pending membership in the same step: it is not active yet. The membership only flips to active (and the bond only posts) once Stripe confirms the payment via webhook, not at the moment the member clicks accept.

Suggested wording: "Accepting the offer starts the process, but your membership goes active once payment is confirmed. Usually within a few minutes of completing checkout. If it's been longer, let us know and we'll check the invoice."

Hand off to a manager rather than resolving in the ticket thread when you see:

• A payment that appears stuck or failed after checkout.

• Bond amount or refund questions. See Relinquishment.

• A suspected duplicate household (the member says they already have an account, or applied before under a different name/email). See Households and portal login.

• #268 (fixed 2026-08-19). Membership waitlist offer-expiry emails did not send before this date; offers that expired earlier were never announced to the household.