I have recently discovered it is possible to fail a transaction to steam when paying by PayPal due to my card having expired and I forgot to update it. This is obviously my fault, though I am still annoyed at PayPal for allowing the transaction to be started with an expire card. However, based on this I have a few suggestions.

In any other retailer in the world the response to a failed transaction is one of the following:

1) Retry the original payment method. In store they ask you to retry your card, on Steam this could be a literal retry button.

2) Automatically take the missing amount from any available balance the customer has with the retailer and send notification this has occurred. I realise Valve does not like this idea so a stern reminder not to start purchased that will fail could be part of the notification however, other retails are usually just mater of fact about it.

3) Allow for the customer to pay via another method. This could be linked to the retry button suggested in option 1.

I am not going to suggest how you would or should update your policy because I am not a lawyer and will at best miss something however, I am suggesting you implement one or all of these industry standards in the retail business.

As for the current method of doing this, which involves logging support cases to help resolve the issue. Currently this will be loosing money each time someone has this because at the very least you have to pay the support persons wage. As a result you should at least have a small admin fee (I'll suggest £10) to cover you expenditures. Personally this is my least favourite suggestion and this kind of process seems like a waste of support persons time instead of automating it with suggestion 1, 2 or 3 above.

Also if you are worried about fraud you can literally monitor for actual suspicious activity instead of monitoring all of these occurrences (I imagine they would stand out in the world for computer games).

The last bit of feed back is, I think there could be a better way of say people messed up rather than making them feel their £4 failed transaction to update their wallet is proof they are some kind of criminal mastermind who has somehow finally been caught and needs to burn on the fires of hell. To be clear you can tell someone they are in the wrong / made a mistake without calling them a criminal.

Thank you for the consideration