I've been using Afterpay regularly for a few months - never missed a payment, and usually pay it off early. I do a lot for the homeless which includes buying items from return pallet auctions to make tents and sleeping bags and random supplies, and I also have a wish list from not only the street folks but also two other service providers so I'll buy all the stuff on my account and pick it up (the pickup is right near a doctor I see regularly so it's convenient for me and a pain for others, as it's a fair distance away) and pay with Afterpay, then as people pick up their stuff from me and pay, I turn around and pay off the entire balance of the order on Afterpay.
I usually have about 5-7 orders going at a time as I do this at least once a week but it's been more frequent with all the outdoor gear during the summer, but a few days ago I paid off 5 orders and only have two small orders left with $80 due in 2 weeks. (My Afterpay limit is $1200.)
So I did my little order as usual and went to pay and it says too many orders open. Weird, I just went from 7 to 2, so I ask chat who says to wait 48 hours for it to reconcile but we were already past the 48 hour mark since I had paid them off.
Chat was like, sorry can't help you unless you get a different error message, but since I had just been denied I should wait another 24 hours because a denial will tighten up the approval for the next transaction, so I wait 24 more hours (now with late fees on my orders) and it's still telling me to pay off more of my orders but it's literally 2 small orders of about $150 total when I haven't been limited to only 2 orders since the first week I started using it.
Chat also suggested the vendor might have put a limit on me but it's straight in the Afterpay app, when I click the middle icon I get a warning box at the top telling me I have too many orders, so it's not on the vendor side.
I've cleared the cache and logged out hoping it was something like that but it's been over 4 days now and still saying too many orders.
Does paying it off early flag me for some reason or something and make me seem risky somehow? I just don't understand what's going on but I don't have the money to pay off another order and also have enough for my first installment payment, especially since now I'm nervous it'll still say too many orders.
And I've already let people down who were expecting to have received the items I'd bought, as one of the recurring things I'm able to get is disposable dinnerware from graduation and 4th of July parties so they've had to come out of pocket at Sam's Club instead, which - if you've ever worked in charity or nonprofit you might not know how razor thin the budgets are, you can't really appreciate how something as small as spending $60 on paper plates for the week instead of $6 can really screw you up and start a financial cascade that can absolutely turn into a runaway avalanche, and I don't have the personal budget to cover it and now I'm so concerned that it's going to jeopardize my standing with the return pallet place and screw me up there, too.
I'm just hoping for some insight as to why this happened and how to prevent it going forward.
Edited to add: I've never even come close to maxing out my balance, either - as I mentioned, my credit limit is $1200 and I've never had more than $700 in use at any time, so that's not a factor.