Good UI. Bad UX.

Many readers asked for bad UX examples and why they fail. Here are two related cases I run into often.

Context: I use a separate card for subscriptions with a small balance. When a useful subscription fails due to insufficient funds, I top up and try to pay again.

Case #1

I open this payment screen:

Payment methods list with duplicates — Three visually identical cards where the first method is disabled

The same card can appear multiple times. The first method is disabled, so I cannot retry it directly. I have to add the same card again to pay successfully.

In short: there is no clear "pay now" retry path for the failed method, so the UI pushes users toward duplicate methods.

Case #2

Another payment interface has the opposite issue:

Payment UI where add method is hidden — Existing method is selectable, but adding a new one is hard to discover

Here I can use an existing method, but adding a new one is hard to find. The action seems hidden under a menu that visually belongs to the current method.

So in the first case I could not reuse the same method, and in the second case I could not easily add a new one.