What’s wrong with this email?

I need a sense check, please.

A couple of weeks ago, my son’s drama school sent me this email:

I didn’t reply.  I skim-read it, assuming they’d go ahead and charge my card. 

But a few days later, I received a chaser email for payment.

Looking at it now, I can see the phrase:

‘With your permission, we can take payment’

actually meant:

‘Please reply to this email and confirm you are happy for us to charge your card.’

But it was so ambiguous I just glossed over it.  Did you gloss over it too?

I call this sort of request a ‘Cloudy Call-To-Action (CTA)’ – nebulous, vague and open to interpretation. 

Cloudy CTAs are an absolute no-no if you want to get people to reply. 

A surefire way to avoid them?  Use questions, not statements:

‘Are you happy for us to charge your card?’ would have straight away shown me I needed to reply. 

Or perhaps I’m just being pedantic.  What do you reckon?

And have you received any Cloudy CTAs recently?  If so, I’d love to see them!