Confirmation emails are not sent if it is a recurring payment
Current behavior apparently:
One-time donations: A confirmation email comes right after you fill out the donation form
Recurring donations: A confirmation email comes each time after the payment is processed
This works quite well for online payment processors like PayPal, where the first payment is made within seconds of submitting the donation form. With "asynchronous payment processors" such as SEPA, however, this approach works quite poorly, because it can take several weeks before the next payment run happens (usually once a month). Currently this does not work at all. Moreover, from a fundraiser's point of view, it is a real disadvantage if these confirmations are sent with every payment: People will be reminded every time that they still haven't cancelled their recurring donations.
In contrast, the behavior most of us would like to see would be:
One-time and recurring donations: A confirmation email comes right after you fill out the donation form
Further confirmations for recurring donations will only come if this has been set in a configuration setting.
My suggestion:
There could be an additional radio button: One option that will be choosed by default which explains that the mail is only sent for recurring donations when a payment has actually been received (and for one-time donations directly). And for this purpose, there will be another option that says that a confirmation will be sent once directly after the form has been submitted - regardless of whether it is a one-time or recurring donation. This will ensure that this function will continue to work for everyone who actually wants to use it that way - even if there are probably not many.