@king Okay, I wasn't sleepy enough so I got on it now. I'ma page @silverpill into this conversation as well
Initially my server logs were showing errors regarding the subscription payment, and when I checked my monero_rpc service It was rejecting the tx for some reason. I've had this problem before, so I went into the monero_rpc config and changed the remote daemon address... actually had to change it a couple of times, but once it connected to a remote node successfully the payment transaction was recognized. I can see it confirming in my wallet now.
Right now I'm a little concerned that a back end monero_rpc error can easily go unnoticed.. if King hadn't told me he was testing subscriptions, I might not have noticed and the sub wouldn't show up on my end until I realized there were errors in the log.
Checking the logs for errors is arguably a responsibility of an instance admin, but I feel like some system to more noisily alert an instance admin of problems with the monero_rpc server might be a good idea... not sure how to implement that, though.