If I use amember+paypal and a customer buys from me, only to later chargeback or initiate a dispute, will/can amember automatically "ban" that member or do I still have to manually find the transaction?
Hello, If you are using "paypal_r" it does handle chargebacks, reversals, or refunds notifications received back from Paypal. It eventually calls function(s) process_refunds(), and refund_payment() in the plugin code. It currently just updates the payment record for the user and does not ban the user but some custom code could be inserted into one of these functions that could add the user to the ban list. aMember is very flexible if you have some coding skills or know someone with some coding skills. Jimmy
I think instead of coding some of the functions each of us want, I think we should develop plug-in and we can download for free or small fee -- just like they do in WordPress.
Hello, I agree, currently aMember does have a plugin architecture which works quite well but it is still upto the developers of aMember (i.e. Alex) to provide the plugin hooks (or callouts) so that a plugin developer can get hooked into the system at the right time to do the right actions. For instance one of the things I change most often and is requested alot is modifications to member.php/member.html and signup.php/signup.html so that either products can be filtered or payment systems can be filtered for display/use in either signup form or members page. By filtered I mean adding or removing. This way you can override the rules/settings specified for an individual product via a global function customized for an individual/company to suit there needs based on product ids or price_group. Anyway this is one instance of a plugin hook that I could have used that would give me more control of product/payment systems without having to modify core code. Maybe if a list of plugin hooks/callouts that currently are not available were formed Alex would consider them for future releases. Unfortunately it would be impossible for aMember to be a one all solution out of the box for everybody. Not everybody will agree what the default action for an operation should be. What is important is for the product to have flexibility (source code is provided) so that it can be adapted to ones needs. I think aMember is very adaptable. I have no complaints but then I am a developer that can modify the code to do pretty much exactly what I want. Jimmy
I agreed. For me, I'm involve with a community-based local organization and our needs are different than what were discussed here. There are some useful tools in aMember that I like -- but I need little more. For example, status of membership -- it's either Active or Expired (and of course, Pending). While Expired status is good for us to know, we have a policy to keep all records -- even if a member died, we need flexible to change that to "Closed". Or someone didn't renew after one years, it should be change to Closed. What if our future new President would like to send out rejoin letters(or emails), we need to pull up all closed records back to five years. Of course, we need to filter out dead members somehow. I believe this can be done with plugin hook (thanks Jimmy, I like the term) -- instead of modify the code (I am not a programmer or what if I may not be here next year; whoever takes my place will not know what were changed in one of our codings). One of a national group I'm a member, is interest in aMember but I don't know if they can find someone to run aMember and do the coding. I don't have time to do the job for them. What make this national group different, they have afflilate members (Chapters, Special Interest Group) -- the national group wants to have each affiliate members to update records of their own membership -- but do not have access to other membership records. I believe, with strong community support we have here like you, DavidM1, etc, they'll provide the plugin hook. Or if I hired a programmer to develop a plugin hook, I know I will be more than happy to give it to Alex to post it (for free). Sorry my thread is long -- just been meaning to write this for long time. David
Hi David, One thing I have seen on another Amember site similar to yours is a special product that users get joined to as a lifetime subscription. So in your example, you may assign your users to a "deceased" or "closed" product. I'm not sure if this is 100% what you are looking for, but it may serve as a short term solution.
"if you are using "paypal_r"" Whats paypal_r ? Forgive me, I have not bought amember yet but if this feature is possible I likely will. Also- Another question- If a user does a charageback or something, can amember prevent/ban the paypal address from being used again to buy the software on another account?
Skippybosco, please email me -- I left you a message here in the bulletin board in case you didn't know.
This is a brilliant idea... Some sort of plugin to automatically deal with refunds. So we can just flick a switch in one control panel, and the aMember account is "banned" or "restricted" and the refund issued. At the moment, I'm having to delete the aMember account, refund the PayPal payment and cancel my affiliate commission within iDevAffiliate all manually. I'd pay big bucks for something that could automate the whole lot. - David
paypal_r is the name of the paypal plugin. There are two of them _r and _pro. _pro is for people with merchant accounts and use Paypal to process everything. _r is for small business and premier accounts (most users have this) Second question, no right now there is no way to stop payments from the same paypal account to several amember accounts. I have talked to the dev team about another item of not completing the transaction in amember and issuing a refund if the payment is from a unverified paypal account. I was told they could make the script stop but not issue the refund as a limitation of the IPN from paypal. In your case maybe have amember dev a ban by paypal email address or have the paypal plugin check the banned email address in the admin section, if the email address is in there then deny access and email the admin to issue the Paypal refund. Another way is to get the Paypal Plugin to request the shipping address of the buyer, so if they file a dispute you can go to your post office and mail them a letter of the login info that is trackable. This will meet Paypal's requirements for disputes, as far as Charge Backs I believe it will meet their requirements too but I do not know for sure.