PayPal Standard Users - How do you handle this?

Discussion in 'Payments processing' started by blue_vision, Sep 18, 2015.

  1. blue_vision

    blue_vision Member

    Joined:
    Sep 27, 2011
    Messages:
    79
    First off, I can only use PayPal Standard payments.

    Since 2011 I've been battling with the PayPal Standard payment cancelation process with aMember. Users click the cancel button in aMember, then confirm the cancelation, just to be redirected to a random page in PayPal where they need to hunt around to cancel their subscription. If they login to PayPal first (currently) then it will redirect them to their pre-approved subscriptions page where they can make a selection but if they don't then they have to login and then are landed on an advertisement or their normal PayPal dashboard (and lets not forget there is two PayPal website designs people are using right now). There was no direct onsite cancelation. Explaining that has never been fun and I often have to cancel subscriptions myself in our PayPal account since the aMember admin cancel button never worked for me.

    Combine this with the fact that they believe we've "hidden" the cancel button in the payment history tab where they can't find it... we are just about accused of conspiracy constantly because of how this all works.

    Upgrading is an even bigger nightmare because there is no upgrade. Members had to cancel their old subscription and start a new one which means I have to double check subscriptions as they come in to be sure there isn't dual subscriptions running. There is no quick and clean way to describe this that I can think of before the member upgrades so they know. When I miss them it creates a PayPal refund/chargeback nightmare for us. Not only this but even though I had memberships in the same pricing groups and aMember (in the past) was accounting for the old subscription by not starting the new subscription start date till the other expired.... PayPal is a different story. The recurring payment was setup for that day and the set amount of time after that it would renew. This causes aMember and PayPal subscription dates not to match up.

    So upgrades and cancels are constant drama. I've provided video and text instructions but they often get overlooked and people are annoyed they need such instructions just to cancel. It should be simple and effortless.

    When Alexander told me that both PayPal Standard on-site cancelation and upgrades would be included in this latest version of aMember I was jumping over the moon excited. Finally, an end to the madness and my members can simply cancel or upgrade. Well, unfortunately this did not end up to be the full case once the update was released. This will only work for *new* subscriptions or subscribers (not sure which exactly because I can't even get that to work yet). So those who signed up prior to my upgrade date still has to go through the tedious process while new subscribers get the easier way. Yikes! We aren't just talking about the cancel button but upgrades also. Only subscribers/subscriptions after this release can upgrade so older users can't just upgrade. I guess this is all because aMember did not store the subscr id or whatever matching the invoices prior but it is now. According to them it's impossible to have this apply to the old subscribers.

    I understand that this is software progression sure. But it was hard enough to explain the complicated cancel and upgrade process before. But now it's not the same for everybody even?...LOL. It's even more information to explain now then it was before.

    So my question to you is... how have any of you dealt with this process? Is there something I'm missing? Do you explain it in a FAQ and people actually read it or videos? Are your members as confused as mine? If aMember can't do better then this as I'm told then fine. But I'm hoping other communities can recommend a better way to handle explaining this or making this process easier for our members and myself.

    Thanks!
    Last edited: Sep 18, 2015
  2. robw

    robw CGI-Central Partner

    Joined:
    Dec 18, 2007
    Messages:
    287
    Paypal standard is a royal pain for sure, and be interesting to see how the update changes things.

    The way we do it on one of our big sites is just to have members contact us to cancel, we then find the subscription in our paypal account and cancel it for them (you can search a txn and then see its parent subscription). That way, WE take the hassle of cancelling for them.

    Cheers
    Rob

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