1st Payment Charging Next Day

[ATB65]

We are using the s2Member Pro version and Paypal payments pro for our payment processor.

The registration form and set up are fine - except when someone joins and pays (we have no free membership), we are notified that there is a new member and a new payment; however, the payment is scheduled to charge on the FOLLOWING day instead of immediately upon joining.

I don't see where I can fix this. Please help!!

How and what do I need to change so that their first payment upon registering and joining is charged immediately?

[ATB65]

Still waiting for help, please!

[Cristián Lávaque]

Hi

I saw your post earlier and emailed Jason about it. As soon as he gets to the email, he should commenting about your problem here. I have an idea of what the problem may be, but am not sure so I rather wait for him.

[ATB65]

Thank you! I'm anxious to hear how to fix it as soon as possible!

[Jason Caldwell]

Thanks for reporting this important issue.
~ and thanks for bringing this to my attention Cristián.

This is to be expected in the current release.
PayPal® will sometimes take up to 24 hours before activating the Recurring Profile.
Taken from: https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd= ... 86520F027U

PROFILESTARTDATE
The date when billing for this profile begins.
Note: The profile may take up to 24 hours for activation.

To clarify: s2Member creates the Recurring Profile in real-time, and the Customer's card is authenticated in real-time. But, settlement of these charges may not occur for up to 24 hours.

PayPal also offers an option for an immediate Initial Amount. However, there are some technical challenges with this feature in the current release of s2Member Pro; and thus, it is not used at all. Instead, scheduled payments are always processed as a Recurring Profile. In a future release, we are going to update the PayPal API version and try to make this option available to site owners that prefer it. But for now, the only way to charge something immediately in real-time, is by choosing a "Buy Now" option whenever you create your Pro Form.

[ATB65]

Thank you for the info - a couple of questions.

When someone joins and "pays", they have immediate access to our membership area. We don't want that to happen if, for instance, their payment does not go through.

If the settlement doesn't occur for 24 hours, is there a way that we can "delay" their membership access until their payment processes via Paypal? For instance, can we say that their profile/membership is being reviewed and will be approved within 24 hours...? If so, how do we set that up?

If we use a "Buy Now" option as you stated, does this mean they would still be charged each month, as a "membership?"

Thank you for your help - look forward to hear about a good workaround to this issue.

[ATB65]

Can I hire someone to change the parameters of the plugin so that members are charged immediately - or is changing it not even possible?

Please advise as soon as possible on this - it seems ridiculous to me that you can't charge someone immediately upon joining. Isn't that the whole purpose of a membership site...???

VERY frustrated by this whole new issue - please respond.

Thank you.

[ATB65]

Also - is there a different payment processor (Such as Clickbank) that can be used so a member is charged immediately upon signup?

[Cristián Lávaque]

I can understand how frustrating this can be for you.

The problem with the delayed settlement of the charge is with PayPal, and PayPal tells s2Member everything went fine, so s2Member has no way to tell if the charge is still pending on PayPal's side. Yet s2Member will try to find a way around this issue, which will come out in a future release, as Jason mentioned.

No, if you use a "buy now" button, it won't charge recurringly.

Regarding other payment gateways, s2Member Pro works with several of them and you can use the one you want, including ClickBank, which also support recurring billing. I don't know if any of them have an issue similar to PayPal's in this regard.

To activate the other gateways, you go to WP Admin -> s2Member -> Other Gateways, check the one(s) you want, save changes and refresh the page to now see them in s2Member's navigation. http://www.s2member.com/video-pro-intro/

[ATB65]

Is there a way to have someone join, pay via Paypal (which isn't charging their card until the following day), and then not get access to the paid membership pages until 24 hours later? If so, how do I set this up?

Please advise. We're still trying to work around this not charging their card until the next day issue....

[ATB65]

Hello? Still waiting for help!!!

[BobTabor]

@ATB65 ... Hi, I can't supply an answer, but before I go and deploy s2Member Pro to a live site, could you explain two things?

(1) Does PayPal Website Payments Pro + Subscriptions essentailly turn no one away? Do they just accept every attempt? Or do they do some preliminary checks (sufficient funds, credit card not stolen, etc.) before they at least give s2Member Pro the initial "all clear"?

(2) If, later on, they do realize a payment did not go through, do you at least get an email directly from PayPal that tells you of the failed attempt at payment? Can you at least manually look up the user and shut them down?

[ATB65]

Hi Bob,

1) As far as I can see, Paypal Payments Pro takes everyone - because the payment doesn't process until the following day, I have no way to tell if their card will go through until the next day. So basically, people can get access to our members-only area, their card could fail the next day, and there is no way to stop this in its current setup. This is unbelievable to me, that the settings can't be changed in the S2Pro plugin so that their card is charged (and approved or denied) immediately upon signup.

2) I think if yes, if their payment doesn't go through, I can shut them down....but they still had access to the members-only area without (technically) paying!

sooooo frustrated by this whole thing. If I could set it up that they join but CAN'T access the members area until 24 hours later, then I could prevent anyone whose card doesn't go through from getting to the members-only content. But s2Member hasn't told me yet how to do that. And so, we wait and more delays and we're losing $$$.

Frustrating!

[BobTabor]

Yes, this is a real eye opener. Thank you for letting me (everyone) know.

Specifically to #2 ... how are you notified by Paypal? Via email? I'm guessing they don't send an IPN to take care of it automatically? Or ...?

This would be a real step backwards if we were to implement this, it sounds.

@Jason ... you have the best product on the market. May I suggest, however, that you strongly consider an additional (optional) integration point to handle fraud: MaxMind. We currently have a custom solution I built in .NET that utilizes MaxMind.com to check GeoIP versus the billing address of the card, known email and credit cards known to be fraudulent ... and have virtually eliminated chargebacks as a result (after being threatened by PayPal for shutdown due to our high chargeback rates. It was due to several Commission Junction scammers who would get paid in 30 days and we couldn't catch the chargeback for 45 days.) In fact, our dedicated PayPal account rep now says we have the lowest chargeback rate of any of his accounts.

[BobTabor]

@ATB65 ... Perhaps an idea ... Use Level#1 as a "holding cell" ... providing limited access (perhaps introductory material or something you could stomach giving away for free) until you are sure payment has gone through successfully. Then manually, you could check Paypal in a batch process and manually move approved memberships from Level 1 to Level 2 -- with full privileges.

Just an idea ...

[ATB65]

Thanks, Bob - I thought of that idea - the "holding cell." But I am unsure how to set this up as we are offering only 1 membership type....?

And of course, I'm trying to limit the manual work - IMO, things like this need to run automatically, which is why I bought the plugin in the first place.

[BobTabor]

Hi again ... it sounds like it's on s2member's radar, so what I'm suggesting would be a temporary fix (at least, hopefully temporary).

The crux of the issue is that Paypal doesn't treat recurring payments as "first class citizens" in their system like they do one-time purchases. To work around that issue, the software must do an immediate one-time purchase, then secondarily set up a recurring payment. Even if you do that, from experience I can tell you that Paypal Website Payments Pro's fraud filters are hampered by the fact that they can't get at the user's IP address and browser to determine their location, cookie content, etc. I may contact Paypal later today to confirm the order of events here and possible workarounds.

Again, from experience (10 years running a membership site that sells memberships), I can tell you a couple of things ...

(1) You simply can't stop people from stealing your stuff. You can file DCMA take-down notices at Google, limit downloads, stream your content with secure tokens, drip your content ... what have you ... it doesn't matter. If someone wants it bad enough, they'll get at it. I've wasted tens of thousands of dollars ... the movie industry has wasted millions of dollars ... it can't be done. It's a fool's errand.

(2) You don't have to offer monthly recurring for a membership site to work. For the past 10 years I've been offering a 1 year subscription. I've refactored the price over the years based on industry averages, taking the amount I would typically charge monthly and multiplying it by the average number of months before people cancel (6 or 7 last time I heard). So ... you could skip the recurring model all together and just provide one year's worth of access.

(I also offer a Lifetime subscription ... sounds a bit foolhardy and there are occasional challenges, but from experience I know that a rather high percentage of people pay for a membership and never download a single resource. I've done that myself on websites, and I purchase books and put them on my bookshelf and left unread. It's just human nature. Therefore, it all averages out.)

This all clouds the real issue here that you're trying to resolve ... so to comment on that a bit ...

How to set this scheme up ...

(1) Make a payment form for Level 1 and have people purchase / subscribe to that.

(2) After "successful" (???) payment and login, the user would be sent to your "member's home page"

(3) See the "Simple Conditionals" section examples on the "s2Member API / Scripting" tab ... use short codes (see "Simple Conditionals") to show a message and Level 1 people awaiting approval. Explain the process and the reason, and then give them links to pages specifically geared towards Level 1 people (i.e., access to the less secure section of the site).

(4) Upon manual approval, In WordPress' Users tab, find the user and upgrade their Role.

(5) Use additional short codes on that "member's home page" to display different information Level 2 users who've already been approved.

(6) Optionally, on the "s2Member General Options" tab, under the "Page Access Restrictions", set the individual pages that you'll allow Level 1's versus Level 2's.

The only thing with this scheme I'm not sure about is cancellations ... if Paypal sends an IPN that says "User cancelled plan Level 1" and you manually moved them to Level 2, what would happen? Hmm... It would be easy to test I suppose.

Another option ... if someone is willing to pay a year up front, then give them immediate access (Level 3). If they want to pay month-by-month, then they agree to wait a day or so for approval. You can provide immediate access because you would create a "Buy Now" payment form, not a "Recurring Payment" form.

[Cristián Lávaque]

Bob, you rock. Great advice overall. (I'm changing your rank to Experienced User)

ATB65, I can understand that it's frustrating, and I'm sorry about that. You have to understand that this weird behaviour is PayPal's, not s2Member's. We're at their mercy regarding this. And it's not just the 24hs they could take to process it, if it doesn't go through they'll retry a few times before they give up, and only after that will they send s2Member an IPN notice that it didn't go through so the plugin can do something about the account.

That said, if you want to delay access to the content for 24hs, you could use conditionals when you protect the content, and check that 24hs have passed before you should them the things. WP Admin -> s2Member -> API / Scripting -> s2Member Content Dripping

I hope that helps.

[BobTabor]

Thanks Cristián, my intent at understanding and participating in this issue is completely selfish, I assure you.

Jason said earlier in this thread:

"In a future release, we are going to update the PayPal API version and try to make this option available to site owners that prefer it."

I'm prepared to bite the bullet and move forward with a launch despite this not being here -- IN HOPES that it will make its way into the next release. In a separate thread, I saw a 3.6 version of the non-Pro version was around the corner. I assume there's a corollary with the Pro version in the works as well ... and if so, will this be a feature added to that?

[Cristián Lávaque]

I don't know the exact changes until the new version is released. I don't know that this change will be in the next one, either. I'm sorry I can't be of more help with this right now.

[Jason Caldwell]

Thanks for the feedback guys. It's MUCH appreciated.
We're trying hard to get the issues that exist now ( with the INIT amount for PayPal Pro Recurring Profiles ), worked out before the next release. As it stands now, I'd guesstimate end of May on this.

[PseudoNyhm]

For reference, to what release (of standard and pro) did this post's issue originally refer? Has there been a new release since, and what is the current status of this issue? (I'm asking because I'm new here, and reading some posts to get a feel for this product's features/issues/support... thanks.)

[Cristián Lávaque]

I'm was probably v3.5.7. After version v3.5.8 we changed the versioning to a dated one (yymmdd), you'll know the release date from it. https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/s2 ... changelog/

The point discussed in this thread I believe was fixed with v110604, here's the changelog entry:

(s2Member Pro). PayPal® Pro API Updates (First Payment / Recurring Profile Behavior). s2Member's integration with the PayPal® Pro API has been updated to API v71.0. There is also a new option available to PayPal® Pro Merchants. s2Member now provides site owners the abililty to control the way the first payment in a Recurring Profile is billed. (1)Consolidate w/ Recurring Profile or (2)— Real-Time / Direct Pay ( mission critical ) —. For further details, please check your Dashboard under: s2Member -> PayPal Options -> Account Details. We recommend: Consolidate w/ Recurring Profile, because this keeps all charges associated with a particular Customer organized in your PayPal® account. No matter which option you choose, a first Initial Payment ( when applicable ), will always be charged immediately ( improved in this release ). In cases where it is absolutely critical that a Customer NOT gain access until their first payment has been fully captured, choose: Real-Time / Direct Pay, which tells s2Member to authorize/capture the first payment in real-time during checkout, instead of consolidating it into the Recurring Profile.

I hope that helps.

[PseudoNyhm]

Yes, I recall now seeing one of Jason's videos talk about that option, but I didn't quite see what it was for. Now I understand where the feature came from. Looks like that would work well for the scenario discussed in this thread.