Paypal will not support a "downgrade" to ERP from Paypal Pro

[adriarichards]

Interesting...

I've been wrestling over if I really want to do embedded Paypal Pro forms with s2member Pro and deal with the SSL certificate and raised awareness of people who will have questions about the payment process so I've been looking for ways to still offer the Express checkout and not require a Paypal account even though I already have s2member Pro, Paypal Pro (with virtual terminal) and an SSL certificate.

Talking with Paypal today, I asked why my button didn't offer a payment option without requiring that pesky Paypal account and they said ERP had not been activated over the weekend (even though it said I was approved). Turns out they will not "downgrade" an account to ERP from Paypal Pro nor will they add on ERP.

They said it was an offering between Paypal Standard and Paypal Pro and you can't go back.

Geeze, I've had my Paypal account since 2000, mainly for purchases and single time invoicing. This subscription stuff is frustrating but I'm sure it'll be worth it.

[Cristián Lávaque]

PayPal can be a pain in the neck sometimes...

I know that PayPal Pro and ERP are mutually exclusive from what Jason has posted.

Having a PayPal Pro account means that you cannot have the ERP service. These two services: PayPal Website Payments Pro, and ERP ( Enhanced Recurring Payments ) are mutually exclusive.

I don't see why you can't modify your account and go to another of their plans, though. Do they offer no solution?

[adriarichards]

A blessing and a curse.

They said once you activate Paypal Pro, you cannot revert to ERP. I'd be curious to see if someone else were to try and see what Paypal said. I've had a business account for about 5 years and first tried Pro back in 2007-2008 for the virtual terminal features but discontinued it.

[jmclain]

I am having the opposite issue. My client did downgrade from PP Pro to ERP. We are at the point where we want to add another level of membership, but cannot upgrade to PP Pro unless we cancel ERP. If we do this how do we add the current members so they don't have to sign up again?

[Cristián Lávaque]

The WordPress account would still be there, but they would need to cancel the ERP subscription and then start a new one with PayPal Pro, unless PayPal makes it possible to migrate, but I believe they don't.

[Jason Caldwell]

I am having the opposite issue. My client did downgrade from PP Pro to ERP. We are at the point where we want to add another level of membership, but cannot upgrade to PP Pro unless we cancel ERP. If we do this how do we add the current members so they don't have to sign up again?

You should probably verify this with PayPal, but to my knowledge, you don't need to do anything in this case. If you have customers with Recurring Profiles, or with other types of transactions, the Transaction IDs and/or Recurring Profile IDs ( aka: Subscription IDs ) associated with these Customers should not change or be lost when switching back and forth between these services. In other words, you shouldn't lose Customers ( please verify this yourself via PayPal support though ).

As for s2Member, the Customer's account access will remain, so you really need to be more concerned about what happens to PayPal's recurring billing system after a change in account status like this.

Switching services may change the way PayPal delivers IPNs to s2Member, so that's something to look out for. s2Member really has not been tested against these scenarios, so I would keep a close eye on your s2Member log files after a major change like this, just in case PayPal decides to send lots of cancellation IPNs or something like that to s2Member. You can enable s2Member's logging routines from your Dashboard, under: s2Member -> PayPal Options -> Account Details -> Logging/Debugging.

I will send an email to PayPal on this issue and see what we can find out.

[jmclain]

Thanks Cristián and Jason. We were told we would either have to cancel ERP or start a new PayPal account with a different address and the members would have to cancel their subscription and rejoin . Since we've had several issues with registration that upset some members (nothing to do with s2Member, just technically challenged people who don't follow directions) I think we will forgo the upgrade and come up with a different solution.

[Raam Dev]

jmclain,

You may want to read my notes on ERP and Website Payments Pro here: viewtopic.php?f=36&t=2634&p=53563#p53563

[Jason Caldwell]

Thank you Raam. Very much appreciated!
viewtopic.php?f=36&t=2634&p=53563#p53563

[jmclain]

Thank you so much Raam! Now I feel that I can proceed with confidence that I won't lose any members.