Trial Period - Cancel, and Re-Activate Possible?

[totomobile]

Hi I looked through the forums and documentation but can't find anything on this. What stops a customer from signing up for a free trial (Lets say, 15 days free trial with a commitment to pay for the year), then cancelling that before the 15 days, then waiting a few days and signing up for the trial again?

thanks
T

[crwodhouse]

Technically, from what I can see, no - unless you use a separate plugin to ban the IP address of everyone who cancels, which is typically a bad customer service move.

From my standpoint (a marketing/ecommerce background), the onus is actually on you - the site owner - to give them an incentive to continue after the free trial. If there is no incentive to continue after your free trial rather than cancel and sign up again, that isn't a problem with the script - its a problem with your business model.

And as Guy Kawasaki says, if you want to be trustworthy - trust others first. Starting off a customer relationship assuming that your customers are going to cheat you probably isn't going to do you too many favours.

Hope that helps!

[totomobile]

Yes I agree with you on the point of trust, however the site is not for myself but a client and I wanted to give them some assurance from that perspective. It's not a huge deal since the content must be unlocked over a long period anyways. I just wanted to know if it's a feature to give the client peace of mind.

thanks
T

[crwodhouse]

Understood - I've been there! Unfortunately I can't see any way of doing it other than an IP ban, as stated above...

Except there is one thing you can tell them for reassurance. Under PayPal Options > Automatic EOT Behavior, Enable EOT System, and set the Membership EOT Behavior to DEMOTE - not delete. Demote will set the user to FREE access level, giving them none of the paid features - but they still won't be allowed to create another account with the same email address.

It won't prevent them from signing up with another email, or logging in and finding a way to delete their account, but it prevents them from cancelling their paypal subscription and resigning up with the same email again.

[Cristián Lávaque]

Cheryl's answer is spot on.

Sorry Toto, but there really isn't a better way to deal with this. Even if you used the best tracking methods, flash cookies (are less often deleted), browser footprint, etc., there's always a way around them. It's the same with sharing what they get from you with others, you can make it a little harder, but those that want to get it, will.

All that said, few will do that, and even if they do, they won't do much with what they get, most of the time it's more about getting it than using it. And, if it's of any consolation, they wouldn't have been customers anyway, so it's not like you're losing anything in reality. It'd be worse if it were a physical product where you actually have an expense because of them, but this is just digital and costs are close to naught.

[drbyte]

Ranting Just follow the US business model.... Carrots and sticks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrot_and_stick

Done ranting

LOL, Just offer them an extra service, call it FOR PLUS MEMBERS and add to that some yummy content...usually they stick around..

Sam

[totomobile]

Hi guys, thanks for the replies! The content is already structured in such a way as to reward people who stick around, so I really don't think it will be a problem. I agree with trusting your users, but as a developer my role is to always plan for worst case scenarios and edge cases. If I was the owner of the site I probably wouldn't be asking. Also I'm not a fan features which add questionable value to but a few users while making the code bloated and harder to maintain, so this is a very acceptable answer!

thanks again
T

[Cristián Lávaque]

Cool.

By the way, I remembered something else: You can have some of the content be dripped over time, so those that just repeat the registration will never get to the future content. s2Member has a basic implementation of it (it'll be improved in the near future, we're getting things ready to go there). WP Admin -> s2Member -> API / Scripting -> s2Member Content Dripping