Recurring Payment Delay

[AlxRam]

Hello,

I've installed s2member and so far everything has run smoothly. I tested the system using a few friends and noticed the payments didn't go through immediately. I gather from the paypal website that it takes up to 24 hours for the initial payment to go through. That would be ok except...

I had a friends test the cancellation shortly after they signed. Those that did were never charged even within 24 hours. So basically they can sign up, access the content, and then cancel without paying anything?

I'm hoping there is some solution for this I haven't been able to find yet. Any suggestions would be appreciated... thanks

[AlxRam]

Still testing and noticed that those people who cancelled and were never charged... can still log in?

Getting a sinking feeling about all this. I've got to be missing something here.

[Cristián Lávaque]

Could you post the IPN logs to see if you're getting notified of the cancellation?

Also, did you set up an EOT behavior? WP Admin -> s2Member -> PayPal Options -> Automatic EOT Behavior

[AlxRam]

Thanks Cristián,

Seems like the cancellations are working fine, I am getting the notifications.

Problem is, people who sign up and cancel before the 24 hour paypal payment are able to login for 24 hours and are never charged. Because of the EOT settings, their account will be removed after the first 24 hours, so that is working. It's just that in the meantime they get 24 hours access without paying, which seems like a big hole in the system.

[Cristián Lávaque]

Yeah, it's not great that PayPal does that. Jason is looking at how to work around this PayPal inconvenience. Hopefully it'll be worked out soon.

In the meantime you can think about it as a 1 day risk-free trial some users get.

[AlxRam]

Hi Cristián,

Nice to hear Jason is aware and working on a solution. I imagine it's not easy to close all the gaps when paypal has weird issues you have to deal with. I'll be looking forward to that update as it's really important for me. In the meantime I'll live with it, as everything else seems to work very well.

It might be a good idea to mention this issue somewhere in the documentation. I didn't find out about it until I live tested the system, and it was quite confusing.

Thanks again for all your work guys!

[Cristián Lávaque]

You're welcome. And thanks for the suggestion, I'm forwarding it to Jason.

[AlxRam]

Just wanted to add a note for anyone else struggling with this.

My temporary (but not preferred) solution so far is to manually check all cancellation emails against my paypal account, and then manually delete their user accounts if they cancelled before payment was received.

[Jason Caldwell]

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

Yes, I'm hoping to have s2Member integrated with version 71.0 of the PayPal Pro API in the next release. This will make it possible to run the INIT amount through the creation of the Recurring Profile.

@TODO / COPY: INIT payment amount during PayPal Pro API "CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile". This thread will be updated once the feature is improved.

100% Resolved

[Jason Caldwell]

We've made progress on this issue.
[ click screenshot to enlarge ]

From the changelog for s2Member Pro v110605+ ( available now ). http://www.s2member.com/

(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.

100% Resolved

[AlxRam]

Thanks Jason,

I just upgraded the files and tested... payment went through immediately. You guys are awesome