Upcoming Change to PayPal Subscriptions

MTS_Ciaran
Moderator
Moderator

PayPal is making changes to the way Subscriptions are created, managed, and displayed. For additional information, see our article Why am I seeing changes to how Subscriptions are reflected?

 

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98 REPLIES 98

ronnien
Contributor
Contributor
What's the status of this? My new and old transactions are still S- subscriptions.
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ai38kpo
Contributor
Contributor

Ditto here. All new subscriptions coming in S- type subscriptions. Is the completion date still June 6th as per https://www.paypal-status.com/history/eventdetails/8180 ?

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S_S_S
Contributor
Contributor

@MTS_Ciaran We just started seeing the I- subscriptions in production. So far it works fine but we encountered one major problem: If a customer attempts to upgrade a subscription he will get an error message if the price difference > 20%. This means ours customer can no longer upgrade their $8 monthly subscription to a 3-monthly one for $24.

 

Is this intended behaviour? The customer is present at the transaction, so surely he should be allowed to increase the amount? Is there any workaround for this, other than asking customers to cancel and resubscribe?

 

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Tobi17
Member
Member

Hello,

 

old subscription could be easily updated by 20% on each update (without 180 days waiting time). This is VERY important for us, as our customers change their subscriptions from 5 USD to 6/7/8/9 USD per month for the next payment and also lower the subscriptions back to 5 USD for month for example. With the new subscriptions this seems no more possible EVEN the customers are redirected to the control-panel and confirm the update of the subscriptions. There is no "hidden" update of the subscriptions.

 

This is a MAJOR problem for us, a real show stopper. It is unbelievable this was not mentioned on the FAQ. Are there any plans to allow subscription updates frequentely as possible with the old "S-" subscriptions?

 

At the moment, this updates hurts, does not have any benefits, less functionality and we are might forced to change our complete way of billing. This is very annoying, especially as this was not announced properly.

 

Any hints to help us? Maybe we have missed anything! Feedback would be much appreciated. Thank you!

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swinny
Contributor
Contributor

i received the subscription update within the last few days and i found a problem / bug then again i hope it is not intended behavior.

 

This example happened on the 26th.

 

For an overview, users who start a subscription after a certain time in the evening (not sure what that time is) do not have the dates matching up between what paypal says and what the date is currently for my time zone (which is set correctly in my paypal account).  Time zone is eastern USA.

 

for example: a user started a monthly subscription the evening of the 26th at 23:16 EDT (my time zone).  the next rebill date should be 7/26 (this is all how everything has worked for many years.

 

if i look at the paypal emails for the new subscription set up it shows this:
Amount paid each time:$4.99 USD
Billing cycle:Monthly
Payments start:Jun 27, 2018
Next payment due:Jul 27, 2018

 

my paypal account is set up to my own time zone so the above values should be the 26th not the 27th. this means the user will lose access for several hours on the 27th waiting for paypal to do rebilling.

 

i had another subscription earlier in the week done a bit earlier in the evening (after 20:00 EDT) with the same problem.

 

maybe paypal is using the customers time zone? does it have to do with GMT time?  Should the time used not be the merchants time zone for all set ups?  If this is intended this may require a lot of changes for the different billing systems.  Thanks.

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ILL101
Contributor
Contributor

On July 5 we started seeing I- subscriptions on our production account. I have two related questions:

 

1) It appears that the default value for the "Number of failed payments allowed before suspending this profile" is set to 1 failure for I- subscriptions. This is not ideal and we would like to increase it to 3.

 

Is there a way to change that somewhere globally on our account? Alternatively, is there a way to pass that variable via the request we make? I couldn't find anything about this in the HTML Variables for PayPal Payments Standard document. Here's what our request looks like:

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_xclick-subscriptions&business=paypal%40japanesepod101.com&return=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.japanesepod101.com%2Fmember%2Fmember_upnewapi.php%3Fnxt%3Dthanks%26payment_id%3D3323467%26member_id%3D53%26paypal%3D1%26hash%3D8fbfb199d4afd2cecc786192d4d27fc03ebd8f462de2b3ced1bb685034760b7c55ddcf7cb0f26fe7bbd8619962917ee2118f49c33a71946c99159101c0205404&notify_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.japanesepod101.com%2Fmember%2Fplugins%2Fpayment%2Fpaypal_r%2Fipn.php&item_name=Basic+-+1+Month+Subscription&no_shipping=1&shipping=0.0&cancel_return=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.japanesepod101.com%2Fmember%2Fcancel.php%3Fpayment_id%3D3323467&no_note=1&custom=2040201130.1496838415&invoice=3323467-QAN-JAPANESEPOD101&bn=CgiCentral.aMemberPro&first_name=Eran&last_name=Dekel&address1=&city=&state=&zip=&lc=US&sra=1&src=1&rm=2&p1=&t1=&p2=&t2=&a3=8.00&p3=30&t3=D&currency_code=USD#/checkout/subscription

2) According to Update 4 on the Event page, "The existing S- Subscription will be migrated in phases and is expected to be completed by August 15, 2018." Our account has thousands of subscriptions, so this is a massive change that can break a lot of things for us. We also need to code support for mapping new I- to old S- subscriptions. With that said, can we know the exact date and time that this migration will be done on our account so that we plan accordingly and coordinate to have technicians available to test/fix any issues? 

 

Thank you, 

Eran

 

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ILL101
Contributor
Contributor

On July 5 we started seeing I- subscriptions on our production account. I have two related questions:

 

1) It appears that the default value for the "Number of failed payments allowed before suspending this profile" is set to 1 failure for I- subscriptions. This is not ideal and we would like to increase it to 3.

 

Is there a way to change that somewhere globally on our account? Alternatively, is there a way to pass that variable via the request we make? I couldn't find anything about this in the HTML Variables for PayPal Payments Standard document.


2) According to Update 4 on the Event page, "The existing S- Subscription will be migrated in phases and is expected to be completed by August 15, 2018." Our account has thousands of subscriptions, so this is a massive change that can break a lot of things for us. We also need to code support for mapping new I- to old S- subscriptions. With that said, can we know the exact date and time that this migration will be done on our account so that we plan accordingly and coordinate to have technicians available to test/fix any issues? 

 

Thank you, 

Eran

 

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swinny
Contributor
Contributor

ILL101, are you seeing anything similar to what i outlined in my post above yours?  From what I have been able to tell, the subscription system, at least for initially setting up subscriptions, is working in GMT for the time.  This will obviously effect you different depending on what time zone you and your paypal account are set up to but for me, in eastern USA time, any subscription set up between  20:00 and 23:59, will get automatically billed the NEXT day the following month (or whatever the subscription term is).

 

Even the paypal emails about subscription set up during this time make no sense as the day it says for subscription payment start and rebill day shows as tomorrow.  Did the user REALLY sign up in the future? lol

 

Whats worse, this means we as the merchant have to give up to 4 or more hours for FREE to those users who sign up during this window.  I would think those users who are further away than i am from GMT would be effected far more.

 

I cant imagine this is suppose to be intended (although paypal support is telling me it is, despite no documentation about it all).  This will take billing system changes to account for this and i am not sure how this could be handled and the issue is so silly  would hate to invest the resources to fix it only to see in the future they finally fix it.

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ILL101
Contributor
Contributor

swinny - we're seeing the same thing. All I- subscriptions are created in GMT. Smiley Frustrated

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swinny
Contributor
Contributor

please please please open a ticket here if you have not already: https://www.paypal-techsupport.com/  Once you are logged in click contact support at the bottom.  let them know what you are seeing regarding GMT.  I am going around in circles with them and all they can tell me is this is how its intended but i just have so much trouble believing it, since it defies logic and all.  the subscription should start and be rebilled according to what the merchants paypal account time zone is set to.  this is how it has worked for YEARS.  it is likely just an oversight and a simple fix.  hopefully ciaran will respond here as well.

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