How does a customer CANCEL a recurring fee?

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Joined: 11/02/2007

How does a customer CANCEL a recurring fee?

Example:

Customer just bought a magazine subscription, where he is charged $20/month. But after several months, decides he wants to cancel his subscription (recurring fee).

How would that be done?

(does it have to be done manually by one of the site administrators? if yes, then that's a burden, especially if you think about having many users, and deadlines (what if a customer cancels 1 hour before rebill, but i don't get to his email till 2 hours later? Then i'm stuck having to go through crediting customer his money back, which can have extra merchant fees as a result)

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Joined: 08/07/2007
AdministratorHead Code Monkey - I eat bugs.

Right now, the answer is the one you don't want... customers will simply have to contact you to cancel the subscription fee. I guess it depends on what you're using to handle the various fees, but this is probably true for any of the existing systems.

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Joined: 05/13/2008

What would it take to implement this?

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Any ideas on this? I think it's really important that this works for membership sites. We definitely need it before we can launch. Yang Ru and team are working on it, but we may need some help...

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AdministratorHead Code Monkey - I eat bugs.

Sorry, got hung up this afternoon but will ping you first thing in the morning.

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Joined: 05/09/2008

hi, Ryan,
Are there any ways for us hooking into the module(uc_roles or uc_recurring?) to realize the auto-cancellation? Or we can do some coding using the existing code in ubercart to realize this?
Thank you.

Best Regards,
Yang Ru

Posts: 20
Joined: 11/02/2007

I agree, this needs to be resolved to be used on a production site... I'm sure a majority of users would be interested in the capability to run a pay for membership site--i.e. after all, this was one of the first ways of making money on the internet since the beginning.

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AdministratorHead Code Monkey - I eat bugs.

Well, for the core recurring handler, not much more will be done. It's meant to be basic and mostly is there as a proof-of-concept. All that's really lacking is some solid documentation I can point folks to that says as much. For a more full-featured solution, you're going to have to get your hands dirty in the code. A lot of this is due to the fact that every payment gateway's API for recurring fees will be different. So, the recurring module handles setting up recurring fees on the product level, but you should code your own recurring fee handler that works with your payment gateway to have the best solution.

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Joined: 08/21/2008

How does an administrator cancel a subscriber's recurring order? Is the only way to do it through the uc_recurring_users table?

Thanks for all your work!

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AdministratorHead Code Monkey - I eat bugs.

If you're using the default handler, you can do it through the recurring fee admin table in the Orders section. Otherwise you'll have to do it through your payment gateway.

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Joined: 05/05/2008
Bug Finder

duntuk wrote:
How does a customer CANCEL a recurring fee?

Why not use the subscriptions module? It allows the user to cancel the subscription at any time, which will let it run until it expires, but won't renew it.

Posts: 20
Joined: 11/02/2007

good to know... i was wondering about the same thing, and wasn't sure if canceling the recurring from the orders section would do it.

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Joined: 11/02/2007

kerunt wrote:

Why not use the subscriptions module? It allows the user to cancel the subscription at any time, which will let it run until it expires, but won't renew it.

intersting... and this module works with the latest ubercart versions? if yes, then that's perfect.

Posts: 61
Joined: 05/05/2008
Bug Finder

duntuk wrote:
kerunt wrote:

Why not use the subscriptions module? It allows the user to cancel the subscription at any time, which will let it run until it expires, but won't renew it.

intersting... and this module works with the latest ubercart versions? if yes, then that's perfect.

I'm not sure about version compatibility. I'm using it with RC4 of Ubercart.

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Joined: 08/21/2008

Thanks. What do you mean by the "default handler"?

Thanks!

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Joined: 11/02/2007

mstearne wrote:
Thanks. What do you mean by the "default handler"?

Thanks!

ubercart current version comes with the recurring payment module as part of the it's core package (i.e. default handler)

Posts: 17
Joined: 08/12/2008

How would you use the subscription module to say do a 1 month subscription that auto cancles after 3 months. Ultimately generating 3 orders. Is that possible with the subscription module?