How Does ec_recurring work? [#151806]

Ok, I've been trying to find this out forever, and I'm not in a situation where I can test this (don't ask...). Here's what I'm trying to find out:

I'm selling site memberships using ec_roles (using paypal, a custom ecommerce module, and paypal's IPN). Along with those role upgrades, I'm setting them to expire after a given length of time with an ec_recurring schedule. At expiry, the user is demoted to a lower role.

But my question is:

1. What EXACTLY happens when a user's membership expires? They obviously don't have their old role, but how does payment "recur"?

2. I can only assume that recurring payment doesn't happen automatically, but instead, they have to "rebuy" their membership...is that correct? If so: Do they get a message when they go back to the site that their role has been downgraded so they know to re-purchase?

I can't picture exactly how this works and I want to make sure it will work with the setup I'm planning.

Please give a step-by step of what occurs when a role expires....Thanks!

Comments

Comment #1

Rhino commented 5 January 2008 at 11:47

I am also interested in this since I'm doing the same thing (recurring product - membership expire etc).

I'd like to show members WHEN their membership expires as well. The recurrong payment doesn't work for me at all, so users rebuy their membership.

Is there anywhere we can find detailed readme's and instructions on how individual modules and the contrib things work in ecoommerce? I find the documentation quite poor for contributed modules.

Comment #2

sammys commented 4 December 2008 at 02:44

Hi there,

I'm the developer that created ec_recurring, ec_roles, ec_useracc and ec_anon. Thanks for trying out the modules and apologies that you've been unable to utilize them.

You are right there is little documentation and some missing functionality. I needed to earn some money to eat and pay rent. This led me to another project and no time to improve these modules.

Please remember that offering a reasonable amount of money (i.e not $25) is a sure way to improve the system.