Properly Handling Failed Payments

subscribing

There is an option on the product fees settings page to allow you to alter how many times and when re-attempts are made on failed payments - although this feature will only work on triggered gateways (e.g. Auth.net CIM) and not hosted gateways like (Auth.net ARB).

As for roles, there is no simple solution here and I do not want to see uc_recurring directly tied into uc_roles as these modules do different things and should be kept separate.

I did start an attempt to try and come up with a "simple subscription" module: #569798: Simple Subscriptions UI, the idea behind this module is that it directly target the use case of a subscription site and integrates uc_recurring and uc_roles modules together. But it is very difficult to work with the various aspects of ubercart directly without using the web interface so building this module is not easy.

I think the best option is to try and use CA to trigger roles to be create and removed on uc_recurring events (rather then have their own expiry date for subscription products) - that way a role will stay active until it actually is marked as expired in uc_recurring.

To clarify -

For a product that is a role assignment and has a recurring fee at one month intervals, do you recommend ?:

Product Settings > Role Assignment Settings > Expiration Period

End: Relative from Activation Time
Default Expiration : 40 days (a number more than the one month recurring interval)

How do Conditional Actions need to be altered for this option, if at all?

- or another option -

Product Settings > Role Assignment Settings > Expiration Period

End: Absolute role ending
Default Expiration : year 2020 (a long time in the future)

Add a Conditional Action that removes the role from the user when the subscription fee payment has failed (after re-trying)

Hello Scott,
Like you, I am new to uc_recurring / role assignment and concerned about recurr bill/expiration/renewal times so that if the recurr bill fails the member has time to correct the situation before expiration. I have run this site on a different CMS for the last 10 years so familiar with the various strengths and weaknesses of recurr billing subscription features. Using this experience I have taken a somewhat opposite tack that I have not yet completely implemented so uncertain if this works the way I think it should:

I have set the system to rebill 5 days prior to expiration. If the rebill fails a email will be sent to explain the situation to the member and give them a chance to reset their information. My concerns are:
1) Does the recurr bill reset the expiration time relative to the recurr bill date or the existing expiration date of the membership. The form suggests it is relative to the time of activation but I may be misunderstanding.
2) Experience teaches me that often members cards that fail today will succeed tomorrow. Multiple attempts following failure prior to expiration is desirable. I see univate above says there is such a setting on the products fee form, which I cannot seem to find. Have you found such a setting? Is this provided by a optional module?

Scott do you think this setup would work for you (and me)?
Robert

2) Experience teaches me that often members cards that fail today will succeed tomorrow. Multiple attempts following failure prior to expiration is desirable. I see univate above says there is such a setting on the products fee form, which I cannot seem to find. Have you found such a setting? Is this provided by a optional module?

here:

Store administration » Configuration » Product settings >> Product Features >> Recurring fee settings >> Extensions

Thank you.
R

I'm still not sure the best way to handle this myself.

You can't set the roles to extend every 40 days and the recurring fees at 1month as on renewal the role will extend another 40days and this gap will continue to grow over time.

I think the options are that we need to either have extensions trigger the role for another X days or move to a CA triggered system to enable/disable roles.

An example:

Extensions
Configure how many time and at what intervals to attempt rebilling on a failed recurring payment.
Attempt #	On a failed payment re-attempt renew after
Attempt #	On a failed payment re-attempt renew after
1	3 days
2	5 days
3	expire
Reattempt on Failure:
Enter comma (,) seperated list of days to reattempt failed recurring charges, for example: 3,5 would mean that if the renewal failed it would first be extended by 3 days and re-attempted again, if that failed it would be extended for another 5 days, if the final attempt failed it would expire

For the above setup, when would ubercart pull the Trigger: Recurring order renewal failed ? If payment failure is triggered on day 5 (the last attempt to capture payment), then this sounds like a good trigger for removing the role from the user.

Example of default triggers/actions:

Trigger: Recurring order renewal failed  

Title                                                            	Class	Status	Weight	Operations

Notify customer when a renewal has expired due to failed payment.	notification	Disabled	1	edit
Notify customer when a renewal has failed.                       notification	Disabled	1	edit 

Would this be a good place to put a conditional action ? such as -
Trigger: Recurring order renewal failed
Action: Revoke user role
Condition: Check if order is a renewal

There is also a trigger for "recurring order renewal expired" that is triggered after the last failed payment or when a subscription ends normally.

Hi All,

We are using uc recurring fees and have thousands of users. It appears that from time to time it will charge a customer twice. The problem is with thousdands of users, this is starting to become a full time job for my support staff having to issue refunds. We use the paypal gateway. Would gladly pay anyone to help us get this issue fixed. Also have a fairly large ubercart project that requires quite a bit of customization that needs to be built as well. Gladly give this project to anyone who can help get this issue resolved.

Any help much appreciated.

Regards,

Will Berger
will@premierobjects.com
770-294-5329

I am attempting to solve the recurring/roles integrations issue via this new module to specifically target membership/subscriptions applications - #569798: Simple Subscriptions UI