All PayPal Auto-Renewals Finally Cancelled: Subscribers Please Read

[Jason Dunn]

This concerns <a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/subscribe.php">subscribers</a>, so if you've received an email from PayPal saying that your Pocket PC Thoughts subscription has been cancelled, keep reading.<br /><br />When we first launched subscriber services in 2003, we had an auto-renew option that used PayPal's then-new subscription feature. When you had a subscription, it would automatically bill every year until you wanted to stop it. This seemed like a great idea at the time (don't they always), but a year after we launched subscriber services I quickly realized what a bad decision I had made. I started getting emails from people demanding to know why I had billed their account again - most seemed to have forgotten it was set up to auto-renew, and some even forgot they bought a subscription in the first place. What's worse is that PayPal didn't give me a tool to cancel the auto-renewing subscriptions, so all I could do was issue a refund then ask the person to cancel the subscription from their end. Now and then someone would file a complaint with PayPal, and their anti-fraud department would contact me asking why I charged the customer - all because the original person forgot that they signed up for a subscription in the first place. :? What made matters worse is that the auto-renewing subscriptions bypassed our subscriber activation system, meaning I had to renew those subscriptions manually. Not hard to do, but yet another thing to look after in my day.<br /><br />I've been going through this for several years, and this year I decided to dig deeper and call PayPal to find out if I was missing something - turns out was...sort of. :roll: When a subscription is renewed and I clicked on the details, there was no "Cancel Subscription" button. After speaking with PayPal support today, I learnt why: the only way to cancel a subscription is to find the original subscription creation point, go into the details for it, click Cancel Subscription, then click Cancel Subscription on the next page. 8O I just finished spending the last hour doing just that - going back through almost three years of subscriber history, finding every active subscription, and cancelling it. So there should be no more auto-billing PayPal subscriptions - I did this for 2checkout last year.<br /><br /><b>What does this mean to you as a subscriber if you received an email from PayPal stating that your Pocket PC Thoughts subscription has been cancelled? Absolutely nothing - your subscription data and expiration date is stored on our server, separate from PayPal.</b> From now on though, when your subscription comes up for renewal, you'll receive an email from our system stating as much and giving you an option to renew. If you're a lifetime subscriber, absolutely nothing changes at all - you still have your lifetime subscription.<br /><br />Lastly, for those of you who got auto-renewed within the last week, I've emailed you to ask if you wanted it to auto-renew or if you wanted a refund. I'll processing those next, so thanks for your patience. Back to your regularly scheduled Pocket PC news &amp; views!

[Airscanner]

A lot of problems with paypal...it's sweet, but hasn't been re-designed for e-commerce yet.

One way to avoid problems might be to offer monthy auto-renewals instead of yearly. That way the user remembers it from month to month.

The worst thing about paypal auto renewal, like the problem you had canceling, is that the end user likewise can't terminate it via they paypal control panel. I tried it with another site recently. The user has to contact the merchant to manually track them the account and do it.

[dean_shan]

This is all the more reason to buy a lifetime membership. I did it last year and haven't had to worry about it since. Plus Jason will give you a cool little light (http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=37109&amp;highlight=microlight) if you do. ;)

[winsquared35]

Wow, Jason, that's a lot of work you had to do!
I, for one, appreciate your efforts. Thanks for looking out for us!

[Jason Dunn]

One way to avoid problems might be to offer monthy auto-renewals instead of yearly. That way the user remembers it from month to month...The worst thing about paypal auto renewal, like the problem you had canceling, is that the end user likewise can't terminate it via they paypal control panel.

We thought about that, but the PayPal per-transaction fee then eats up most of the profit. And FWIW, end-users actually can cancel their subscription, it just takes some digging. Easiest way is for the user to look at the history > subscriptions and they'll find it. Until today, that was the only way they used to get cancelled, by the end users.

[developerzero]

Wow! Ironic timing. I just recently learned of this site:

http://paypalsucks.com/

Go check it out. You are not alone 0X

[wocket]

When I checked my email this morning I thought by Odens Raven what has happened to PPCT my subs cancelled. So panic over now :D


Maybe a lifetime sub is the way to go.

[ricksfiona]

Wow, Paypal has been quite a hassle! How about creating your own credit card processing portal on this site?

[PR.]

I got a warning from the thoughts website saying my subscription was going to expire I have since renewed but the website is still showing that I haven't paid, I recieved a receipt from 2Checkout if you want the order number let me know.

I have sent an email and contact us form and haven't had a reply :(

Thanks

[Jason Dunn]

Wow, Paypal has been quite a hassle! How about creating your own credit card processing portal on this site?

We use 2checkout in addition to PayPal, but 2checkout's % fee is quite a bit higher than PayPal's - ultimately people can chose to pay with whichever they prefer.

[Jason Dunn]

I got a warning from the thoughts website saying my subscription was going to expire I have since renewed but the website is still showing that I haven't paid, I recieved a receipt from 2Checkout if you want the order number let me know. I have sent an email and contact us form and haven't had a reply :(

Yes, I have a lot of back-logged email to get to - please be patient, I'll get to you as soon as I can.

[PR.]

I got a warning from the thoughts website saying my subscription was going to expire I have since renewed but the website is still showing that I haven't paid, I recieved a receipt from 2Checkout if you want the order number let me know. I have sent an email and contact us form and haven't had a reply :(

Yes, I have a lot of back-logged email to get to - please be patient, I'll get to you as soon as I can.

Thanks for letting me know :)

[nosmohtac]

This is all the more reason to buy a lifetime membership. I did it last year and haven't had to worry about it since. Plus Jason will give you a cool little light (http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=37109&amp;highlight=microlight) if you do. ;)

That reminds me... I never did receive my cool little light.

[Jason Dunn]

That reminds me... I never did receive my cool little light.

Did you request it? :-) There's a form on the subscriber page you need to fill out with your shipping address, etc.

[nosmohtac]

That reminds me... I never did receive my cool little light.

Did you request it? :-) There's a form on the subscriber page you need to fill out with your shipping address, etc.

It has been a while, but I'm pretty sure I did that the day that I became a lifer.

I resubmitted the request in the case that I'm mistaken.

Thanks,

[ctmagnus]

Speaking of which, I didn't get one automatically either, which I thought was rather strange because I got my DMT microlight automatically. So here I go to fill out yet another form and get my second PPCT microlight (I eventually bought one, but one can never have enough of a good thing ;) ).

[ironguy]

Last week I received an email that said my subscription was over and I could renew. Never did receive the "Oh, my! Your subscription is going to expire!" email. I've re-upped (paypal) and am patiently waiting to become a valued subscriber once again.

[Jason Dunn]

Last week I received an email that said my subscription was over and I could renew. Never did receive the "Oh, my! Your subscription is going to expire!" email. I've re-upped (paypal) and am patiently waiting to become a valued subscriber once again.

Hrm. Do you perhaps have a spam filter that might have blocked that email? It should have gone to you two weeks prior to your subscription ending.

I have two subscriptions in my Inbox that I have to manually activate - both were payments from PayPal, but they somehow didn't activate our system properly.

[ironguy]

I check every piece of mail that gets put into the junk folder. I have all the PPCT emails sent since the beginning of May (need to empty the 2215 items in there...) and I didn't see it anywhere.

I came back from vacation (only a week) and was surprised to see that my subscription was over without a reminder. I wonder if the timing with the paypal resubscribe issue caught me. I did see that email followed by the 'ignore that paypal' email and article. Maybe my subscriptional renewal was real!