Approved PayPal member has no Paid Subscr. ID

Hello,

A member emailed us asking to cancel their new account.

However they do not have any s2Member Configuration & Profile Fields info (e.g. Paid Subscriber ID).

However again, in the log files they appear as a paid and approved member using s2Member and PayPal.

So we don’t know if we could manually cancel the membership by setting an Automatic EOT Time since there is no Paid Subscriber ID.

And because PayPal/Payflow is, well — PayPal/PayFlow, we need to use s2Member options to cancel a membership.

1. How do we cancel the membership inside of s2Member (can we set an Automatic EOT Time even though the member record doesn’t appear to s2Member as a Paid Subscriber)?

2. Can a member cancel using the s2Member Cancel page when they do not have a Paid Subscriber ID?

3. How does the member have s2Member, PayPal approved membership status and no Paid Subscriber ID?

4. Since s2Member can interact with payment gateways, a SUPER addition to the s2Member Pro admin world would be a button in paid user records, with an action that would tell s2Member to hook up with the payment provider, use the selected member’s record and cancel the membership onClick. A feature like this would be a handy addition to the back end Admin part of a website so that administrative personnel could complete these actions and not require admin as well as developers to coordinate to find these problems and attempt to cancel members working together, doubling the cost of cancelling a membership each time.

Below we see the member was approved and appears in log files: paypal-payflow-api.log and paypal-ipn.log, however in their user record there is no Paid Subscriber ID, or any other indication that they’re a paying member.

Here is an extract from one of the logs:

——– Output string/vars: ( Thu Oct 18, 2012 3:11:03 pm UTC ) ——–
RESULT=0&
RPREF=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX&
PROFILEID=XXXXXXXXXXXXXX&
RESPMSG=Approved&
TRXRESULT=0&
TRXPNREF=XXXXXXXXXXXXXX&
TRXRESPMSG=Approved&
AUTHCODE=XXXXXXXXXXXXXX&
AVSADDR=Y&
AVSZIP=Y&
CVV2MATCH=Y&
PPREF=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX&
CORRELATIONID=XXXXXXXXXX&
PROCAVS=Y&
PROCCVV2=M&
TRANSTIME=2012-10-18 08:11:00&

1. How do we cancel the membership inside of s2Member (can we set an Automatic EOT Time even though the member record doesn’t appear to s2Member as a Paid Subscriber)?

Setting the Automatic EOT Time will only delete/demote (depending on your settings in Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Options -› Automatic EOT Behavior) the users account on the s2Member side. It will not cancel the PayPal subscription.

2. Can a member cancel using the s2Member Cancel page when they do not have a Paid Subscriber ID?

No. The only way for s2Member to know which PayPal Profile should be canceled is if it has the Paid Subscriber ID (aka Subscription ID). If there is no Paid Subscriber ID on s2Member’s side, s2Member does not even know about the PayPal Subscription.

You can login to your PayPal account and visit the Recurring Payments Dashboard, locate the Subscription ID for that customer, and then copy/paste the Subscription ID into the Paid Subscriber ID field on that users account. Once that’s done, you can generate a cancellation button/form (Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Buttons -› Subscr. Cancellation Buttons or Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Pro Forms -› Billing Cancellation Forms) and present that to your customer. That will allow them to cancel their subscription.

Otherwise, either you or your customer can manually login to PayPal and cancel the subscription manually.

3. How does the member have s2Member, PayPal approved membership status and no Paid Subscriber ID?

That would indicate you might have problems with PayPal communicating with s2Member. When a new customer signs up, PayPal sends the new Subscription ID to s2Member and s2Member saves it to the users profile. If that communication is broken, the ID might never get saved.

I would start with looking at your logs for any errors, especially around new signups. (The IPN log is what you want to look at, not the API log, which is what you pointed to above.) I would also double and triple check all your PayPal configuration (Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Options -› PayPal® IPN Integration and Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Options -› PayPal® PDT Integration).

4. Since s2Member can interact with payment gateways, a SUPER addition to the s2Member Pro admin world would be a button in paid user records, with an action that would tell s2Member to hook up with the payment provider, use the selected member’s record and cancel the membership onClick. A feature like this would be a handy addition to the back end Admin part of a website so that administrative personnel could complete these actions and not require admin as well as developers to coordinate to find these problems and attempt to cancel members working together, doubling the cost of cancelling a membership each time.

Thank you for the suggestions.

s2Member provides cancellation forms/buttons that you can provide to your customers so that they can cancel their subscriptions on their own (see Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Pro Forms -› Billing Cancellation Forms). The IPN communication handles the assignment of the Paid Subscriber ID automatically, so as long as that’s set up properly, you should never need to manually do anything to connect the user with the payment gateway. And if you do need to connect it manually, all you need to do is select the gateway and enter the Subscription ID on their profile.

Thank you for the answers. One more important question.

s2Member is tightly linked into PayPal with APIs, keys, IDs, tokens, Subscription IDs, Transaction IDs, staples, duct tape and bailing wire.

s2Member talks to PayPal to START a recurring PayPal transaction for a membership.

How can admins cancel a membership on our site so that…

s2Member talks to PayPal to END the recurring PayPal transaction for that membership?

If a user has an s2Member generated PayPal Subscription ID and Transaction ID then in the WordPress Admin interface for a user record there can be a button that can generate an end to the recurring transaction. All the pieces are waiting to be assembled.

When a member emails a site asking to cancel their membership, and for whatever reason they won’t go to the Cancel Membership page, creating one off buttons for individual subscribers, and logging into two systems to cancel an account and payments is not productive use of time for s2Member Admins (s2Member customers).

Send a survey out to all s2M Pro customers, in fact to all s2M customers, ask if they’d like to have this button available on user records inside the Admin interface.

The goal here is a one click button on a user record that Admins can use to EOT membership AND stop recurring transactions. The wiring is already there.

1. Display a WordPress user record.
2. Can s2M and PayPal talk?
3. Does user have a Transaction ID?
4. Does user have a Subscription ID?
5. Display button.
6. On Click: EOT and notify PayPal to cancel subscription.

Things like this in an Admin Panel would help s2Member customers have a much easier user experience with the s2Member product much the way AOL made the Internet accessible to millions and millions of people who couldn’t, wouldn’t or didn’t want to deal with protocols and ugly new words like HTTP, SMTP, POP3, etc. And more than a few of the original people who worked at AOL are now retired and independently wealthy because AOL understood that making the user experience painless was profitable.

s2Member is the D11T Caterpillar of website membership systems, but it requires the operator to manually do so many automate-able tasks.

Thank you for the suggestions. I understand how having a subscription cancellation button for admins inside s2Member would make the lives of admins easier and I will pass this thread along to Jason (the lead developer) for consideration in the next major release of s2Member.

Thank you Raam,

When this happens you and Jason will become heroes of the free world…

Climate change will stabilize…

Global economies will flourish…

Democracy will finally work right…

Every day the sun will rise in blue skies…

Children will be laughing and dancing everywhere…

Rose blooms, and tulips and Narcissus will have flowers every month…

We minions who live in s2M code daily will smile when we log in each morning…

And there will be a special place reserved for you in Heaven, Valhalla, or your paradise of preference…

I would like to be such a hero, in such a world, and have such a special place reserved in paradise. :)