Change PayPal Account:Affects Subscribers?

I have 60+ existing subscribers who signed up during a limited private invitation period while we tested the new site.

s2Member Pro was set up with PayPal account #1. PayPal account #1 had the wrong set of PayPal products (documented in agonizing detail here http://www.s2member.com/forums/topic/paypal-error-36-transaction-failed/). Basically, PayPal account #1 wants to speak in an API that s2Member doesn’t fully understand.

But s2Member and PayPal account #1 did have enough of a common tongue that these 60+ users managed to subscribe successfully (these 60 used a credit card to pay and not their PayPal accounts, it so happens).

Anyway, to get s2Member and PayPal speaking the exact same dialect, we called PayPal.

PayPal says that they can’t really change the account type once its up and running. They say the way to do it is to set up a PayPal account #2 that is outfitted with the right set of PayPal products and to tell s2Member to talk to that account.

So I’ve set up PayPal account #2 with the correct set of PayPal products, and I was about to go in and reconfigure s2Member to talk to PayPal account #2. But then I paused: what will happen to the existing 60+ subscribers once I do this?

(PayPal account #1 is not going away, by the way, if it makes a difference.)

Thanks!

s2Member can’t handle more than one PayPal account at the moment, and it should be configured with the new one you just got, that is the right kind for the integration.

The subscriptions with the previous account will keep being charged by PayPal, but there will be some complications with s2Member.

Here’s a reply Jason posted recently for a user that was having trouble due to his change of PayPal account: http://www.s2member.com/forums/topic/error1000-11546-profil-id/page/2/#post-29791

Basically, in their profiles you’ll remove the subscr. IDs of the old PayPal account and you’ll have to demote them manually when they stop paying you, because s2Member would have no way of knowing about it to do it for you. The good thing is that they aren’t that many members, so it won’t be too hard on you.

I hope that helps. :)

Got it. Good info. This suggests a method to move these members to the new PayPal account.

1. Stop accepting new members.
2. Set s2Member/Automatic EOT Behavior to Demote.
3. Ask existing members to cancel their subscriptions.
4. Leave s2Member configured for PayPal account #1 until everyone has hit EOT and been demoted.
5. Using Username Changer plugin, change their usernames to _old or something so that when they resubscribe, they can use their original username.
5. Configure s2Member for PayPal account #2.
6. Ask existing member to resubscribe. They can use their original username and will get a new Paid Subscriber ID.

I’m not sure I really want to do all that, but would it work?

Yeah, it’d work, but in the meantime you wouldn’t be able to get new subscribers in the new PayPal account…

If you’re going to ask them to resubscribe, they don’t need to create a new account, just making sure they’re logged in to the existing account when they load the page with the pro-form, will upgrade their account instead of having the payment go towards a new account.

if you’d ask them to resubscribe, make sure you integrated with the new PayPal account first, so the new subscription goes there instead of the old PayPal account. Also, I’d offer an incentive so you don’t lose subscribers because of the move, give them a free term for the trouble, you can do this with the trial term in the shortcode.

Ah, this is encouraging. So I should be able to:

1) Change s2Member’s PayPal information to the new account.
2) Ask existing users to sign in, then go to the Billing Modification page and subscribe with PayPal or a credit card.
3) s2Member will create a new recurring profile for the user under the new PayPal account.
4) I can manually remove their recurring profile from the old PayPal account (via the PayPal site).

Does that sound right?

Yeah, that sounds right.

Normally, s2Member would cancel the old profile and creata a new one. In this case, though, it’d not be able to cancel the old one, so I’m not sure if that’d cause trouble creating the new one. You should test this first. If it doesn’t happen automatically, then what I’d do is remove their subscr. ID from their profiles before making them create a new profile, and you can cancel the old ones manually.

Thanks, I will take this approach for sure. I will temporarily give existing members a super easy way to get to the update-billing-information page.

And it so happens that my update-billing-information page is not giving PayPal as a payment option…hmmm…I will start another thread as it doesn’t seem related to any of this (I haven’t even changed over the PayPal account yet).

Thanks!

I will temporarily give existing members a super easy way to get to the update-billing-information page.

Why? I’m not sure I understand what you meant… You don’t want them to update the billing information in their existing subscription, you need them to end that subscription and create a new one in your new PayPal account. Right?

Ah, thank you, you are so right. That makes complete sense now. I need them to create a new subscription under the new PayPal account but under their same user account.

But still, shouldn’t the update billing information page have PayPal as an option regardless? Thinking for once I’m past this, users will need a way to update just their billing info without creating a new subscription, right?

Thanks!

Yeah, it’s fine to have the billing update form, but I’d first complete the transition to avoid more complications. The transition should not take too long.

If you really need to have the billing update form for users, then you could put it inside a condition that checks whether the person has a subscr. ID before showing it, so those users you edited to remove it, won’t be shown the form.

Hey, that’s a brilliant idea. How could I send them to one page after they sign in if their Subscriber ID is empty, and another (the normal page) if their Subscriber ID is populated?

Thanks!

I’d send them to one page and just change the content based on the PHP conditional. [hilite path]Dashboard -› s2Member® -› API / Scripting -› Advanced PHP Conditionals[/hilite]

You can use the constant for the subscriber ID. [hilite path]Dashboard -› s2Member® -› API / Scripting -› PHP/API Constants -> S2MEMBER_CURRENT_USER_SUBSCR_OR_WP_ID[/hilite]

Keep in mind that the constant will be the WP’s user ID if there isn’t a subscr. ID, so you should check if it’s an integer or not.