Subscriptions with Paypal IPN

Question

I am adding subscriptions to a site using Paypal IPN which works very well, I can successfully create a new subscription and verify it. The subscription has a two week free trial. The guide was unfortunately a little vague on subscription statuses.

At the moment, the users account gets subscribed status once subscr_signup or subscr_payment is received and gets removed when either subscr_cancel or subscr_failed is received. I believe this is correct but it's best to make sure.

Also what is subscr_eot? the IPN guide describes it as "subscription’s end-of-term." Does this get triggered after the trial period is over?

Answer 1

subscr_eot is sent when a user's last paid interval has expired. subscr_cancel is sent as soon as the use cancels the subscription - for example:

User signs up on day 1 for a subscription which is billed once a month. subscr_signup is sent immediately, subscr_payment is sent as soon as payment goes through (usually immediately as well).

On day 13, the user cancels. subscr_cancel is immediately sent, although the user has technically paid through to day 30. Cancelling at this point is up to you.

On day 30, subscr_eot is sent - the user has cancelled, and this is the day which his last payment paid until.

Not much changes with trial subscriptions - if a user cancels before a trial subscription is up, subscr_cancel is setn immediately, and subscr_eot is sent at the end of the trial.

Answer 2

Also, one interesting to note is how subscr_eot works with subscr_failed.

I haven't confirmed this personally, but from what I've read, subscr_eot comes after the FINAL subscr_failed. So if in your account you set it to automatically retry failed payments 3 times, then it should go like this:

first failed payment => subscr_failed second failed payment => subscr_failed third failed payment => subscr_failed and subscr_eot

so basically in your code you can set it up so subscr_failed triggers an email like "hi, please take moment to check your payment info, maybe you need to update the credit card expiration date, etc. You still have access, we'll try again in a few days." And setup subscr_eot to actually turn their subscription off and trigger an email like "Sorry, we still havent' gotten payment and have taken your profile down. You can still reactivate it by..."

Basically this is the "nice" way of doing it so customers have a grace period, and their account isn't shut off unexpectedly just because of an expired credit card or something like that.

Answer 3

According to this thread:

https://www.x.com/thread/41155?start=15&tstart=0

It depends on the account if it is new or not wether sbscr_eot gets send which is kinda beyond me?

I haven't found the proper way to manage subscriptions yet. If anybody know plz post it here :) Calculating the dates on the server could go wrong very fast if there is a delay in payement.