Community Support Forums

Is it possible in s2Member Pro Forms to have membership settings such that terms are set as follows
N months @ $XX per month (an installment plan to lock a term to N months), then $XX recurring monthly

The idea is we don't want to charge $XX * N all at once, but we do want the terms to guarantee that a customer cannot cancel their subscription in less than N months.

I don't think you can stop a customer from cancelling a subscription, I don't even know if you can have a number of payments at one amount and then change to another one... What gateway are you planning to use?

Simply using paypal actually.

The ideamy client has is customers commit to atleast 3 months, then go month to month thereafter.

You can have an initial payment to cover those 3 months, and then the following months at the normal rate, but I don't know how to set 3 initial monthly payments that can't be cancelled, and then the normal monthly payments.

You could charge them the first 3 months in one initial payment, or try to persuade the subscriber to remain with you the 3 months telling them from the beginning that in month 4 they'll get a bonus or something.

Cristián Lávaque wrote:You can have an initial payment to cover those 3 months, and then the following months at the normal rate, but I don't know how to set 3 initial monthly payments that can't be cancelled, and then the normal monthly payments.

You could charge them the first 3 months in one initial payment, or try to persuade the subscriber to remain with you the 3 months telling them from the beginning that in month 4 they'll get a bonus or something.

Correct. You could have a company policy that you write, which says that you don't allow a cancellation during the first 3 months. This might work fine for PayPal Pro Forms where you're accepting credit cards on-site. However, PayPal account holders ( i.e. inside their PayPal account ) will always have the ability to cancel a recurring Subscription in order to avoid the next payment due in their billing cycle.

That being said, if you do as Cristián suggested and charge them up front for the first 3 months, the Customer can't reverse those charges, they can only cancel to avoid the recurring charges that start after the initial 3 month period is over. That's the way I would recommend handling this scenario.

A tad belated, but thanks for your responses.

I was afraid that was the case.

No problem.