Pre-orders
Is it possible to take subscription pre-orders? We are looking to start a monthly service, but we first have to evaluate market interest. The idea is to let people pre-order, and once we have enough orders, we start the service and begin billing everyone.
It seems like it's possible to set an amount of time to bill after first signup, but the idea would be to start billing everyone at the same time, regardless of when they placed their pre-order. Any thoughts?
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Support Staff 1 Posted by Marc Guyer on 26 Jan, 2012 02:13 PM
Hi Conor -- No problem. There are a few ways to do that.
Assuming you don't know when you'll start billing, I suggest first setting up your plan(s) with no auto-recursion (the last option in the "Frequency" option for a plan). This will enable you to subscribe new customers without a bill date. Once you know when you will start billing, change the plan(s) to a monthly frequency. Then, use the API to set everyone's bill date to whatever you want.
If you already know when you'll start billing, you can set the plan(s) to bill monthly and set each subscriber's first bill date upon signup.
Does that answer your question?
2 Posted by Tim on 26 Jan, 2012 04:57 PM
Problem with this is that it seems like that means we still have to charge on the first pre-order, rather than at shipment time. Can this be combined with the "free" solution the mention to do what we want:
"Can I change a "free" plan to a non-free plan?
Once you have customers subscribe to a free plan without credit card information, you cannot change the plans configuration to a non-free configuration. The reason for this is that CG assumes if a customer is subscribed to a paid plan that it will be possible to charge the customer. If you wish to eliminate this limitation, you may choose to require credit card information even if a pricing plan is "free". Learn more about "free" pricing plans here."
Support Staff 3 Posted by Marc Guyer on 27 Jan, 2012 09:11 PM
Hi Tim --
Hmm... No... What do you mean by "the first pre-order"? You can control when the first bill occurs.
This is actually possible. That was some old documentation. We used to restrict plans from being changed to paid when there were subscribers on the plan without a payment method. However, that is no longer the case. I've updated the documentation accordingly: http://support.cheddargetter.com/kb/pricing-plans/pricing-plan-conf...
Dean closed this discussion on 18 Jan, 2013 09:33 PM.