IPN Paypal Subscriptions

Question

I am adding subscriptions to the 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. Unfortunately, the management was a bit vague on the status of the subscription.

Currently, the user account receives the subscription status after receiving subscr_signup or subscr_payment and is deleted when it receives either subscr_cancel or subscr_failed. I think this is correct, but it’s best to make sure.

And what is subscr_eot? the IPN guide describes it as “end-of-term subscriptions”. Does this work after the trial period ends?

Answer 1

subscr_eot sent when the last user billing interval has expired. subscr_cancel sent as soon as use cancels the subscription - for example:

The user is registered on day 1 for a subscription, which is issued once a month. subscr_signup sent immediately, subscr_payment sent as soon as payment passes (usually immediately).

On day 13, the user cancels. subscr_cancel immediately, although the user has a technical payment of up to 30 days. Cancellation at this stage is up to you.

subscr_eot is sent on day 30 - the user canceled, and this is the day that was paid by his last payment.

There are not many changes in the trial subscriptions - if the user cancels before the trial subscription subscr_cancel , subscr_cancel sent immediately, and subscr_eot sent at the end of the process.

Answer 2

Also, one interesting detail: subscr_eot works with subscr_failed .

It looks like subscr_eot appears after FINAL subscr_failed . Therefore, if in your account you have configured it to automatically repeat failed payments 3 times, then it should look like this:

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

so basically in your code you can set subscr_failed to start email, for example

Hi, please take a moment to check your billing information, you may need to update your credit card expiration date, etc. You still have access, we will try again in a few days.

And configure subscr_eot to disconnect your subscription and trigger email, for example

Sorry, we still haven’t received the payment and removed your profile. You can reactivate it by logging in and updating payment information.

Basically this is a “good” way to do this so that customers have a grace period and their account is not disconnected unexpectedly just because of an expired credit card or something like that.

Answer 3

A topic recently posted by Chris has been updated.

Sometime in 2010, PayPal stopped using subscr_eot when a user canceled their account. After a series of complaints, they restored it, but it took 6 months for this. All of this means that you can process subscription notifications again, as described by Peter in the accepted answer.

From a PayPal representative:

subscr_cancel means that the profile is canceled and there will be no future payments. However, if the buyer has already paid for the current billing since they are charged in front, then you can use subscr_eot to complete the profile.

However, uncertainty about what happens in the case of several failed payment attempts. The PayPal documentation is awful at the moment.

Answer 4

It depends on the account, if it is new or not, is subscr_eot , which is not for me?

I have not yet found a suitable way to manage my subscriptions. Calculation of dates on the server may not go so fast if there is a delay in payment.