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Is PayPal Capable Of Doing Forced Continuity?

by Steve Iser
25 replies
Just as the subject line says.

If so, how is it done?

Thanks,

Steve
#capable #continuity #forced #paypal
  • Profile picture of the author Vince Runza Online
    Subscriptions and recurring payments: https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/we...c/subscr-intro
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  • Profile picture of the author tradermike2008
    Just do a subscription/recurring payment - you can even have a zero price if you want a totally free trial.
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  • Profile picture of the author Steve Iser
    Thanks - but neither of those relate to "Forced Continuity".

    It's a front end offer ($49 lets say) combined with a "free trial" that is charged after 30 days recurring for examples sake - $19.95/m.

    Steve
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  • Profile picture of the author Melody
    Steve - the answers are correct. You can do a free trial and then it rolls over to a subscription at whatever price and billing term you want. Check your PayPal account for details.

    It's done all the time with WSOs!
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  • Profile picture of the author Steve Peters Benn
    You can charge for two trial periods. Use one as the price of your front end offer.
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  • Profile picture of the author Stanley Tang
    And I think people actually prefer using paypal as a continuity program, cause there isn't the hassle or worry that they won't be able to cancel it. Since with paypal, all you have to do is login to your account, click on subscriptions, and then cancel.
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  • Profile picture of the author Eric Lorence
    Just a strange way to word it, "Forced Continuity", just sounds like you would like to force people to stay subscribed against their will.

    Recurring payments just seems like a better term.

    Just my opinion.

    Best!
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    • Profile picture of the author Frank Bruno
      That term is not nice is it.....

      Subscription sounds a little better even though the terminology is used extensivly in Interent marketing. (and offline)

      Frank Bruno
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      • Profile picture of the author Steve Iser
        So the subscription can be lets say $49 and in the next month can be $19.95?

        Cool - you guys are good.


        Thanks a bunchies.

        Steve
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        • Profile picture of the author JasonParker
          A friend of mine who's at the top of our industry said I shouldn't use PayPal for subscriptions because it's so easy to unsubscribe. He'd rather force a customer to take the time and guts to call the office and cancel.

          This might seem a little aggressive, but on the other side of the spectrum... there are a lot of wimps out there willing to easily take advantage of your trial period, for example.
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          • Profile picture of the author Chris Lockwood
            Originally Posted by JasonParker View Post

            A friend of mine who's at the top of our industry said I shouldn't use PayPal for subscriptions because it's so easy to unsubscribe. He'd rather force a customer to take the time and guts to call the office and cancel.
            I've heard that, too, but make it too hard to cancel and they may just call their credit card company to do a chargeback rather than calling you. What if they are overseas? That call could be expensive.

            Why not make the product better instead of making it hard for people to cancel it?
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            • Profile picture of the author Bruce Wedding
              Originally Posted by Chris Lockwood View Post

              I've heard that, too, but make it too hard to cancel and they may just call their credit card company to do a chargeback rather than calling you. What if they are overseas? That call could be expensive.

              Why not make the product better instead of making it hard for people to cancel it?
              Bingo! Jeez, this stuff isn't that hard.
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              • Profile picture of the author andyelite
                So now we've established that PayPal can do recurring payments, is it possible to get PayPal to automatically pay out commissions to affiliates on the recurring payments received?
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                • Profile picture of the author Suthan M
                  Originally Posted by andyelite View Post

                  So now we've established that PayPal can do recurring payments, is it possible to get PayPal to automatically pay out commissions to affiliates on the recurring payments received?
                  as far as i know: No.
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            • Profile picture of the author JasonParker
              Originally Posted by Chris Lockwood View Post

              Why not make the product better instead of making it hard for people to cancel it?
              Wouldn't really make a difference.

              What I'm saying is it's just too tempting for a lot of customers to just download everything then cancel their subscriptions at trial period with ease.
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            • Profile picture of the author Suthan M
              Originally Posted by Chris Lockwood View Post


              Why not make the product better instead of making it hard for people to cancel it?
              I wish the world is filled with only honest buyers. But thats not happening anytime soon.
              Sometimes, people who want to cancel will just cancel.. They dont really care how good your product is. They join, rip, and cancel.
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          • Profile picture of the author J. Barry Mandel
            I know what you mean but its a delicate balance.

            There's nothing more annoying than not being able to cancel a subscription to anything!



            Originally Posted by JasonParker View Post

            A friend of mine who's at the top of our industry said I shouldn't use PayPal for subscriptions because it's so easy to unsubscribe. He'd rather force a customer to take the time and guts to call the office and cancel.

            This might seem a little aggressive, but on the other side of the spectrum... there are a lot of wimps out there willing to easily take advantage of your trial period, for example.
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            • Profile picture of the author Josh Anderson
              A friend of mine who's at the top of our industry said I shouldn't use PayPal for subscriptions because it's so easy to unsubscribe. He'd rather force a customer to take the time and guts to call the office and cancel.
              I think you should avoid paypal for subscriptions for entirely different reasons. I have seen entire 30k a month membership sites recurring subscriptions vanish due to a paypal bug and then there is always the chance that they might just suspend your account.

              For this reason we created ours so that if you loose one merchant account you can pop onto another. We have the option of using paypal as well but I usually offer that for one time payments only.

              Also on the cancellation thing... we created settings where the publisher gets to choose whether its one click easy or not.

              Personally I like the one click easy cancellation. It provides consumer confidence, can be sold as a benefit, and cuts down on customer service. There is no reason to hold someone hostage if they want to cancel.

              Also there are far more effective motivating factors to keep people subscribed like sheer value, quality service, and maybe an incentive like a higher account creation fee on the first payment.
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              • Profile picture of the author Makabongwe Maseko
                "Forced Continuity" is messed up. A friend of mine once subscribed for this "free lotto stuff" and unsubscribing was a nightmare.

                They did not send him any login details, no tel contact details on their site, only a submit ticket and they never respond to.

                Every month they were charging $19.

                So after 3 to 4 months we had to search for the tel no on Google and called them which is when they eventually canceled it.
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    • Profile picture of the author Chris Lockwood
      Originally Posted by Eric Lorence View Post

      Just a strange way to word it, "Forced Continuity", just sounds like you would like to force people to stay subscribed against their will.
      That's just an industry term meaning the continuity is not optional. I wouldn't put the term in the sales letter.
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  • Profile picture of the author Melody
    I have been in the payment processing industry for more than 20 years - and one of the fastest ways to lose your merchant account is to 'make it difficult' for a customer to unsubscribe - especially if you are based in the US, Canada and the UK.

    It is against Visa/Mastercard regs to not provide the customer with an easy way to cancel any recurring billing - and if you want an example of an industry that has suffered greatly because of their 'forced continuity' programs - you only have to look at the adult industry. It is very common for adult companies to pay processing rates of up to 15% with 15% to 25% reserves.

    The reason PayPal and Clickbank make it so easy for the customer to cancel is because THEY hold the merchant account - not you - and it is their account that is at risk if the complaint level gets too high.

    Yes, we all wish for honest buyers - but trust me - there are many, many dishonest merchants that have already screwed up a lot of things for the rest of us.
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  • Profile picture of the author impact-productions
    I'm in the UK and would like to think I'm a typical purchaser of subscriptions - in that there are some I've kept going for years and some where I've given a product a try before seeing that it is valueless to me and cancelled after the first month.

    If a subscription required me to call overseas to cancel it I'd be pretty annoyed. Not only due to the expense (let's say that the cost is probably in excess of $1 a minute, more at the moment with the poor exchange rate, factor in a few minutes of canned music, and a few offers to keep you on the line and you've easily looking at a couple of months of subscription charges going to a phone company), but also the waste of otherwise productive time, the inconvenience of having to call outside UK office hours, and the whole annoyance factor of poor customer service provision forcing you to make a call.

    I would have no hesitation in instead calling up my credit card company to block future payments.

    I will stress that I've never had to do that before. I certainly wouldn't do that through choice if there were other reasonable options available.

    If I did have to call a credit card company I'd probably use the time saved to warn other potential customers about the difficulties in cancelling, rather than giving the time to the 'phone companies, or the supplier in question.

    Anyway, I would certainly never offer my customers a product that required such difficulties and created badwill in order to cancel. I hope that most serious marketers would feel the same way.
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    • Profile picture of the author SeanyG
      What payment processors are there that can charge continuity off of a credit card without having to get customers to sign up for an account (paypal).

      Clickbank is one but are there any others?
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  • Profile picture of the author Josh Anderson
    What payment processors are there that can charge continuity off of a credit card without having to get customers to sign up for an account (paypal).
    You can do that with any merchant account.

    I use a merchant account with an Authorize.net gateway so that it integrates with my ecommerce automation platform.

    This allows me to easily set up any type of continuity I want.

    In our system we offer publishers true forced continuity where they can bundle purchases of individual products with continuity trials for memberships, premium rss feeds and podcasts, even pysical on demand print and shipped continuity.
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