Buying 3rd Party Memberships

[Nifft]

I'm thinking about running a contest with a prize at the end, and one prize idea I had was a year's membership to EN World.

Are you set up to allow 3rd party membership payments?

That includes automatically billing the 3rd party after the year's duration is up.

Also, anonymity of the payment source from the prize recipient.

Thanks, -- N

 

[Morrus]

Nope, there's currently no way to do that. I've been looking for a way, but I've been unsuccessful so far.

That includes automatically billing the 3rd party after the year's duration is up.

Well, we can't automatically bill someone unless they specifically sign up - it would need their credit card details (which we, incidentally, do not store).

 

[Nifft]

Well, we can't automatically bill someone unless they specifically sign up - it would need their credit card details (which we, incidentally, do not store).

Okay, so change that to "bugging recipient to renew and never bugging me".

Let me know if you do get this working.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Morrus]

Okay, so change that to "bugging recipient to renew and never bugging me".

Let me know if you do get this working.

That's a very specific software request! I'll let you know if I find anything which meets those specifications, but I haven't yet found any which meets much broader specifications - so I don't hold out much hope!

 

[Nifft]

That's a very specific software request! I'll let you know if I find anything which meets those specifications, but I haven't yet found any which meets much broader specifications - so I don't hold out much hope!

Gift memberships are a strangely specific request?

Well, whatever. Let me know if you get anything like that working. If so, I may want to buy some.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Morrus]

Gift memberships are a strangely specific request?

One that meet those specific requirements are, yes (anonymous, requests the recipient to renew, etc.). We have to use pre-written software. I can't write it, and can't afford to pay someone to write it.

I'll keep looking, although, I think my google-fu has been exhausted at this point! If it was there, I'm sure I'd have found it by now.

Well, whatever. Let me know if you get anything like that working. If so, I may want to buy some.

If the CS account opportunities change, I'll be sure to annouce it. Don't worry!

 

[Nifft]

One that meet those specific requirements are, yes (anonymous, requests the recipient to renew, etc.).

Let me clarify: "anonymous" means from the recipient, not from you. I don't want the recipient to see any of my billing info.

"Request recipient to renew" is actually your problem: all I really need is for it NOT to bug me about renewing the (gift) membership, and to NOT bill me after the gift period expires. I'm just assuming you'd try to roll over their memberships to their own payment source -- but really, I don't care what you do, so long as the billing system stops billing me after the gift period expires.

I don't think there were any other "etc." conditions. Could you clarify?

 

[Morrus]

Let me clarify: "anonymous" means from the recipient, not from you. I don't want the recipient to see any of my billing info.

Even I don't get your billing info, let alone a hypothetical recipient. PayPal's the only one who gets that. But I thought you meant "anonymous" as in "the recipient doesn't know who bought it". Thanks for clarifying.

"Request recipient to renew" is actually your problem: all I really need is for it NOT to bug me about renewing the (gift) membership, and to NOT bill me after the gift period expires. I'm just assuming you'd try to roll over their memberships to their own payment source -- but really, I don't care what you do, so long as the billing system stops billing me after the gift period expires.

Well, the software doesn't even have a "period" setting for recurring subscriptions (they run until cancelled).

Don't get me wrong - it's a good idea. Which is why I've been looking for a decent plugin to handle it. But it's a pretty big change from how vBulletin works as default, which is why I'd need to find that plugin; and, unfortunately, I've not been able to find such.

As I said, if I manage to find one (if one exists), I'll use it and let everyone know.