Questions about the stats I'm seeing in our 'purchase' queue

Oh. Are the 'Joins' prorated according to the clients monthly billing date? Is that why I see partial payments?

Yes, you are seeing amounts less than your purchase price because subscription purchases are pro-rated when the customer first subscribes. Each customer has a monthly "bill date". When they make a purchase they are charged a pro-rated amount to their bill date and on their bill date it will renew for the entire amount. This way all of a customers subscriptions renew on the same day and on one invoice.

"RokuVince" wrote:
Yes, you are seeing amounts less than your purchase price because subscription purchases are pro-rated when the customer first subscribes. Each customer has a monthly "bill date". When they make a purchase they are charged a pro-rated amount to their bill date and on their bill date it will renew for the entire amount. This way all of a customers subscriptions renew on the same day and on one invoice.

I've got to say that this is pretty unworkable.

"SolveLLC" wrote:

I've got to say that this is pretty unworkable.

In what way? You get the exact same amount in the end, except it all comes at one time each month.

"kbenson" wrote:

"SolveLLC" wrote:

I've got to say that this is pretty unworkable.

In what way? You get the exact same amount in the end, except it all comes at one time each month.

No you don't. You get the amount from the date of purchase to their next billing date. A cancellation may or may not happen during that time.

"SolveLLC" wrote:

"kbenson" wrote:

"SolveLLC" wrote:

I've got to say that this is pretty unworkable.

In what way? You get the exact same amount in the end, except it all comes at one time each month.

No you don't. You get the amount from the date of purchase to their next billing date. A cancellation may or may not happen during that time.

Edit: I know why they do this...to save on credit card/paypal transaction fees, but the way it's set up now, a user can "try out" a channel for a day or two and only "pay" a few cents (pay is in quotes because anything less than $X Paypal won't accept as a transaction, so it's free to the customer).

Now I can suddenly see the mad rush to the sporting channels to try them out on the one game they really want to see.

"SolveLLC" wrote:

"SolveLLC" wrote:

In what way? You get the exact same amount in the end, except it all comes at one time each month.

No you don't. You get the amount from the date of purchase to their next billing date. A cancellation may or may not happen during that time.

Edit: I know why they do this...to save on credit card/paypal transaction fees, but the way it's set up now, a user can "try out" a channel for a day or two and only "pay" a few cents (pay is in quotes because anything less than $X Paypal won't accept as a transaction, so it's free to the customer).

Ah, I see the issue now. I wasn't considering refunds and an event based service.

Maybe the best solution is a better terms of service presented to and enforced for end user, where they can get a refund only in 10 day (1/3 month) intervals, with a minimum of 1/3 month for any subscription based service always charged? That would ensure that at least some money went to the provider for services used, and the temptation to sign up and immediately request a refund after using it for a short period (in a fraudulent manner, as suggested by tensen) is curtailed.

It does require some work from Roku, but if they really want the channel billing system to be usable, I agree that there needs to be protection against people abusing the payment system.

"kbenson" wrote:

Ah, I see the issue now. I wasn't considering refunds and an event based service.

Maybe the best solution is a better terms of service presented to and enforced for end user, where they can get a refund only in 10 day (1/3 month) intervals, with a minimum of 1/3 month for any subscription based service always charged? That would ensure that at least some money went to the provider for services used, and the temptation to sign up and immediately request a refund after using it for a short period (in a fraudulent manner, as suggested by tensen) is curtailed.

It does require some work from Roku, but if they really want the channel billing system to be usable, I agree that there needs to be protection against people abusing the payment system.

It's not a refund, there are no refunds via the Roku payment system. The problem is say this. The channel is $1.99. The customers bill date is 2 days from now. The customer is charged $.18 (which I don't think that amount is billable via Paypal or CC). The customer watches for a day and a half and then removes the channel. The next month, the customer does the same thing (it's always something less than $1.99 as long as they cancel before the billing date).

I hesitated to even bring this up in a public forum because I don't want to tell people how to cheat, but this will happen to some degree.

"SolveLLC" wrote:

It's not a refund, there are no refunds via the Roku payment system.

Isn't that what the credits/reversals field in the sales activity report is for? In any case, I understand what you are referring to now.

The problem is say this. The channel is $1.99. The customers bill date is 2 days from now. The customer is charged $.18 (which I don't think that amount is billable via Paypal or CC). The customer watches for a day and a half and then removes the channel. The next month, the customer does the same thing (it's always something less than $1.99 as long as they cancel before the billing date).

I imagine this is less a purposeful act than an accident of timing. It would require customers know the monthly bill date in advance, and then make the decision to attempt to exploit it to make it purposeful. I imagine more Roku users don't necessarily know the exact bill date.

If the channel in question is event bases (such as a sporting event) that happens somewhat infrequently during the month, if en event happens close to the bill date, it seems like it may be inevitable to see signups and cancellations spike around that, and the total subscription fee would be small.

Maybe a good solution is that if it's close to the end of a billing period (5 or 10 days), then cancellation requests work for the period after the upcoming period. Customers would have to be warned this on signup though.