"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.
