[WTF] Roku purchases/billing is down since March 2nd?

My channel sales have tanked as well (I assumed primarily due to the removal of the Top Paid category), but I've still had at least one purchase on most days this month, so billing services aren't completely down, but something is definitely going on.

"TheEndless" wrote:
My channel sales have tanked as well (I assumed primarily due to the removal of the Top Paid category), but I've still had at least one purchase on most days this month, so billing services aren't completely down, but something is definitely going on.

Mine too, and I got complains from potential customers that wanted to upgrade my new Poker Clock channel, I have zero upgrades sold.

Considering the small % of people that bother to look for me in twitter or facebook to complain, I lost some money 😞

"TheEndless" wrote:
My channel sales have tanked as well (I assumed primarily due to the removal of the Top Paid category), but I've still had at least one purchase on most days this month, so billing services aren't completely down, but something is definitely going on.

Ha! The plot thickens... Roku becomes more like The Lost Room.

So it can be things like perhaps you still get orders from devices with old firmware (3?) or from accounts that use peculiar billing (say Paypal vs CC) - things which alas you cannot guess/measure. There hasn't been firmware push lately, so it must be server-side - and it seems to coincide with a monthly web rollout. What's bizarre is that they could not roll back the change once noticed. 2+ weeks! Did not bother? Shot themselves in the foot?

Can you quantify the change in purchases for you?
E.g. did it start on a specific date? How much % did the purchases fall (90%, 95? 99%).
For me the Event was very "qualitative" - went to 0. Perhaps of low volume. Btw i found it helpful to group purchases by week (Excel 🙂 "=WEEKNUM(tmtsmp)" then group or pivot) to even out "pulse" speed-up/slow-down from weekends/weekdays.

"EnTerr" wrote:
Can you quantify the change in purchases for you?

I think this pretty much sums it up...

Now, I suppose it is possible Roku had some sort of promotion for the channel on the first and second that I wasn't aware of, but that seems like odd days to run something (Tuesday and Wednesday), especially without letting me know...

"TheEndless" wrote:
Now, I suppose it is possible Roku had some sort of promotion for the channel on the first and second that I wasn't aware of, but that seems like odd days to run something (Tuesday and Wednesday), especially without letting me know...

That's be easy to figure out looking at Tue-Wed from earlier (February). I bet numbers are comparable to Tue and the count for 3/2 is partial because The Event happened that day (GMT or PST). So now you are down to 1/10th the old installs (90% loss).

I wonder why are you still getting any even? One thing i just thought of: my app is 3xxx and 4xxx models only

Have you tried setting up a dummy account and trying to purchase one of your own channels? Yeah it might cost you a little bit (whatever Roku keeps off the top) but you would at least be able to see what a potential buyer sees. Just a thought.

"TRR" wrote:
Have you tried setting up a dummy account and trying to purchase one of your own channels? Yeah it might cost you a little bit (whatever Roku keeps off the top) but you would at least be able to see what a potential buyer sees. Just a thought.

Why yes! Yes, i have tried purchasing channels.
Anybody who is curious what the exact outcome is, should try it for themselves.
For example, pick yourself something from this list viewtopic.php?f=34&t=93606&p=525173#p525173

In the worst... no, sorry! - in the best case scenario, should the transaction work end-to-end - then you would have got yourself installed a fine & cheap app (support the Roku ecosystem at-large and an indie developer in particular!). In the not-so-best case, we can talk about the experience 😉

Subs seem to be working fine as we had a really good month on that front. But our PPV numbers dropped quite a bit in March. No reports from customers (or potential customers) regarding any issue. I just assumed it was a slow month for TV as things are warming up outside.

Using my test account I was able to make a purchase & subscribe without any issue, so I'm assuming if there is a system wide issue the sales will still be recorded, maybe just not reported.

"RobSMS" wrote:
Using my test account I was able to make a purchase & subscribe without any issue, so I'm assuming if there is a system wide issue the sales will still be recorded, maybe just not reported.

It's not just the reporting - it's inability to complete payment transactions (reportedly incl. new subscriptions) - see viewtopic.php?f=28&t=93340 for what happens on "the other side" (customer's end).

You said you were able to purchase&subscribe using your "test account"? Were there real charges you can verify showing at the credit card company or was that with a fake/test payment?

Re "slow month", just compare your non-recurring $ txns per day of the week, March vs February - my guess is you will see 90-100% drop which is way beyond slowdown, it's systemic failure. If payments were kidneys, at this point the patient needs organ transplant 😛

I was emailed a short time ago on my issue and this was their response......

"I am not sure when or if this issue will be resolved, it seems to be partially resolved as in I can't reproduce the problem, but I've had a bug open on this issue or at least a similar issue for a year now.

My suggestion would be to modify the channel to use our in-channel subscriptions instead of the up-front subscription format. You can add a free trial to your channel when you do it that way, and you can add this functionality fairly easily via the InstantTVChannel system which it looks like you are using – that way people can use it for free for a few days before they automatically start paying a monthly subscription.

This generally translates to more subscriptions as people get to try the content first without paying"


What is everyone using to build their channels? SDK? Instanttvchannel.com? Etc.....

-B