Hi all,
Is there anyone I can talk to about the numbers I’m seeing in our daily purchases stats? Is the a billing/ordering developer’s phone line?
I don’t understand why some sub rates come in at the appropriate amount of money and others are wildly fluctuating - all in the downwards direction. We have a pay channel that’s $1.99/month. I only see a few of those. Most range from $1.something to $0.13! No reason for this and I don’t think we’re getting a wild amount of chargebacks that would cause the amount to fluctuate downwards so…? Who can I talk to about this. We’ve got 5 weeks of stats, we’re new and I want to figure this out. Thanks for any help available.
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.
Yes you are correct. The customer isn’t getting a refund, they have paid for a pro-rated period are basically canceling their subscription before it auto-renews.
If it were not implemented this way it would be very confusing for the customer. For example, if we charged the entire subscription amount a customer’s subscriptions would be renewing on different days. This would result in a customer not really having a clear understanding of when they need to cancel before a subscription auto-renews. Another option would be to charge them the prorated amount plus the next month. However, we would be fielding a large number of inquiries because we’d be committing the user to more than a month’s purchase.
There is the possibility some users could try to use this to their advantage. Yes, they can watch for a couple days and then cancel. However, most users won’t be doing that and it is our hope that subscription channels are providing enough compelling content that the customers actually will want to keep the channel.
You do raise a good point though and we’ll explore ways that we can prevent this from occurring.
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).
“RokuVince” wrote:
Yes you are correct. The customer isn’t getting a refund, they have paid for a pro-rated period are basically canceling their subscription before it auto-renews.If it were not implemented this way it would be very confusing for the customer. For example, if we charged the entire subscription amount a customer’s subscriptions would be renewing on different days. This would result in a customer not really having a clear understanding of when they need to cancel before a subscription auto-renews. Another option would be to charge them the prorated amount plus the next month. However, we would be fielding a large number of inquiries because we’d be committing the user to more than a month’s purchase.
There is the possibility some users could try to use this to their advantage. Yes, they can watch for a couple days and then cancel. However, most users won’t be doing that and it is our hope that subscription channels are providing enough compelling content that the customers actually will want to keep the channel.
You do raise a good point though and we’ll explore ways that we can prevent this from occurring.
Well, with the way that the billing is set up now, there is no way that we could even know if it is happening because Roku doesn’t share customer information for people that are buying our product.
“RokuVince” wrote:
There is the possibility some users could try to use this to their advantage. Yes, they can watch for a couple days and then cancel. However, most users won’t be doing that and it is our hope that subscription channels are providing enough compelling content that the customers actually will want to keep the channel.
I think the major problem, as tensen pointed out, is for subscription channels that have major events. Theoretically access to the major event is paid by the subscriptions fees averages out for the month. Adding the channel right before the event and cancelling afterwards, when the event happens to be close to the end of a billing cycle, puts quite a burden on the content provider.
I’ll butt out now. It’s obvious I’m not the one actually being affected by this, so my ramblings should hold less weight.
