Fixed No way to cancel PayPal subscriptions for users who don't have a paypal account

[Jake B.]

Affected version

2.2.5

If someone signs up for a subscription using PayPal and opts to not create an account the "Cancel" button on the user upgrade page will take them to paypal to cancel it, but as they don't have an account it's not an actual action they can perform so they either have to contact an admin who is able to login to paypal and cancel it manually on their side, or call Paypal support to cancel it for them.

 

[Chris D]

What alternative behaviour do you propose?

XF doesn’t know whether they have a PayPal account or not. It’s not something we attempt to track if it is even made known to us. It would still require manual action to cancel a subscription.

Even so, a link that takes them to PayPal seems to make sense either way if PayPal are capable of helping them cancel.

 

[Jake B.]

Using PayPal's API to cancel it would probably be ideal, or at a minimum an explanation of some sort that they'll get taken to paypal to cancel it, and if they don't have an account they'll need to call them to get it cancelled. Right now it just takes them to a login form

 

[beerForo]

The Website Payments is what allows this behavior and it is controlled by the older PP API which was replaced in 2010, XF should move to the new API.

Implemented - PayPal NVP API

The PayPal integration XenForo uses is the old school "Website Payments" system that PayPal supports via creating a form and submitting it to PayPal. It works, but PayPal has an exponentially better API now that let you do a LOT more than just blindly take payments...

xenforo.com

 

[Chris D]

Using PayPal's API to cancel it would probably be ideal, or at a minimum an explanation of some sort that they'll get taken to paypal to cancel it, and if they don't have an account they'll need to call them to get it cancelled. Right now it just takes them to a login form

That’s not a functionality of the API that we use. The cancellation has to be triggered by the user in some way; be that logging into their account and doing so, or where that’s not possible contacting the merchant or PayPal directly.

As we have no way of knowing whether they have a PayPal account or not - the common case by far is that they will have - displaying any further information isn’t possible.

Note that calls for us to “move to the new API” aren’t particularly helpful as we’ll still have to maintain the legacy API for all existing users thus far with no migration path and no benefits to those existing users as they’ll be tied into the original API.

Not entirely sure there’s much more we can do at this point but will leave this open for further consideration.

 

[beerForo]

You can turn it off in PP which may hurt business but just an FYI.

PayPal account optional​

When this feature is turned on, your customers will go through an optimized checkout experience. This feature is available for buy now, donations, and shopping cart buttons, but not for subscription buttons. Learn more

PayPal account optional

On

Off

 

[Chris D]

Just to follow up on this. We're marking it fixed but all we're doing is adding some text below the cancellation button to make it clearer what the process is if the user has no PayPal account.

Any further changes are beyond the scope of bug fixes.

 

[XF Bug Bot]

Thank you for reporting this issue, it has now been resolved. We are aiming to include any changes that have been made in a future XF release (2.2.6).

Change log:

Make the process of canceling recurring PayPal subscriptions clearer if the user does not have a PayPal account.

There may be a delay before changes are rolled out to the XenForo Community.

 

[click here]

Just to follow up on this. We're marking it fixed but all we're doing is adding some text below the cancellation button to make it clearer what the process is if the user has no PayPal account.

Any further changes are beyond the scope of bug fixes.

Could you tell us what that text is exactly? Also, I assume we could edit that text in phrases if we wanted to?

 

[RobinHood]

From the announcement post I presume it’s in the template

• payment_cancel_recurring_paypal

 

[ShikiSuen]

Could you tell us what that text is exactly? Also, I assume we could edit that text in phrases if we wanted to?

Search the text in the lang file. This helps you find the phrase ID.
You can also use the phrase ID as a keyword to target the related template.