Reactivate Suspended Suscription ARB

[jpwdesigns]

Here is the situation:

1. Subscription Created with start day Monday executing every 12 months.
2. Card gets processed but is declined and subscription suspended Tuesday. 
3. Wednesday I update the subscription (Credit Card # and EXP only) via XML.

Questions:

• When will the card process next? 
• Wednesday night or one year from Wednesday?
• If One year from Wednesday, then I could also along with the CC details set a new start date BUT if the subscription has already processed once before successfully and now i'm trying to update the startdate will it work or do i have to cancel the old subscription and start over?

Thanks

[Michelle]

Hi, jpwdesigns, 

If you update a suspended subscription, the next payment will run according to the next payment date. So in your example,  if you update it Wednesday, the next payment would run in a year from now.

If you're creating a new subscription when this happens, to fix the issues, you can cancel the subscription and enter a new one, or edit the existing one and update it with the new cc info and a new start date.

If this is an existing subscription, you can cancel the subscription and enter a new one, or you can update the subscription with the new info and then run a manual transaction in the Virtual Terminal for the payment that was declined.

Hope that helps,

Michelle

Developer Community Manager

[twcreations]

What is the procedure for reactivating a subscription using the same credit card? I always have customers who are declined on the 1st, but you run them again on the 7th or the 14th and they are approved. If you simply update the subscription without new payment info, will that reactivate it?

Bud

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@Michelle wrote:

If you update a suspended subscription, the next payment will run according to the next payment date. So in your example,  if you update it Wednesday, the next payment would run in a year from now.

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[Michelle]

Hey Bud,

I'm pretty sure that if you don't update a suspended subscription with new credit card information, but simply submit an update request either using the API or from within the Merchant Interface, that the subscription status will change to active. I'm not 100% positive though and am trying to track down that answer for you. I'll update this post when I do find out.

Just some additional info that may be helpful though--a subscription will only be suspended if the first payment in a subscription with that payment information is declined. So if you set up a new subscription, and the first payment declines, the subscription will be suspended. But if you have already had succesful payments in a subscription, then any subsequent declined payments will not suspend the subscription. It will continue to process as scheduled.

The only exception to that is if you've recently updated the payment information. If you have a subscription that has monthly payments, and the first four payments process normally, you then update the billing information with a new card, and the next payment after that declines, then the subcription will be suspended. But if you never update the payment information and a payment declines anytime after the first payment, your subscription shouldn't be suspended.

So if for some reason, updating a suspended subscription without new information doesn't make it active again, you could just cancel the old subscription and create a new one as previously discussed.

Hope that makes sense!

Thanks,

Michelle

[twcreations]

Yes Michelle, it all makes sense. I'm trying to keep a single subscription going so I can keep a single record with payment logs locally. A variable I'm relying on is PaymentNum.

Let me know what you find out. Thanks.

[Michelle]

Hi Bud--just a quick update on this one. If you update a subscription, just the act of updating it, whether it be through the Merchant Interface or via API will set the status back to active. Let me know if that doesn't work though.

Thanks,
Michelle

[TechStu]

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@Michelle wrote:

If you update a suspended subscription, the next payment will run according to the next payment date. So in your example,  if you update it Wednesday, the next payment would run in a year from now.

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In the test environment this does not seem to be the case.  I had a subscription that should run on the first of every month with a start date of 8/1.  That payment did not go through and the subscription was suspended as expected.  However, when I updated it on 8/2, the payment was processed the morning of 8/3.  So it would seem that once you update a suspended subscription, the payment is processed the next day regardless of the next scheduled payment date.  I really need to know if this is how the production environment will work also or if the above is correct (the payment that caused the suspension is skipped and the next to run is the next schedule date).  I've looked around the forums and seem to get conflicting information.  Anyone know how the production environment actually behaves?

[Trevor]

The behavior that Michelle describes is accurate for any subscription that suspends after it is underway.  If a subscription suspends on the first payment, then it isn't considered to have started yet.  Under these circumstances, the subscription will "start" as soon as you update it and that means that the first payment will be attempted again.