Double subscriptions

#1

Occasionally we see members accidentally subscribing twice, (same email address / username), usually it’s something like them not thinking the payment has gone through, maybe a slow internet connection and/or the page not refreshing to the success screen, something like that.

Is there a way for us to stop a member accidentally paying twice if they have already subscribed for the current term? I had a look here and in the docs to see if there was something obvious I’d missed from settings or on the sign up form but didn’t find anything.

Thanks for any help!
Graham

#2

Hey Graham, @grahams

  1. Are you selling a subscription to some other pages on your site?
  2. Are you using a ProForm or ‘buy now’? (I assume proform but have to ask)

And yes, the proform is a pain because it does not ‘shrink’ and show conformation like a contact form does.

#3

Hey Debbie, thanks for the reply.

It’s a membership subscription for a small choir, joining or renewing membership does open up pages in the members area of the site otherwise unavailable.

We’re using a Pro form for Stripe.

I think might have half solved the problem for existing members that are renewing their membership, by using conditional shortcodes and prompting users to log in first. So if you’re logged in and NOT s2member_level0 (lapsed memberships), the subscription page won’t present the payment form but instead a "Thanks, you’re membership is up-to-date” message.

So that just leaves brand new members, signing up for the first time (and so not logged in) who manage to load and send the form twice, before they notice any email confirmation message, or sometime they don’t realise that they should check. We mostly have older non-tech minded members!

Best,
Graham

#4

@grahams, cc: @clavaque

I have the same issue. I have even used the short code [success="/thanks/"] and it fails to redirect after the sale. Sadly, I believe this to be a bug and just something we have to live with for the moment. Even I missed the success notification at the top of the form the first time.

I copied Cristián just in case we are doing something wrong but I don’t believe so.

#5

@grahams - you’re on the right track. Don’t make a subscription button visible to non-logged-in members. It is not technically possible to know if a non-logged-in member has / has-not previously subscribed.

#6

Thanks Tim, hopefully we’ll see it happening more infrequently now that the button is hidden.

Best wishes,
Graham

#7

You should also keep an eye on the double payments bug which a number of us have been discussing with the plugin author for a number of months. See Stripe causing double payments

#8

Thanks Tim will do. I did see that thread but so far we haven’t run into the same problem.

#9

The reason I pointed you at the error is that there is a possible double-subscription caused by a Javascript flaw where the client enters the data, presses submit, then gets impatient and presses submit again before the first submission completes. There is code that protects against this but it is possible there is an edge case loophole.