Duff OMelia's dashboard

Duff OMelia started following the question "Moving current subscribers over to Spreedly" in Spreedly.

Duff OMelia replied on December 10, 2009 22:03 to the problem "Can't create a message from a category on the iPhone" in No Kahuna:

Doh! Good catch. Fixed.

Duff OMelia started following the question "Advice on implementing multiple currencies" in Spreedly.

Duff OMelia replied on December 03, 2009 14:50 to the problem "Spreedly is suddenly unable to authorize my payment" in No Kahuna:

I'm thinking the first thing to try is to ask the credit card company. Hopefully they'll have some insight.

I just did some more research, and it looks like the detailed error report is saying that the transaction was declined by the issuing bank.

I'm hoping the extra information helps.

Duff OMelia replied on December 03, 2009 14:00 to the problem "Spreedly is suddenly unable to authorize my payment" in No Kahuna:

Hi there,

We get that error message when the underlying payment gateway fails to collect the funds from the card. We have it hooked up to have a 3 day grace period, which means you'd be able to access your private projects up until this coming Saturday. I also gave you a complimentary time extension of a few days (till Wednesday of next week), to give you more time to determine if the credit card company is having an issue, etc.

Unfortunately, the error message we get back from the payment gateway is often not very descriptive, which makes it difficult to know why the payment was denied. I saw that you emailed support@nokahuna.com. We can certainly continue the conversation there if you'd prefer.

Sorry for the trouble! Please let us know how it works out and if there's anything else we might help with.

Duff OMelia replied on December 01, 2009 23:06 to the question "preventing customers getting free service through repeat free trials" in Spreedly:

Well... in every interaction with Spreedly, you're telling us the ID of the subscriber you'd like to operate on. This is your ID for your customer.

So, for example, the subscribe url is pertinent to a particular subscriber. Since we know if that subscriber has ever used a free trial, we know whether or not they now qualify.

Most of the API calls are specific to a subscriber which you specify.

Hope this helps to clarify!

Duff OMelia replied on December 01, 2009 17:27 to the question "Difficulty assigning a newly-created subscriber to a free trial plan" in Spreedly:

Sounds great. Thanks for letting us know.

Duff OMelia replied on December 01, 2009 17:24 to the question "preventing customers getting free service through repeat free trials" in Spreedly:

When a customer decides to "Stop Auto Renew", we don't keep a stored copy of their credit card. The subscriber still exists and their transactions still exist, but they're no longer auto renewing and we no longer have their card.

Does that help clarify? If not, just let me know.

A comment on the question "Manipulating subscriber and plan properties programmatically" in Spreedly:

Gotcha. I was wondering if the response body that you got back was confusing or whether you think that might be improved as well. – Duff OMelia, on November 30, 2009 16:57

Duff OMelia replied on November 30, 2009 12:08 to the question "Updating customer's credit card info" in Spreedly:

The options that show up when you click on the "View subscriber account" link depend on the status of that subscriber.

For example, if the subscriber is active and has a recurring subscription, then there will be an option there to "Stop Auto Renew" and an option to change their payment method. If it's not a recurring subscription, there'll be an option for them to make it recurring.

There's also a link to allow them to change to a different plan (that is, if you've set the "Subscription selection URL on your site" in your site settings).

I've added a task to our list to improve the documentation of the subscriber account page.

Hope this helps explain things. Hit us up with more questions if the page isn't acting as you'd expect.

Duff OMelia replied on November 30, 2009 11:55 to the question "Manipulating subscriber and plan properties programmatically" in Spreedly:

I've added a task to our list to improve the documentation in this area. Thanks for the suggestion!

Currently, when you try to update an attribute of a subscriber which shouldn't be updated, the API call will complain with a 403 (Forbidden). The reason some attributes are not updatable is because they have a special call for them which runs a transaction, etc. So you can see here:

http://spreedly.com/manual/integratio...

that there are calls to do things like comp a subscriber, stop auto renew, etc.

We don't yet have an API call to add a complimentary lifetime subscription (probably because most folks don't seem to do this on a regular basis and just using the Spreedly UI to do it has been sufficient up to this point.)

Are you planning on giving complimentary lifetimes on a semi-regular basis (to need an API call), or would using the Spreedly UI be sufficient?

Duff OMelia replied on November 29, 2009 03:34 to the question "Updating customer's credit card info" in Spreedly:

It sure is. There are 2 ways:

http://spreedly.com/manual/integratio...

and

http://spreedly.com/manual/integratio...

Duff OMelia replied on November 27, 2009 10:02 to the question "Charging a Goods and Services Tax (GST)" in Spreedly:

Hi there David,

I'm thinking that this thread:

http://getsatisfaction.com/spreedly/t...

sounds like it's at least partially relevant to your question since it's talking about adding in taxes. Spreedly currently doesn't have the ability to have a separate "tax" line item, but it is something you could add to the description field of the subscription plan to spell out for your customers how much they're paying in subscription fees and how much is GST.

Hope this helps!

A comment on the question "Some Implementation questions" in Spreedly:

None that we know of. :)

- Psyched about your gem – Duff OMelia, on November 20, 2009 17:18

Duff OMelia replied on November 19, 2009 21:36 to the question "Trouble updating subscribers via the API" in Spreedly:

I just looked at the logged actions on your site and there's nothing there to help with this issue.

Duff OMelia replied on November 19, 2009 21:26 to the question "Trouble updating subscribers via the API" in Spreedly:

We've got them here. Thanks for sending them. I don't see anything at first glance, but we need to spend some more time on it. We'll let you know through the email channel what we find probably sometime tomorrow.

If there's anything that's generally applicable to other folks, we'll post here too.

Duff OMelia replied on November 19, 2009 15:22 to the question "Customer ID for "listen for changes from spreedly"" in Spreedly:

It's the customer ID which you passed. Spreedly always talks in terms of *your* ID for your customer. So in your example, it would be 44763.

A comment on the question "Some Implementation questions" in Spreedly:

Sorry, which credentials / details? Just want to ensure I understand your question. – Duff OMelia, on November 19, 2009 14:42

A comment on the question "Some Implementation questions" in Spreedly:

Well, a subscription plan has a feature level. And the subscriber is potentially at a feature level at a point in time. So basically when the subscriber chooses a subscription plan, they get assigned that feature level so that in your app, you can ask a subscriber for their feature level and enable/disable parts of your app based on that feature level. Make sense? – Duff OMelia, on November 19, 2009 14:41

Duff OMelia replied on November 19, 2009 14:37 to the question "Please clarify subscription terminology" in Spreedly:

Active/Inactive: A subscriber is active if they have access to your site or service. (they've paid, been given a complimentary subscription, etc and their time hasn't run out yet)

Complimentary subscription : give a subscriber access to a feature level for a time. If they're already on a subscription and you'd like to give them a complimentary subscription at another feature level, you must first cancel them.

Complimentary time extension: just extend the time on the subscriber. Leave the feature level alone.

Free trial: Allow your customer access for a time free of charge. They're only allowed one free trial (unless you reset the flag with the API).

Lifetime complimentary subscription: Allow your customer lifetime access for free.

Auto Renewal stop: When a customer stops auto renew, we delete the credit card and won't auto renew when they're up for renewal. They'll go inactive when their time runs out.