Nathaniel Talbott's dashboard

Nathaniel Talbott replied on November 13, 2009 18:19 to the question "What is the best way to configure for multiple products?" in Spreedly:

1) The feature level is just a string - can be anything. One Spreedly client even stuffs JSON-encoded objects into theirs.

2) Not currently, but a big feature we're working on is the ability to add any kind of "fee" you'd like onto an existing recurring subscription. Initially it will be very low level (so you would have to track off_leash_romps within your application) but it will be possible. We're aiming to have this available before the year is over.

Nathaniel Talbott replied on November 13, 2009 14:23 to the question "What is the best way to configure for multiple products?" in Spreedly:

You would do this all within the same site.

What you want is four plans: dog walking annual, dog walking monthly, dog feeding annual and dog feeding monthly. The two dog walking plans would each have a feature level of "dog_walking" (or something similar - all that matters is that they're they use the same feature level) and the two dog feeding plans would similarly use "dog_feeding". Then your application just looks at the feature level to determine which service the subscriber is subscribed to.

If you want to offer both services together, just add another two plans: dog walking+feeding annual, and dog walking+feeding monthly. Give them both a feature level like "dog_walking+dog_feeding". Then turn on the appropriate features in your application based on that feature level.

I hope this makes sense - definitely let me know if I can clarify further!

Nathaniel Talbott replied on November 12, 2009 23:23 to the question "Are you spreedly types on irc, or have a public campfire?" in Spreedly:

Not currently, no. We try to be super responsive via email, etc., though!

A group chat type resource is something we might do in the future - I've definitely appreciated it when other businesses have had it. It's just not practical for the team at the present time.

Nathaniel Talbott replied on November 12, 2009 23:20 to the question "Retrieve last 4 digits of credit card?" in Spreedly:

We don't currently expose this information, but I think it's a good idea. I've added a task for it, though it may not roll out for awhile. Thanks for the suggestion!

Nathaniel Talbott replied on November 12, 2009 22:28 to the question "Confused about free trial subscriptions." in Spreedly:

FYI, on_trial is now set correctly for "first period free" subscriptions.

Nathaniel Talbott replied on November 12, 2009 03:30 to the question "lifetime free trial > timed membership" in Spreedly:

The way it works is that if a subscriber on a lifetime subscription signs up for a timed subscription, it overlays the lifetime subscription rather than overwriting it. That way, if/when the timed subscription runs out, the subscriber will revert to their lifetime subscription. So, technically, your subscriber *is* lifetime - he's simply currently operating on his timed subscription.

Does that help clarify?

Nathaniel Talbott replied on November 12, 2009 03:10 to the idea "Ability to "expire" subscription on a test account." in Spreedly:

It's a good idea, and I've added a task for it. Not sure when it'll roll out, but I'll update here when it does.

A comment on the question "What happens if a fraudulent credit card is used?" in Spreedly:

Fund reversal and penalty charges are all handled at the merchant account level, and Spreedly has no visibility into that. So when it comes to that it just depends on what your agreement with your merchant account looks like. Make sense? – Nathaniel Talbott, on November 11, 2009 02:33

Nathaniel Talbott replied on November 11, 2009 02:32 to the idea "Ability to "expire" subscription on a test account." in Spreedly:

It's not exactly the same - that's why I was wondering what cases you were wanting to test. For a lot of cases it ends up being functionally the same, but as you noted there are differences.

Nathaniel Talbott replied on November 11, 2009 02:31 to the question "expiring grandfather plan" in Spreedly:

They can update their payment information without affecting their plan at all. It's only if/when they decide to jump on a new plan that they'll lose their current benefits.

FYI, down the road we'll definitely have tools to allow you to force-move subscribers to a new plan, etc. Just haven't gotten there yet, and grandfathering ends up covering 80% of the cases when introducing a new plan.

Nathaniel Talbott replied on November 10, 2009 00:01 to the question "More about how subscription upgrades are handled, please." in Spreedly:

I think you are getting them mixed up: you could have any number of plans at the same feature level (each offering different durations, for instance). Pro-rating only comes into play if you have two plans at different feature levels (say Pro and Basic), and if you run through that scenario in the interface I think you'll see that it doesn't hassle the user. If anything it helps make the sell since it means they "pay less" for their first term on the new subscription.

Nathaniel Talbott replied on November 09, 2009 23:59 to the question "How to support sales tax in particular UK and EU VAT" in Spreedly:

If you need a VAT invoice with dynamic details you would currently need to generate it yourself.

Nathaniel Talbott replied on November 09, 2009 23:58 to the question "Paypal as payment choice not visible to customers." in Spreedly:

PayPal could penalize for this, but our experience is that they don't, especially in a case like Spreedly where supporting PayPal Express against a recurring plan is very difficult (though we are working on it!). If they were to come after you you should definitely get in touch with us as we have some pretty good contacts at PayPal and should be able to get them to back off.

Nathaniel Talbott replied on November 09, 2009 23:55 to the problem "Spreedly doesn't save client's name/email with PayPal Express Checkout" in Spreedly:

We don't send notifications when a subscription is about to expire: those are currently on you (though it's an email we want to add). For a full list of emails and their contents, see https://spreedly.com/manual/integrati...

You are correct that we could be saving the name and email off for PayPal Express and aren't - I've added a task to tackle that. It will probably roll out with recurring PayPal Express transactions later this year or early next.

Nathaniel Talbott replied on November 09, 2009 23:52 to the question "Malicious Downgrade?" in Spreedly:

You are correct that it won't cost in that case (assuming there's enough pro-rated credit on the higher level plan to cover the new plan) but the malicious user still has to enter their credit card details which makes them easily trackable. We plan on not requiring credit card details for the $0 case in the future, but we obviously need to offer the higher security method of using the subscriber token before we remove that requirement.

Nathaniel Talbott replied on November 06, 2009 18:29 to the question "Non US/UK/AUS merchants - options?" in Spreedly:

We can easily support any of the "Direct Payment" gateways from this list:

http://activemerchant.rubyforge.org/

Unfortunately there don't seem to be any Asian options yet. Down the road we'll be working to expand the list, but we're not able to dedicate resources to it yet.

So, unless you can get access to one of those gateways from Japan, you're probably stuck finding someone in Australia to help you out. One option would be to talk to banks in Japan about merchant accounts, and see if you get a Japanese merchant account if you can also through them get one of the supported gateways hooked up to it.

Nathaniel Talbott replied on November 06, 2009 18:16 to the question "Why shouldn't we integrate directly with PayPal?" in Spreedly:

You can do it a lot of ways (many of the other gateways also provide recurring services), but Spreedly makes it *much* simpler. Our focus is on this space exclusively, while PayPal and friends just see it as another way to bring in a few more clients, and thus don't service it well.

We regularly have businesses going through the (somewhat painful) process of extricating themselves from PayPal so that they can use Spreedly instead, which speaks to the much greater value they see in using Spreedly.

Does that help explain?

Nathaniel Talbott replied on November 06, 2009 18:09 to the question "Malicious Downgrade?" in Spreedly:

This is possible, however we see it as an unlikely scenario since it requires the malicious user to pay their own money with a legitimate credit card to exploit. Since the malicious act is costly, easy to track, and in no way catastrophic (a quick re-upgrade is all it takes to fix) we've deemed it an acceptable trade-off.

That said, we are planning down the road to allow you to require the subscriber token be used when changing a subscriber's account. Once we do that you'll be able to close up this exploit completely. It still doesn't seem worth worrying about in the meantime, though.

I hope this helps explain - don't hesitate to let me know if you still have concerns.

Nathaniel Talbott replied on November 04, 2009 23:08 to the problem "Create User Returns a 404 (using PHP API)" in Spreedly:

It looks like you're getting a 404 for some reason - can you give me more details about the request (url, content) so I can figure out what's going on? Nothing has changed related to this that I know of.

A comment on the question "PayPal, Can’t do API certs and Sigs at the same time" in Spreedly:

You need to get up with Anthony - he told me today that there's a way around this limitation (though I don't know the details). – Nathaniel Talbott, on November 04, 2009 22:52