Unfortunately, it is still not possible to achieve this at this point of time.

But I find it interesting, can you elaborate more details on the following questions so that we can clearly know the other possibilities as well?

Imagine now the site has 5 plans e.g. A, B, C, D, and E + deduct 20%

1. Is it always deducting a 20% discount automatically when the user plan to subscribe to Plan C (or plan D and plan E) if the user already has 2 active subscription plans A and B?

Or do you want something like allowing admin to configure if the user has 2 active subscription plans then discount 30%, if the user has 3 active subscription plans then discount 40%?


2. Is it the configuration part that needs to allow the admin to configure which plan can get a 20% discount?
For example:
- User A subscribed a plan A (active subscription)
- Now user A subscribes to plan B but no discount for it.
- If user A subscribes to plan C then only get a 20% discount.


3. Imagine the user already has 1 active subscription plan A, so now he trying to subscribe to plan B, the user can get a 20% discount now and complete the payment.

After that, the user decides to refund plan A, so the user can use this way to always get a 20% discount?

Hi Arlex,

Thanks for your detailed reply and sorry about delay (was speaking and attending JoomlaDay France, first in person JoomlaDay since the start of the pandemic!!!)

1 & 2 - I'd want to specify a series of rules such as:

- if user has plan A, they get plan B with NN% discount

In my current use case, it would be reciprocal, ie: users with plan 1 get B with 20% discount and users of plan B also can get plan A with same discount. In the future it may not be, and so just setting up rules as above is fine, I could specify two or more rules as needed

So it's not (for me) about the number of plans they have, but which exact plan they have.

This is not a "commercial" discount but a "logical" one. The idea is that they can get a product, and then there's another product that complements, works together the first one, so I encourage them to get the second one.
As said before, it's not the same as having a bundle, because a bundle implies having the same expiration dates for instance, or tying the 2 products together, which I don't want to do. Maybe product A will be discontinued independantly of product B or something.

3 - Valid objection. In my case, refunds are vetted manually so it's unlikely we would not notice that. Options:

- you would add a note in the Plan A notes that a specific discount of $XXX - for purchasing plan B - was granted due to having Plan A. Admin doing the refund would see the note and decide what to do. Logical thing would be to only issue a partial refund, deducting the value of the discount from the refund.

- Ideally, you would take that into account when clicking the refund button, if payment processor allows direct refund so that only a partial refund is issued. If refund is done directly at payment processor control panel, then there's a risk we don't see the warning indeed.

- Another option would be to "tie" the 2 plans and block any partial refund, ie you refund both or you refund nothing. Again, that would only be under Payplans control if payment processor allows refund from Payplans.

What do you think?

Cheers

Yannick

No problem for the delay Yannick, how is the JoomlaDay France that day you attended?

Thanks for getting back to us with the detailed response. After we've thought carefully and evaluate this new discount rule, we've come to the conclusion that we decide not to add this as PayPlans's core feature due to the 3rd question that I point to in my previous reply.

1. We can't be expected that other site owners also will do the refund process manually. Even though we add a new setting to determine whether allowing the user to refund if the user refund request "ties" the 2 plans together.

I believe the customer also won't take a risk to buy a product on the site since he knows that they can't make any refund after purchasing the second plan. This might affect the sales as well even if that is a good customer.

2. From what I know, not all payment gateways can support a partial refund. This might give a headache to the site owner about this refund case if the site accepts multiple payment gateways.

3. If the site owner did not aware of this after creating this discount rule, the site owner will lose money if the customer uses this trick to get a discount when purchasing a second plan and refund the first plan. (For those direct refunds from the payment gateway)

Anyway, you may consider submitting this as a customization request to us if you want this feature to apply on your site.

Hi

We can't be expected that other site owners also will do the refund process manually.

Maybe there's a confusion, I'm not sure what you understood by "manually". What I meant is that customers don't get a refund just by clicking a button on their dashboard, and I don't think anyone does that.

I believe refunds are looked at by a human being before being accepted/processed. Whether the refund is then made by clicking the refund button in Payplan admin or by going to the payment processor control panel is not related to what I was saying.

I believe the customer also won't take a risk to buy a product on the site since he knows that they can't make any refund after purchasing the second plan.

Maybe another confusion. Of course you want to keep the ability to do refunds, we won't change anything in that regard.

Simply in the case of a "group" discount we are discussing, they would get a partial refund instead of a full one, basically the cost of product A minus the 20% discount they got when purchasing product B.

2. From what I know, not all payment gateways can support a partial refund. This might give a headache to the site owner about this refund case if the site accepts multiple payment gateways.

We only use Paypal and Stripe. Both do accept partial refunds from their UI, and I'm pretty sure they from their API, although if I'm not mistaken, Payplans only provides a refund button in the admin for Stripe orders. For Paypal, we already have to log-in to Paypal.com anyway.

3. If the site owner did not aware of this after creating this discount rule, the site owner will lose money if the customer uses this trick to get a discount when purchasing a second plan and refund the first plan. (For those direct refunds from the payment gateway)

Well there's always a balance between commercial incentives (ie discounts very often) and expected abuses. Here, Payplans becomes a limitative factor by not allowing flexible commercial incentives, which are failry important these days.

Anyway, you may consider submitting this as a customization request to us if you want this feature to apply on your site.

If we go the customization route, we can do that ourselves. I already had a custom discount plugin running prior to Payplans v4, for the same reason: discount options are not flexible/powerful enough. I dropped it when moving to PP4 and I'd hate having to having to rework it to but I may have to.

Thanks anyway,

Best regards,

Yannick

PS: JoomlaDay France was great, happy to meet again face to face! Videos on their way.

I am sorry for the delayed of this reply,

Thanks for explaining again the "manually" refund process, I understand now.

And we got your point here about the commercial incentives but it will make the refund process become complicated because we also need to think about the customer who purchases the plan.

Imagine if the customer purchase product A and then purchases product B on the same day, but now the customer request to refund product A, then the customer noticed that he can't get a full refund after the site owner explained to him what is the reason why need to deduct 20% discount amount from product B.

The customer might be feeling frustrated because most of the customers will always think that they will get the full refund if refund the product on the same day.

Anyway, we will discuss this again with the team and we will see if we are able to come up with a proper solution that will work for everyone. And most importantly it will not overcomplicate the discount/refund process.

Thanks again and have a nice day

Hi

The customer might be feeling frustrated because most of the customers will always think that they will get the full refund if refund the product on the same day.

Well, I don't think so: if you got a discount on the basis that you are buying two products, it's a really hard ask from the customer to both get a refund of one of the product and at the same time keep the discount. I know I would not have any problem defending that.

Hope you can work out something and again, I'd like to insist on the fact that flexibility in discount methods is a major point in any "selling tool" extensions/products such as Payplans.
We expect the basics (display products, payment, refund, administration,...) to work flawlessly in 2022. How we can attract customers by intelligent and innovative discounts, affiliation, grouping, etc methods is where many sellers are at now I believe.

Best regards

Yannick

Thanks for your input, we will see what we can do.