[#6552] Duplicate running subscriptions with PayPal

This is a problem I've had for a long time and I really don't know how to solve it or if there is even a solution.

The Problem:

• A paid subscriber with a monthly subscription is being automatically charged by PayPal and notified Electronically.
• The user's charge by PayPal gets denied for whatever reason.
• My CBSubs plan has a 3 day grace period.
• After 3 days PayPal tries again to charge the card and fails again.
• CBsubs doesn't receive a payment notification marks the subscription as Expired.
• The user gets logged out and is prompted to renew.
• The user follows the link to PayPal and in the process of renewing updates their payment method.
• Now the user has a new subscription with PayPal but has not cancelled the old one, and PayPal tries 3 times to charge the card before rescinding the subscription.
• So soon after the user gets another charge, from the original subscription because the card has been updated.
• These 2 subscriptions continue active in PayPal for the same user and CBSubs plan.
• Sometimes the double payments go on for 6 moths or more before anyone notices.
• We have no problem refunding but there's always fees and sometimes people put in disputes and get upset at us.

I have set the plans to NOT allow duplicates, but this doesn't solve the issue. I could set the grace period to extend as far as PayPal keep trying to charge before cancelling the subscription, but that's too long for my preference.
Users only see the re-subscribe button if their subscription has expired and they are locked out, but this doesn't mean PayPal has cancelled the linked subscription.

I can see in the notifications list for the user when PayPal cancels the subscription but I can't monitor all subscriptions all the time, and I can figure out what happened, but only after the fact. Cancelling the subscriptions in PayPal for the user can be tricky because sometimes CBSubs cancels the member altogether, leaving the user to have to subscribe again.

People should monitor their payments more closely, but they don't. I can't say I always do.

I'd love to know if we could solve this.

Thank you,
Tomas

CBSubs 4.1.0
CB 2.0.14
Joomla 3.5.1

They don't have duplicate subscriptions in CBSubs. What's happening is the recurring profile on PayPal is being re-created instead of the user just fixing their payment information. I've a hard time believing this is a common thing though; at most once a year surely.

You can probably workaround the issue by simply increasing your grace period to account for PayPal retrying 3 times. Once it stops retrying you're safe as PayPal will cancel the recurring profile.

Recurring profiles should also be cancelled on plan expiration if you've configured your PayPal gateway with the API parameters otherwise the only way to cancel those is for the user to do it themselves within their PayPal account. Specifically the "PayPal API credentials (optional)" parameters in CBSubs > Gateways > Your PayPal Gateway.

Thank you.
The API was an option that I didn't know about. I may implement it on PayPal's second try so I'm not 11 days out every month before canceling memberships.
For now I'll keep refunding. I't more often than you think, I've done it 3 or 4 times this year.
Thank you,
Tomás

The API configuration doesn't have to wait or anything. Simply plug in the credentials and you should be fine. If it still happens after adding the credentials please let us know.

Hi Kyle,
So it took me a while, but I've added the API and for a few months it has worked OK and I even was able to refund from CB Subs which was great, as it gave me more options than PayPal.

However today I was able to confirm that when CB Subs cancels a subscription, it does NOT cancel the recurring subscription in PayPal leaving me vulnerable to double billing, because they sign up again to the site with a new subscription, and in doing so they update the payment method in PayPal, but the old subscription didn't cancel and PayPal tries again for the failed subscription (3 times before cancelling it) so now the old subscription payment goes through and we now have 2 concurrent subscriptions in PayPal for the same membership. Then the users think I'm pulling a fast one and billing them twice.

So bottom line, am I missing a setting to force the cancellation in PayPal when it cancels in CB Subs? Or is it a bug?

Thank you
Tomás

With the API configured your users cancelling their subscription on frontend should also cancel the recurring payment at PayPal. How are they cancelling their previous subscription? Are they manually cancelling it from frontend? Just upgrading to a different plan? Are you cancelling from backend? Any errors in History Log around the time of cancellation?