Hello
Is there any way to put people on autoship where they can choose a product or products to be automatically sent to them at user-defined intervals and they are automatically billed?
I wouldn't even mind if it was just 30, 60 and 90 day intervals to choose from.
This is for physical, consumable products, not a subscription service.
I get if CS Cart can't do the auto billing and the admin just gets notified that it's time to bill Jane Jones, but sending the customer notification “Hey, login to the shopping cart so we can send you stuff you signed up for” is not autoship like on Vitacost.com, e.g.
Any workarounds?
Thank you.
We had to build this custom for a client… because this has to communicate with your specific gateway. Otherwise you have to violate about a half-dozen PCI compliance rules … which you do not want to do.
Essentially you designate a product to be autoship, then set an interval, like 30/60/etc. - send the initial charge for their order, then send a second authorization to set up the autoship amount. Since you cannot do auth-only for the whole amount without placing a hold… even temporarily … you usually just set up the authorization as a .01 auth and void, then use the reoccuring until they cancel.
Most of our customers doing this send a reminder email ahead of the reoccuring charge, then also give a how-to-cancel spiel… etc etc…
Still custom …
We will want autoship in our store. Can we talk about that soon (FDGWeb)? Hotze Health and Wellness
We have also done this but not sure about what fdgWeb means about breaking PCI compliance rules. We do not believe storing CC data and reusing it with the customer's consent is a violation of any PCI rule. PCI relates to the storage (not use) of credit card data. Our client's lawyers have approved the T&C's of the agreement that is agreed upon at initial purpose.
The method we did was to setup product chains so that a subscription could be ordered at an introductory price and the move to a different product (if desired) after N cycles. Cycles are defined in days so it is quite configurable. An email is sent out N days in advance of the subscription renewal notifying them of the upcoming renewal with a link for the customer to cancel if they choose.
It only works with card payment methods and has options for free shipping (like for the teaser (1st time) order) and then to use the same shipping method (but charged) in subsequent shipments.
This is used on a site that sells dietary products. It's starts with a 14day introductory supply and then 30 day recurring shipments.
We had originally thought about doing this as an addon product but realized that the vast majority of sites are not PCI compliant and/or do not store CC info. Our solution also does not work for payment methods that are offsite or require customer interaction (like payPal or other offsite processors). However, we are investigating implementing Authorize.net's CIM module that stores customer card data in a vault at authorize.net so CC data is NOT stored on the merchant's site thereby avoiding all pci compliance issues.