Problem with the coupon usage workflow

[iancassel]

We have a subscription product where we occasionally provide coupons. The coupons are intended to reduce the cost of the initial term of a subscription but we don't want them used for renewals or more than once. So, we set "Can be used for renewals of selected products?" to off in the coupon configuration. However, we have found that users can use the coupon again by letting the subscription lapse, creating a new instance of the subscription, and then applying the coupon.

A mechanism to avoid the problem of using a coupon more than once (e.g. renewals) would be to set the "Number of times this coupon can be used by a single member" to 1. However, whenever a coupon is applied to an invoice for our subscription product it is marked as a use even if has never been purchased. We have found that people frequently create an invoice and apply the coupon but don't actually buy. Then they come back a few days later and actually try to buy on a new invoice. Unfortunately, in this situation the coupon can't be applied a second time which results either in support requests to us or people that don't subscribe. So, we set "Number of times this coupon can be used by a single member" to 4 but then have a loophole.

So, to ensure that a coupon is only used for the initial subscription and not renewals we propose that one of the following options be implemented.

OPTION #1: Only consider a coupon “used” once the payment process has completed, then we could simply set the individual uses back to 1 and have it work as designed.

or...OPTION #2: IPS emails them the original invoice with the coupon code applied so they can go back at a later date and pay it.

[bfarber]

In 4.5 a user cannot repurchase their subscription, so your concern should be mitigated in the latest release.