Hi,

How does the subscription system handle changes to the price of a plan? How are subscribers informed?

Will a change automatically charge existing subscribers at the new price? And if so, how might this be justified without a new subscription agreement?

Assuming that fee changes do charge existing customers at the new rate and without a new agreement, I suppose the only good alternative would be to prevent new subscriptions to the existing plan, create a new one to replace it, and grandfather-in existing subscribers to the (old) similar plan. Still, this would not allow for increasing the plan fee for existing customers, which may be required at some future point (or if the existing price structure should turn out to not make financial sense). I am just trying to anticipate possible future difficulties. Thoughts?

I changed mine and was offered the option to apply to existing subs or only new ones. I chose apply the price to only new ones so I don't know how upcharged users would be informed; I presume during renewal somehow.

Edited May 2May 2 by bradl

30 minutes ago, bradl said:

I changed mine and was offered the option to apply to existing subs or only new ones.

Ah. OK. I think I must have forgotten to save the change in my testing. I just tried again (and after saving) and the following appears:

Would you like the changes you have made to be applied all existing purchases, or just to new purchases?

With the options:

Update Existing Purchases | Apply to New Purchases Only

I suppose that answers my question.

Though, I've just noticed a bug with it. I back-clicked to check something without choosing an option, and it had saved the change. I did not know which option had been chosen, and I cannot tell for certain what happens in all situations from the front end looking at my account subscription. But it seems to indicate that if I fail to choose an option, the new price is not applied to existing subscribers. However, if the plan is already cancelled (but still active as it is within the period already paid), reactivation will be at the new price. That's probably the correct behaviour. But what should not occur is completion of the price change if I have not selected if the change should apply to Existing or just New purchases.

If we choose to apply this to existing customers, without a forced update to ToS, this could lead to problems. In any case, unless there are pressing financial reasons to force the change on existing subscribers, it is probably counterproductive to have this apply to existing customers. Even if they are were all contacted (which they are not), many might have been letting the subscription ride - due to laziness, supporting the project, etc. - but a forced price change might persuade them to end their subscription.

Anyway. Thanks for the reply @bradl.