NPN Subscription Renewals **UPDATED**

Last year this time, we were getting comments from those trying to sign up for membership through PayPal that our links were producing "outdated link" error messages. We had been using PayPal subscription links (as opposed to "buy now" shopping cart links) for years and they had been working fine. When setting up the subscription link, I could set the link to not automatically renew after one year.

So when I updated the "outdated links" last October, I once again used the subscription method. Only this time, I wasn't entirely positive that I had successfully set it to not auto-renew. I left the links that way for a short period of time until I went back in and changed them all to shopping cart "buy now" links which do not offer the auto-renew feature.

Unfortunately, it is now apparent that those "updated" subscription links are automatically renewing. Since I really despise such auto-renew schemes myself, I can understand the negative comments we are receiving on them now that a year has elapsed and some of the memberships are auto-renewing.

To the best of my knowledge, if you became a member or renewed in October or November of 2008, there is a chance your membership will auto-renew. To prevent this, you will need to log in to PayPal and cancel the NPN subscription. Once you do so, you can manually renew (as we always intended) using our current "buy now" links.

The only place we currently use the subscription link is for the free 30-day trial which at least as of now does not auto-renew at the end of the one year subscription.

Once again, our apologies to those who were caught off guard (as were we) with the recent membership auto-renewals.

Update 12/1

The auto-renewal beast has been slayed. I had to get on the phone with PayPal tech support and they did a mass subscription cancellation on our account. What this means is that your NPN membership is uneffected but you will no longer be automatically billed for membership renewals. You will receive a cancellation notice from PayPal but you do not need to be concerned with it.

Thanks for your patience while we worked through this glitch!

Jim -

For those of us who are chronologically challenged, as it were, is there any chance of adding membership expiration dates to the user preference page?

Jim, it would be a big project. Non of the member info resides on the server - we generate the monthly renewal notices with a PC application.

Hi Jim,
When are new subscriptions due? Beginning of the calendar year (i.e. January 2010) or 12 months after joining?
Just can't remember

Johan, a year after joining. We send out renewal notices the month they become due.

Thanks for asking!

Jim : many thanks for your efforts on this. I do think the new arrangement will be better.