#ortatherox
sullen lake
swift parrot
Ah - great, hi?
red whale
👋
swift parrot
I've looked at a few techniques so far: A new Subscription schedule
but that didn't really extend an existing sub
I've tried uaing price_data to add a specific item, or coupon-based with existing prices
I think the shape of what I'm lookg for is being able to add a "gift" line item, to an existing sub and extending the period for the current sub?
This is on my side, so someone would have bought the 'gift' which adds a gift in our app, then later that is used
And that person could, or could not have an existing subscription
red whale
Hmm this is an interesting use case. I think there are a few ways you could approach this. When someone buys a "gift", do they have to indicate who the gift is for or can they gift it to anyone?
swift parrot
It could only be used by someone who was a user in our app
E.g. you can email it to someone who will sign up, but it will always be applied to a known user in our system
Could a one time use coupon work on a new invoice item maybe extend the schedule?
red whale
I think the extension is the tricky part.
Why couldn't subscription schedules work in this case exactly?
swift parrot
( I'll re-set up that code to give you exacts now )
if I recall, it was that the current one would still try and renew
and it felt like it would end up making two
yeah
it makes many
I dunno how much access you have, but https://dashboard.stripe.com/customers/cus_NesSKcrewgxwEP
perhaps I wrote it wrong, and its making a new sub instead
( it might be that )
Yeah, the API is a tad weird, I think I need to migrate to a schedule first and then can add phases
So, I might have something
red whale
I think there will be a few conditionals here. So, once someone is redeeming a gift, you'll want to determine whether they're a new customer or an existing subscriber. If they're an existing subscriber, you can create a Subscription Schedule from an existing subscription: https://stripe.com/docs/api/subscription_schedules/create#create_subscription_schedule-from_subscription
swift parrot
I can take the original sub, switch it to a schedule
Add the time period as a new item on that schedule
but that can potentially switch you to a different pricing model
E.g. this goes from an annual pricing schedule
ideally then I switch them back to the prior price
and my code will have to keep filling in the middle basically
red whale
So in the example above, this customer redeemed a $5 gift?
red whale
Gotcha. I was going to suggest working with customer credit balances but that's not exaclty what you're looking to do. If you give a customer a $5 credit, that would just apply to their next invoice vs. giving them a month for free immediately and shifting the billing cycle/extending their subscription
swift parrot
Yeah, maybe trying to do this invisibly behind the scenes is the wrong call here
creates something close
red whale
Ooh I see
This could get confusing for your customers as well if they see the billing cycle change this often/when they redeem a gift
swift parrot
yeah, that was what I was trying to go through also
trying to show that in a UI would be a meh too
and who knows what the webhooks will look like
sounds like a lot of surprises
I'm gonna try give this a shot at just giving a dollar value coupon
Think it might just be too much complexity
thanks for being a great rubber duck 😄
red whale
I think the way you were going about this makes sense: create a Schedule and add two new phases, where the first new phase is 1 iteration of a monthly price with a discount, and the second new phase returns the customer to their yearly price. You could also use Schedules and a free price, or Schedules and a trial period