ISXOgre Price changes

[Kannkor]

Try not to skim, or skip sections in this post. This will effect people differently, depending on your situation.


On (or shortly after, but not before) Sept 1st, ISXOgre pricing will be changing. This is how I plan on handling it.
*edit: Changes will be coming October 1st.*
*edit2: New prices are in effect now.*


Every single person with an active recurring subscription in paypal, will be grandfathered for as long as the subscription remains active. If the subscription is cancelled for any reason, you will need to sign back up, and it will be at the new price. How it's being handled in paypal, is the old option will not be available to be signed up for. This means even if you accidentially cancel it, I can't put you back on it. It would have to be at the new rate.

Price is increasing $3/month. ISXOgre is (and will remain) billed in 3 month periods. This means the price change for the 3 month period is going from $21/3 months to $30/3 months.


How to tell if you're subscription is active.
Generally speaking, it's active until you cancel it, OR paypal cancels it (usually for no funding source available).
You can manually check in paypal if it's active.
Log into paypal, and in the top right hand corner, click on "Profile" then "Profile and Settings".
In the middle column, Financial Information, click on "My preapproved payments".
Here you should be able to see all your recurring payments, including one from me. Ogregaming.
To the right it should say "Active". YOu can click on it for more detailed information.
You will see things like:
Status: Active
Next Payment date: Aug 10, 2015
etc.

If the subscription has been cancelled, you will see things like this:
Status: Cancelled - By Buyer
Date of Cancellation: Aug 22, 2009


What to do if you do NOT have an active subscription.
First thing to do, is to make sure there aren't two listings. For example: One that is cancelled (an old one) and one that is active. You only want 1 active (otherwise you'd be billed for each one).
If that is not the case, send me an email and we can review it together to see why and what to do. For example: Some people had two active subs, so I had them cancel them both, and instead of getting 3 months, they got 6 months. In that case, this person would not have an active sub.
If you're unsure, feel free to email me and we can look at it together.


Tips for keeping an active subscription.
Really only two things.
1) Don't cancel the subscription by accident. For example if you were cancelling a different subscription in paypal, make sure you select the one you want to cancel.
2) Make sure paypal doesn't cancel your subscription for no funding available. The most common scenario for this, a debit/credit card is used as the funding source, and it expires and you get a new one. When any payments are attempted, they will fail, and it cancels the subscription.


Why the price change?
I actually meant to do this last year, when I upgraded all the hardware/server for Ogregaming. Previously, the old server had "issues" to say the least. It would time out connections frequently, and this meant failed auths, failed patching, etc. This was mitigated by adding a secondary auth server, but it didn't help for patching, and a number of other issues.
With the new server, everything got better. Between rewriting a lot of back end code, and just having 1000000 times better hardware, meant it could handle everything, more reliably, and quicker.
During this time, a lot of updates were done to the secondary auth also.
Random tid bit: There was actually a complete hardware failure that happened that shut down the entire server for a few days or almost a week. Because of the secondary system in place, it didn't impact a single user from using Ogrebot. (If there was no secondary server in this case, everyone would have been offline until it was fixed).
That is the single biggest reason for the price change, because the new servers costs more money than the old servers.

[Kannkor]

I'm now aiming for October 1st for this change.


Some additional information for folks who have a active time, but do not have an active subscription.
Example of who this section effects:
People who sign up and cancel. They do this every 3 months.
Now, lets take a look at a specific example:
You signed up on August 15th, and cancelled the recurring sub at any point after that.

This means your 3 months gets you to November 15th. But if you wait until November 15th, you'll be in the new price.
There isn't a realistic way to have paypal 'delay' payments on subscribing that I can find through their docs, or emailing them.
What these people can do is this. Sign up again before Oct 1st, and you will have extra sub time. You won't lose any.
Lets look at my specific example again.
Your last payment date was August 15th and you cancelled the sub. You sign up on September 30th. The original sub would still have 45 days remaining. Your new sub gives you an additional 90 days. You now have 135 days.
Because the subscriptions are based on a 90 day cycle, this means on December 30th it will renew. On this day you will have 45 days remaining. It will renew, and you will get an additional 90 days.
Lets say you cancel your sub on December 31st. Your account will remain active until all 135 days runs out.
In short, there's no way via paypal to just have them 'delay' a payment, so the only option is to sign back up and just get your time at the end.


Reminder to all, sign up on or before September 30th! Oct 1st these changes will be in effect!