Please Brainstorm this with me...

Please can anyone brainstorm this scenario with me? Need to look outside my own ideas incase Im missing the obvious solution!

Need to find best solution for customers to make a payment for business listings on a site, after a trial free period.

Would like to be able to be able to setup customers payments over phone as well as allow them to enter payment details online themselves.

So far, setup using Dolphin (of course) - Modzzz premium business listing module

M'boi's recurring payments module is possible for - recurring payments...

Using these 2 modules there are several main combinations available.

1 - anyone can register on site for free, but then have to select a payment package within the Listings module in order make a listing. This just uses Premium Listings, but does not allow automatic recurring payments. 

Users do get an email to notify when listing term is about to expire so they can renew it.

2 - setup 'allow create listing' as a membership option, use Mbois module for Business Listings - this way you have to upgrade membership to make a listing. Payments are recurring automatically. 

Free trial period available via trial membership. Problem is, if trial membership expires and user does not pay to upgrade, I think the listing and membership is deleted??? or does it just go inactive and save content...? (have to test)

Either of these options, I guess can be updated on phone, by using Deano's Tools module, then logging in as that user and adding their paypal info, plus making the payment action while on phone.

Not as clean as taking a card payment but same thing I guess....

Is there another method?

Out of these which would you think is best as admin, plus as a user?

Any thoughts appreciated :-)

Thanks

check this one out - maybe it has what you are looking for: http://www.boonex.com/m/Dolphin_7_Membership_Subscriptions_Module

Thanks - thats the module I referred to in the post by Martinboi (I called him M'boi as lazy typing!)

Couple of things Im trying to work out

- possibility of customers giving card details for payment over phone. I know PP allows to use cards, but even without a PP account, I think maybe you would still have to create a user name and password for a card transaction?

 - the other thing that would utilise the above mentioned module, is if people had a Promotion membership that allowed them to list a business listing, then after 30 days the promo membership expired... I think the promo membership would then automatically 'upgrade' to a regular standard membership. (I think it should become non active to be more useful...)

Now, if standard membership did not allow you to list a business listing, unless you upgrade to a paid membership level, the listing created while using promo membership would still be active! The new standard membership would not allow to create a new listing, just the function of creating one would be disabled. However, the previous listing would still be active which is no good.

I need to figure out, using recurring payments, how to have a 30 day free trial, then the listing becomes unactive but stored, until membership is upgraded...

This can be done within the premium business listing module, but would not be a recurring payment just a manual renewal each and every time which I would prefer to avoid if possible, as creates lots of potential follow up support work...

If only the 2 modules could combine properly!

OR - Boonex would upgrade the default membership / payments module to recurring payments finally!

If you're ok with using manual insertion of over the phone payments, then I have an idea that I use and works flawlessly.

I use Intuit Go-Payment.   They have an online terminal that only the ADMIN can see.  They allow you to accept MC, Visa, AMEX & Disc. - All part of the standard package.  it truly was extremely easy to get approved, only took like 2 days I think.

It works for me because it's free to use (unless transaction is made), there's no minimum monthly transaction penalties which is great for a start up business and their default monthly charge amount is $2,000/Month.  After only 1 week I requested an upgrade to $5,000/Month and it was granted.

This is where it may be practical for you... There is an option for you to setup automatic recurring billing right from your control panel.  You select the time interval and the amount. You can select one/week, every 2 weeks or monthly, you can even specify a specific date each month.  The customer gets an email every time their card is billed.

Now granted, it's not a Boonex mod, but as you can take orders over the phone as you mentioned, then entering in a payment manually shouldn't be a problem.  Also, if we can get someone to build a payment mod that just collects the payment information (i.e. CC #,. Billing address, CVV# etc) and emails it to our business email, then we can still enter in the payments manually and set up the recurring billing manually. 

The module would not need to actually process the payments, only send us the information.  However since the customers were entering the payments through the module on thew website, they would think it was actually being processed through the website.. EVERYONE wins!  Either way, it can be used without a Mod, I do it now, just having the Mod would indeed make it easier.  If you wanna work together and split the cost of having someone design the Module to do this, I would be willing to talk with you about that also.

Either way, hope my input was of some use.  Wish you the best in finding a solution.