Needed: Method to confirm payment and send email/take additional action upon event registration

[Steven]

I conduct webinars.  I'm using Meetup as the front-end for people to sign up and pay for those webinars. It works pretty well EXCEPT that with growing numbers of registrations I need to find a way to automate the webinar registration itself.

There is an API for me to automatically register participants - all I need is their email address which is supplied by PayPal - and NOT supplied through meetup.

I thought a method to grab the payment confirmation would be to hook the IPN (Internet Payment Notification) method of PayPal - but no... Meetup is overriding that so I don't get a notification.

Anyone have a thought on how to proceed here?

[Doug Tangren]

On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 12:08 AM, Steven <steventh...@gmail.com> wrote:

I conduct webinars.  I'm using Meetup as the front-end for people to sign up and pay for those webinars. It works pretty well EXCEPT that with growing numbers of registrations I need to find a way to automate the webinar registration itself.

There is an API for me to automatically register participants - all I need is their email address which is supplied by PayPal - and NOT supplied through meetup.

We do not expose our member's email address unless otherwise noted to protect our user's against potential spammers.

I thought a method to grab the payment confirmation would be to hook the IPN (Internet Payment Notification) method of PayPal - but no... Meetup is overriding that so I don't get a notification.

 

The API can't change the behavior of the site.

 

Anyone have a thought on how to proceed here?

If your Meetup event requires payment to RSVP then you can infer a yes rsvp has been paid for.  If you want push notifications for when member's rsvp, you can can try to consume the rsvp stream for your event - http://www.meetup.com/meetup_api/docs/stream/2/rsvps

[Richard]

At this time accessing Item Title on Paypal is the best way to confirm payment.

[richard]

I process the payment details sent to paypal.  I extract the event name, member id, and the event date.  I cross check that to meetup events and which member did RSVP for that event.  So far all payed RSVP records correlate to an individual's RSVP.  

It still would be great as organizer to be able to see the data through the API just as an organizer can see it on the website.

[Richard]

You allow for pay_status for self, why not allow the organizers universal privilege?

Another option is to strip the results from www.meetup.com/payments/events/#######

[Doug Tangren]

On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 5:09 PM, Richard <richar...@gmail.com> wrote:

You allow for pay_status for self, why not allow the organizers universal privilege?

This would be is doable. 

[Dominique]

I too am looking for a way of accessing event payment information. I found self.pay_status on event but this is of no help for other attendees. I expected to see something similar on the rsvp eventually? :-)

 

Dominique 

[Dominique]

Looking into payment issues a bit more and how they could best be provided for scripts and I've come to the following conclusion. Having the last payment on the profile (and perhaps added to the RSVP) is "nice to have" but quite limitted. What would solve all the cases is access to all the payments for a particular member, similarly to how it's available in the UI. I suggest the API have a new payment object with a method like /2/payments that accepts search fields similarly to /2/events. This would return an optional event id (if the payment applies to an event), group id, date, payment type, payment status, confirmation number and amount. My 2 cents, but you guys probably have a similar design in mind already... ;-)

 

Dominique

[Joe Lippeatt]

+1 for this

We allow members to sign up for anything, but there is a 24 hour window to pay.  This makes life easier for folks that want to RSVP in a hurry but don't have time to PayPal that moment.

So having Dominique's method would allow us to create a job that automatically removes non-paying ppl after 24 hours elapsed.   

Thanks!

Joe

Sent from my iPhone

On Jan 8, 2013, at 10:47 AM, Dominique <salt...@gmail.com> wrote:

Looking into payment issues a bit more and how they could best be provided for scripts and I've come to the following conclusion. Having the last payment on the profile (and perhaps added to the RSVP) is "nice to have" but quite limitted. What would solve all the cases is access to all the payments for a particular member, similarly to how it's available in the UI. I suggest the API have a new payment object with a method like /2/payments that accepts search fields similarly to /2/events. This would return an optional event id (if the payment applies to an event), group id, date, payment type, payment status, confirmation number and amount. My 2 cents, but you guys probably have a similar design in mind already... ;-)

 

Dominique

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[Steven]

Just to close the loop, the RSVPs "pay_status" field tells the payment status. Unfortunately this field is shown only to organizers. That means that an event host who is trying to manage the RSVP list cannot see who has and hasn't paid unless organizer keys/authority is used.

Another issue that I see is there is note in the documentation about "partially_paid" as a possibility, but it's not clear how that is determined.  If someone overrides the charge from say $30 to $0.01 they show as "paid" per my test. And there is no means I am aware of for an organizer to mark them "unpaid" or "partially paid" using either the UI or the API - with the possible exception of issuing a refund.

Issuing a refund is galling to me... PayPal still gets a $0.30 transaction fee for refunded amounts. But now I'm going off on a tangent.

So my questions are:

1. How can a "partially paid" occur?
2. Can the API be relaxed to show "pay_status" to an event host?

[jo...@lippeatt.com]

I didn't realize until this thread that pay amounts can be modified and still appear in Meetup as "paid" -- seems like this is a bug in the paypal integration that needs to be a addressed.

Paid status for event host is a good idea too, GUI and API.  In some of our events, the cost of materials can be $40 bucks -- and event hosts have to ask me "has everyone paid?  has everyone paid?"  Even though I'm on-top-of-it, they could use the reassurance by seeing payment status.

Joe

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[Steven]

To be super clear:

I would like to see the Pay_Status made available to:

1. Event Hosts
2. Assistant Organizers
   
3. Co-Organizers
4. Organizers

At present it is only visible to the last two.

[Doug Tangren]

This is consistent with the site. The API is not the place to request new features on the site.The reason for the restriction has to with with the ability of hosts to manage money for the group. If you want your hosts to see this information you can upgrade their status to co-orgs if money is going to be involved and they are the event host. 

 

[Doug Tangren]

This can occur when members only pay some of the total amount due using paypal or amazon payments.

 

1. Can the API be relaxed to show "pay_status" to an event host?

Please see my other reply for the answer to this.

 

[Steven]

This is consistent with the site. The API is not the place to request new features on the site.The reason for the restriction has to with with the ability of hosts to manage money for the group. If you want your hosts to see this information you can upgrade their status to co-orgs if money is going to be involved and they are the event host. 

Doug, the site is not itself consistent.

If the organizer chooses to show "Money" to members then members can see that *somebody* has paid and how much.

Only Organizers and AO can see who paid.  This is a sore point with our non-AO's since they rely on the AOs to update titles to indicate "membership" levels.   Moreover, if Money is turned on, there is an entry visible to all that indicates the specific event and amount for which the payment was made. In the degenerate case of one person in the event and a single payment, it's safe to conclude that the person has paid the amount shown. If there are twelve in the event and twelve payments it also (likely) indicates all have paid. The people who care about payment are the people managing the event requiring it all to be single threaded through the Organizer isn't efficient or timely.  Of course not showing clearly that the event was fully paid is another kettle of fish which I'll address in a moment.

I understand why you don't want to blaze a trail with the API team leading the charge, but there are perhaps 100 suggestion in UserVoice around issues just like this.  Here are some - most of them seem to be means to handle problem with lack of visibility of funds to AOs, EOs, and EHs.

Mandatory Monthly Dues:  (712 votes since Aug, 2011)

http://meetup.uservoice.com/forums/37079-ideas-and-suggestions-for-meetup/suggestions/2171485-monthly-dues-payment-option-required-to-join-group

Allow Multiple Payment Accounts (226 Votes since Jun, 2010)

http://meetup.uservoice.com/forums/37079-ideas-and-suggestions-for-meetup/suggestions/836967-allow-use-of-multiple-paypal-accounts

Better membership and fee management options ( 26 votes since April 2012)

http://meetup.uservoice.com/forums/37079-ideas-and-suggestions-for-meetup/suggestions/2794543-better-membership-and-fee-management-options

Include the paid status on the RSVP printout. Only the Meetup group founder can see it now.( 6 votes since Aug, 2011)

http://meetup.uservoice.com/forums/37079-ideas-and-suggestions-for-meetup/suggestions/2198641-include-the-paid-status-on-the-rsvp-printout-onl

Allow each event organizer to enter a Pay Pal address other than Group Organizer's Pay Pal Address (21 votes since Aug, 2010)

http://meetup.uservoice.com/forums/37079-ideas-and-suggestions-for-meetup/suggestions/1021441-allow-each-event-organizer-to-enter-a-pay-pal-addr

Doug, can you tell me (privately) whom I need to lobby to get the OPTION to allow payment amounts to be visible to the leadership team?  I believe that single ability will solve about 40% of the demand behind the above feature requests.

[Steven]

1. How can a "partially paid" occur?

This can occur when members only pay some of the total amount due using paypal or amazon payments.

My results indicate that if a user overrides the amount on the UI before it goes to PayPal, the API shows the amount as "paid".  I don't see how I can override the cost after reaching PayPal, but before proceeding - perhaps that is the scenario where "partial" would  be returned, but I can't duplicate it.

Here is the event:

http://www.meetup.com/Web-Tools-For-Meetup-Organizers/events/112156922/

Here is the API call result:

http://api.meetup.com/2/rsvps?_=1364861210618&event_id=112156922&order=event&desc=false&offset=0&format=json&only=member%2Cpay_status&page=20&fields=pay_status&sig_id=6516298

Here is what was returned after "Chris T" paid $0.01 for the $1.00 event.

{

• "results": [
  • {
    • "member": {
      • "name": "Steven Christenson",
      • "member_id": 6516298
      },
    • "pay_status": "paid"
    },
  • {
    • "member": {
      • "name": "Meetup Helper (robot)",
      • "member_id": 10471288
      },
    • "pay_status": "none"
    },
  • {
    • "member": {
      • "name": "Chris T.",
      • "member_id": 27741102
      },
    • "pay_status": "paid"
    }
  ],

I also had previously used the "Money" panel to enter a "manual payment" for Steven Christenson of $0.50 (half of the amount shown as required).  Notice how the amount from Chris T. comes through as $0.00 due to the fees deducted by paypal/credit card processing.

Apr 1, 2013	Event: Test Meeting Payment from: Chris T. Paid using: PayPal Confirmation No.: P18116932 More details Payments history	$0.00
Apr 1, 2013	Event: Test Meeting Payment from: Steven Christenson Paid using: Cash/Check Confirmation No.: M18115702 Payments history	$0.50

I can see where it would be darn hard for the interface to know what a "partial" or full payment are... except that it should know that someone has paid less than the asked amount by overriding the UI.  One obvious complication is that the amount might change later (become more or less).

[jo...@lippeatt.com]

This is a pretty big deal I think.  If someone signs up for a event that costs me $70 in materials, and I don't realize he goofed around with the cost -- and the API doesn't tell me how much he paid, it could put an end to my event hosting for good.

Here's the problem: http://24moves.com/_houstonphotowalks/_event_images/pay.png

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