How to prevent frequent trial period abuse on my app?

[Raphaa]

Hello,

I'm facing a person who are dealing with trial periods, to frequently install/uninstall and don't pay my app, having a 10day-trial period.

Every months he installs the application for 10minutes.

To block him, I changed my recurring charge creation when he comes back to have (only for him when he reinstalls the app):

trialDays: 0

However, he is still not charged, even if he installs the app for 10minutes.

Is it possible that I'm facing a bug? Or is there another better way to handle this behavior?

Thanks,

[Morek]

Hi @Raphaa 

I'm sorry for your inconvenience.

As specified by Shopify here:

What happens if a merchant that uses an active recurring app charge uninstalls my app?

If a user uninstalls your app before the first day of the independent app billing cycle, they are not charged for the following month. If they uninstall it after the first day of the billing cycle, they are charged. There is no pro-rating.

Does uninstalling and reinstalling my app reset the free trial?

This is for you to decide. Since you are specifying the trial_days property every time you create a new RecurringAppplicationCharge, you are able to ignore it, or set it to a custom value, for any merchant you know has previously installed your app.

As an example, every store in your database could include a first_install_date property that is set when the entry is created. Every time your app is installed, check whether that store already exists in your database, and if it does, what the difference is between the first_install_date and the current date. If that is less than your trial period, then continue offering a trial. Otherwise, ignore the trial_days property, and the merchant will not be offered a trial.

Hope it helps you.

If you found this comment useful, hit the 'Like' and 'Accepted solution' buttons.

[Raphaa]

Sorry, this doesn’t answer my question.
What I’m saying is the merchant is not billed for the current cycle (not the following month) when i create recurring charges with trialDays:0 (not trial_days using graphql endpoint) and he uninstalls the app 5min after.
Hope this is clear enough.
Thanks

[jam_chan]

I also have these users for my seo app. I believe he is taking advantage of my keyword research feature. The user just install and uninstall frequently.

My app is just $15.99 / m. Honestly, if the guy is so desperate to save a few bucks, I'll turn a blind eye to it instead of changing my app.

If I change my program solely for a person, my salary cost probably exceeds 1 year payment.

If you really want to suspend the user, why not use his Shopify url to stop him from entering. 

[Raphaa]

Yes that could be an easy option, but I would like for him to pay 😈 

And btw, may be there is a bug behind this, that would deserve a fix.

[Raphaa · Accepted solution]

Actually the trialDays = 0 works, the shop hasn't been charged previously, probably because of the beginning date of the cycle..

But now, I can see he's charged, all is good.