Membership Plan upgrade issues

We have recently started to allow members of two plans the ability to switch from one to the other on renewal. The plans are identical except one plan allows for an associate member and a $5 upcharge. Plan A being $5 less than Plan B and without an associate member. Note: the associate member is nothing more than an additional name field. Also, on initial new registration, a new member will have a choice between either plan, but only one can be chosen.

Two issues have come up:
The first involves the expiration date after a plan change, where instead of adding a full year to the expiration date of the original plan, as it would if the original plan were renewed, it sets the expiration date on the upgraded plan one year from the actual renewal date. I.e.; if the original Plan A expiration date was 5/1/2013 and the plan was renewed and upgraded to Plan B on 2/15/2013, the expiration date on Plan B is now 2/15/2014 instead of 5/1/2014. The reverse is also true if someone changes from Plan B to Plan A.

The second issue is that after a plan change, the original plan is now showing in the User Management Membership tab as a second, but inactive plan, even though the plans are set to "Only one subscription at a time".

I have the Workflow set as follows:

First static condition: This condition must be met to allow upgrades:

Existing subscriptions: (set to other plan - if current Plan is A and upgrading to B, then must have Plan A)
Must be in state: Active, Registered Unpaid, Expired
Can be purchased same time: No: these plans must already exist

No other conditions except: Multiple subscriptions per user: Only one subscription at a time.

Do I have something not set properly or is this the way plan upgrades/changes operate?

On this site this is a critical issues as the plan expiration date is used as the magazine subscription expiration date and if cut short on renewal, then the member will lose magazine issues that have been paid for.

TIA



CB 1.9, CBSubs 3.0.0, J1.5.26

Bump

The first involves the expiration date after a plan change, where instead of adding a full year to the expiration date of the original plan, as it would if the original plan were renewed, it sets the expiration date on the upgraded plan one year from the actual renewal date. I.e.; if the original Plan A expiration date was 5/1/2013 and the plan was renewed and upgraded to Plan B on 2/15/2013, the expiration date on Plan B is now 2/15/2014 instead of 5/1/2014. The reverse is also true if someone changes from Plan B to Plan A.

This is because a plan duration of 1 year is exactly that. It doesn't matter when they subscribed or renewed it will always be 1 year to date. To have what you're wanting you may want to explore the 1 calendar year duration instead.

The second issue is that after a plan change, the original plan is now showing in the User Management Membership tab as a second, but inactive plan, even though the plans are set to "Only one subscription at a time".

They're two different plans, this is normal; they have a subscription row, but it's made inactive on upgrade. The multiple subscriptions parameter is multiple subscriptions to that same plan. What you're seeing is the plan the upgraded from and the plan the upgraded to. Again, this is normal; they don't have two active plans.

From the sounds of it you've everything working fine based off your configuration.

Unfortunately, I was expecting your answer to be similar to that. This situation creates several problems as I explained with the magazine issue and with additional back-end admin workload.

Is it possible to use Auto Actions to pull the original plan's expiration date and insert it into the new plan?

Thanks

Is it possible to use Auto Actions to pull the original plan's expiration date and insert it into the new plan?

Yes, but will not advise you as to how as I'd be advocating breaking your site. That's just asking for trouble. You can use a Query action to do this, but you're on your own in regards to the query and setup, sorry.

I suggest simply using by calendar year duration or allow for different expiration dates. Then simply stop sending them magazines if the magazine is released after the expiration date. This is how every magazine I've subscribed to has done it.

Yes, but will not advise you as to how as I'd be advocating breaking your site.

Well, we don't want to chance breaking the site. But with a calendar year plan, I would have to set expiration date to be the same for all members and then for the next year all members would be pro-rated, which would cause a mess for office personnel. After that, when all plan expiration dates are in alignment, the major influx of proceeds will be at one time. This would cause huge budgeting problems. If my understanding of calendar term is correct.

So, if a query will not cause any of the issues Auto Actions might cause, that seems to be the best course of action. I can handle setting that up.

Am I correct with this assessment?

Thanks