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Hey Paizo Staff.
You've done a great job of making a number of products available to me via subscription, which I think is great. I've taken advantage of Pathfinder, Chronicles, Planet Stories, and Gamemastery. As far as I know, that's 100% of what you currently offer.
The only thing you haven't offered me (which I would like) is a way to leave a deposit from which to pay for my subscriptions. I know that you can't guarantee the price in advance, so you can't simply charge me a fixed cost per month.
One of the advantages that a subscription typically offers is to make a large payment at a convenient time so you don't have to worry about expenses in inconvenient months. For example, I pay my 1 year Renter's Insurance in September, my Auto Insurance in February and August, Car Registration in July, etc. These large 'fixed expenses' make it imperative that I carefully budget for those months. Some months (like March) involve a large annual bonus from my employer and has none of these large fixed expenses.
In March, I know that I would have an easier time making a large payment to you rather than continuing to make monthly payments in periods where money may be tight (like near Christmas).
I know one advantage of subscriptions for you that are charged monthly is 'income smoothing', but having 'unearned money' on hand seems like the kind of inconvenience you should want to have - if nothing else it means you can earn interest on the money.
You've given me just about everything else. Do you have a way that I can make a single large payment to you and have you deduct each subscription product from that amount? This would also be convenient for people who want to give me gifts. Since I have all the Paizo products I want (almost) it will be easier for my friends and family to make a 'donation' to my subscription fund, rather than deal with inconvenient monthly charges to their credit card. It's nice to have a gift that keeps on giving, but not so much to give a present that requires you to keep giving.
What can you do to make my request a reality? If I did send a payment by check for, let's say, $1000, what would happen? Would you apply it to my account, or automatically refund it in full? Thanks for looking into this.
Oh, wow. It would be sweet to be able to add to your own store credit, and then be able to use that credit towards a running subscription.
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There's an upcomming feature (on Gary's to do list, no idea what priority) that will be about "gift cards".
I know nothing about how it's going to work, but if you can chose how much money to put in it, I guess you could put a lot of money on a gift card to yourself and use it to pay for your subscriptions. I have no idea if you'll be able to refill it, though.
Maybe Gary/Vic can tell us more.
Chief Technical Officer
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Gift cards are not terribly close to the top of the to-do list right now, unfortunately. Even if they were ready, though, we require a credit card to sign up for a subscription.
The main reason for that is that our experience with the magazines demonstrated that the whole business of subscription renewals is terrible for us, and unpleasant for a lot of customers. People ignore renewal requests, then get frustrated with us when they miss a month because of it. That's why we—and a lot of services that used to require renewing—have moved to an ongoing subscription format. This way, neither you nor we have to worry about you missing a volume because you didn't respond to an e-mail quickly enough.
However, there is something that might cover your needs. Previous posters have mentioned that there are credit cards that can be "preloaded" to suit your requirements. I'm not sure if you can have other people load your card for you or not, but it might be worth looking into.
(Anybody out there have any experience with these?)
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I was thinking about that. To have a 'Paizo Credit Card' would be somethng I could do as a last resort.
I'm not looking to get out of having a credit card to back my subscription. I'm looking to have the credit card 'secure' the subscription, so that when I run out of money on account it automatically gets charged to the card.
Basically, this would allow me to make a deposit, and every month when my order goes out the deposit would be eroded. When 'used up' it would switch to the card. So, let's say after putting down $500, and having orders that average $80 month, I've used $480 after 6 months. On month seven when my order goes out, it would use the last $20 on deposit and charge the other $60 to my card.
There would be no need for renewal cards - and no fear that I won't miss an item because I forgot to 'pay up'.
Basically, it comes down to this. Eventually, when money gets tight, my wife will suggest I stop buying your products. If I paid you in advance, she wouldn't do that. What this boils down to is if you allow me to 'pay ahead' you're much more likely to keep me (and people like me) as subscribers for the long haul.
Arguing once every couple years about $1000 I spent is much easier than arguing every month about $30-40.
What you might be able to do is get a Visa "Gift Card." Basically, it's a card that you load with $xxx, and it's available for use. Then you could sign up the subscription using that "credit card."
The only problem with this is the only e-mail you would get about needing to update your subscription is "Your credit card was refused."
To you, it's basically what you're looking for, with the added bonus of being able to access the funds if need be.
To Paizo, they don't care one bit since it works just like a normal credit card.
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One other advantage to being able to leave cash on deposit is that Paizo will be able to avoid the fees charged by the credit card companies. Reducing the expenses in processing orders would yield to a higher profit. Of course, if it is just my orders that would use this system, well - it wouldn't make much difference. But even if a few hundred customers do this, those savings start adding up.
RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32
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Here's an idea (possibly a bit overkill):
Go to a bank other than the one that you do the majority of your banking at. Open a new checking account there. Make your opening deposit for whatever you want. Get a debit card to go with the account. The vast majority of debit cards these days have a Visa or MasterCard logo on them, which means that they function just like a credit card. Use that debit card to tie to your subscription accounts. You can set up online banking with most banks so that you can check your account balance at any time. And, since the account is with a bank other than the one you normally bank at, you won't have the ability to easily switch funds around and drain your subscription account prematurely.
Of course, if you're not worried about that, then you can just open an extra account at your normal bank.