Trial Periods

Overview

Trial Periods can have a different configuration per service and can offer a discount between 1% and 100% to the cost of the service, for a defined number of billing periods.

The Trial Period can be billed as a single event, I.e. a 3 month trial period can be taken as a single payment for the 3 months, or split across each of the billing periods, I.e. a 2 month trial period taken as two monthly payments. Any value less than 100% discount will result in a payment. This is explained further in the Configuration section below.

Configuration

• Active/Inactive: Whether the trial period is active for this service or not
• Trial Period: The duration of the trial period. Note: It is possible for the trial period and the billing period time units to be different
• Trial Discount: The percentage the cost of the service will be discounted by during the trial period
• Non-Payment Trial Permitted: When ticked, the consumer does not have to provide a payment details when undertaking a trial period. This only applied where the discount = 100%
• Apply Trial as a Single Period: Defines whether there should be a single payment for the trial period, or a payment for each billing period. Note that the length of the billing period in the trial is set by the choice of unit length: day/week/month. A trial of 7 days will renew every day for 7 days, unless this option is selected.

Example Configurations

• • Scenario: A monthly digital only service, with no minimum term, where the first 3 months are discounted by 50%
    • Active/Inactive: Active
    • Trial Period: 3 months
    • Trial Discount: 50%
    • Non-Payment Trial Permitted: No
    • Apply Trial as a Single Period: False

If a customer were to take this subscription using this trial, they would receive a 50% discount for the first 3 months to be paid at point of each monthly renewal, and then full price for the remainder of the service period

• Scenario: An annual premium subscription, with no minimum term, with an initial free trial period of 2 weeks, that renews at the annual cost
  • • Active/Inactive: Active
    • Trial Period: 2 weeks
    • Trial Discount: 100%
    • Non-Payment Trial Permitted: No
    • Apply Trial as a Single Period: True

  If a customer were to take this subscription using this trial period, they would not pay anything for the first 2 weeks and then full price for the remaining of the service period

• Scenario: A monthly digital only service, with no minimum term, where the first 3 months are discounted by 50%
  • • Active/Inactive: Active
    • Trial Period: 3 months
    • Trial Discount: 50%
    • Non-Payment Trial Permitted: No
    • Apply Trial as a Single Period: True

  If a customer were to take this subscription using this trial, they would receive a 50% discount on the total price for the first 3 months, the full amount of the discounted period will be paid at point of taking the service (i.e., 1.5x the normal price, for 3 half price periods) but no further payment will be taken until after the trial period is complete, then full price for the remainder of the service period.

  Care should be taken to ensure that trials and other offer types are not defined with reference to the same subscription simultaneously. If this should occur, the offer takes precedence over the trial; and so necessitates that the user start payment in accordance with the offer-terms, potentially losing the trial-benefits.

  For example: a subscription that is already available with a 30-day free trial, subsequently becomes part of an offer campaign, whereby a 50% discount will be applied to subscription-costs. In this case, the user is charged for the subscription from the outset, at a 50% rate; but receives no free trial.

  Offer-campaigns must therefore be designed such that collision between offers and free trials cannot occur.

  Note that a free trial can be applied only once, to a single service within a service group: thus, if a magazine (constituting a service group) were offered as two services (weekly and monthly subscriptions respectively), a user who took out a free trial against the weekly subscription would then be prohibited from taking out a free trial against the monthly.