Let’s face it, dealing with refunds is an unavoidable part of your membership business. Some number of your refunds will be from legitimate users that realize they do not need or want your membership any more.
Some refunds, though, may be from abusive users who know that they can sign up, consume your membership product (whether that’s support, premium content or guides, downloads and more), then cancel and request a refund right away. If you are seeing this become a widespread problem, check out the code recipes below.
About The Code Recipes
This post includes three different recipes based on how you want to approach the restriction on a new checkout. In each case, the user will see a notice if they try to purchase membership that can be adjusted for your needs. The default message reads: Please contact us about your account to complete checkout..
- Restrict checkout if the LAST order was refunded,
- Restrict checkout if the user has ANY refunded order history,
- Restrict checkout if the user has ANY refunded order history, but ALLOW checkout if their LAST order was successful.
Code Recipe: Restrict if the LAST order was refunded.
Code Recipe: Restrict if there are ANY refunded orders in history.
Code Recipe: Restrict if there are ANY refunded orders in history, but allow checkout if the last order was successful.
Adding the Recipe to Your Website
You can add this recipe to your site by creating a custom plugin or using the Code Snippets plugin available for free in the WordPress repository. Read this companion article for step-by-step directions on either method.
Feel free to alter the message in the recipe that’s shown at checkout if the user is not able to register.
More about Refunds and PMPro
If you are new to PMPro, check out some of these other articles related to member refunds:
- How to Process a Refund
- Advice for Decreasing Refund Rates
- Details on the Member History Add On to Show a Member’s Past Orders
- Add a “Refund Rate” Report to Your Dashboard
- Responding to Chargebacks or Disputes
More Ways to Restrict User Registrations
Check out these additional tutorials with more ways to restrict user registration:
- Restrict Certain Words in Usernames
- Exclude Certain Email Domains from Membership Signup
- Limit the Number of Members by Membership Level
- Offer a Membership Level for a Limited Time
- Restrict Checkout for Users with a History of Refunds
- Restrict Membership Signup by Country
- Restrict Membership Signup by Email Domain
- Require a Discount Code to Checkout for a Certain Level
- Restrict Membership Checkout by Email or Username
Free Course: Membership Site Development—The Basics
Develop a deeper understanding of membership site development in this beginner-level course. Learn how to make your site work better, save yourself time and money, and improve your site's performance.
