I'm just now getting starting implementing DTO vendor and I guess this is the biggest glaring missing link to make this the most incredible addon paid or not to vbulletin.

Maybe I just haven't dug deep enough on this one yet, but I'm not seeing a way of notification when their plan expires and then allowing the vendor an automated way to make the payment and renew. If in fact your providing the vendor with a good bargain for their advertising/leads then its just a no brainer for them to renew of course, but there is amount of overhead for renewals and first time payments that could just be eliminated by implementing something for the payment portion of this product.

How is everyone that is using DTO vendors collecting and renewing the payments for their vendors? Do they setup a standard VB subscription with a $X that takes them to a "vendor group" and then manually marking them as paid inside vendor cp?

I've talked with Woody offline about this I believe and like he mentioned, there is something to be said for personal rapport with vendor and calling them up and chatting with them on the phone to get their payment information and are personally conversing them with them in an email.

Awesome product.. It just takes you right to the edge of success but then stops shy of actually taking the payment for this great vendor service.

Even some very simple integration with the existing VB payment api and just the ability to pull the existing vendor banner ads to a different rotating spot somewhere on the template would be a GREAT step in the right direction.


Matt

This is something that I've considered a couple of times but only gotten feedback from a few customers. The main issue, to date anyway, is the payment API in vB via subscriptions. I'm just not comfortable with how it works relative to each payment type and I don't like the idea of have a cash impact to a site if our code "forgets" to notify/renew/accept a payment from a vendor. When I was managing my own site and handling vendor payments I handled them through Quickbooks rather than relying on something in vBulletin. I was that uncomfortable letting vB do something that could have big impacts on my cash flow.

Regardless I would really want more feedback from customers to determine how they really handle billing now, how they would like it to work, etc. Most of customers are either currently billing independently of vBulletin or using auto-renewing subscriptions via Paypal. That way if they see a vendor cancel a subscription, they are getting a notification from Paypal and they know they need to suspend the vendor tools access/entry.

Mark

__________________
Mark Ferguson
President - Drive Thru Online, Inc.
Drive Thru Online – Helping Turn Your Passion into Profit

I purchased Vendor Tools recently. The above posting is a year old...? Mark hook us up. :)
A subscription Store/Shop with auto-renewing subscriptions via PayPal.
How else am I going to collect and renew the payments for my vendors?

I seeing billing in Vendor Tools but how am I going to get payments?

I really would have thought this would have be included by default.