Allow users to back out of receiving gift paid time after the fact

[yvi]

Title:
Allow users to back out of receiving gift paid time after the fact

Area:
payment/shop/shameless money grubbing

Summary:
Allow a user that received paid time via the 'sponsor a user' system to back out and give paid time to someone else.

Description:
If a free user didn't opt out of the option, they can receive paid account time from everyone on the site. But people forget to set that option because it's a relatively new feature or because they didn't think it would affect them and they don't really want a paid account for various reasons. That's not a good situation for both sites to be in.

Since (I think) payment logistics dictate that there also can't be a "No thank you, give money back to sender" option, I propose a "No, thanks, give to random other person instead", where the next person in line is randomly chosen and not picked by that user. That option should be valid for, I don't know, maybe 48 hours (most gifts are, I suppose 1 or 2 months)? That time is subtracted from the paid account time.

The gift giver should be notified of who his money went to in the end.

It would also be good for the person making the gift as they would know that they don't give paid account to people who don't want it and can still support the site (which is, personally, why I use that option in the first place, as Dreamwidth has no other donation system).

Development-wise, probably not the most straight-forward thing, but it also doesn't seem insanely complicated. Or maybe I am missing something - I am not familiar with the payment system.

Poll #1066 Allow users to back out of receiving gift paid time after the fact

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 47

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
14 (29.8%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
5 (10.6%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
15 (31.9%)

(I have no opinion)
13 (27.7%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[denise]

I am very firmly against this.

We don't allow any non-anonymous payment to refuse gift paid time (and I don't want to start allowing it, either), so this would introduce an inequity.

People who object to receiving gifted paid time can already opt out of the system. (It's not even particularly hidden, not like things buried in the console.) If they don't opt out in time and receive a gift payment, oh well: opt out now and enjoy your paid time in the meanwhile.

[(Anonymous)]

This seems like a sensible option from my side, as someone who opted out of that feature as soon as I was able. I hate the idea that paid account time could be forced on someone who doesn't want it via this mechanism (and I haven't seen any official announcement of how to opt out). It's all kinds of wrong.

[7rin]

I don't get why someone wouldn't want freebie paid time?

[yvi]

*shrugs* Beats me, but someone I sent it to didn't seem to want it - which prompted this suggestion, as I wasn't exactly thrilled at discovering that and would have rather it had gone to someone who actually liked having paid account time.

So yeah, that's the story behind this :)

[melannen]

Reasons to say no to freebie paid time:

1. You don't want to look like you're supporting the site. (I would hope that nobody feels that way about DW yet, but I bet there are some people who do: who have something against DW's leaders but got an account to camp the username, and would hate to look like a hypocrite by it showing as a paid account. There were certainly times in the recent past when I would have been very annoyed if someone bought me LJ time.

2. You know you can't afford to buy any for yourself once the gift runs out, and you don't want to get used to all the nifty paid features just in time to lose them again. (This was my initial planned strategy for DW. And then someone bought me six months. So now I'm going to have to scrounge and scrape to get enough to buy more once my six months runs out, because I can't live without a paid DW account anymore. *sigh* :P )

3. You know you aren't going to use the paid features, and don't want to waste the money, even if it's someone else's money.

Presumably anyone in categories one or two will have taken the trouble to turn off gifts, though. And people in category three shouldn't really care *that* much - it would be more for the sake of the giver, in that case, I'd think.

[triadruid]

#1 and #3 are very, very reasonable (I'm not sure I can understand #2 as anything but sarcasm :). I don't know that I understand denise's objections, since the money can just be juggled somewhere else to a user that "won't say no", and DW doesn't lose anything in either case.

[melannen]

My guess is that Denise's main objection is that allowing users to refuse non-anonymous gifts would just be another source of (major) drama, and there's enough drama here as there is!

And I meant #2 in all seriousness - more or less. There are plenty of people who just *can't* buy paid time, they either don't have the money or don't have a reasonable way of getting the money to DW. And, speaking as someone who's spent more time in that state than outside it, yo-yoing between paid and unpaid - gaining and losing icon slots, forgetting whether you can edit comments or post polls, having to make sure your custom style can survive indefinitely without maintenance, coming to depend on Search and then losing it - is more annoying than just staying unpaid and letting yourself forget that the paid features even exist.

[triadruid]

Fair enough.

[azurelunatic]

4. You cannot receive or even appear to receive gifts from certain classes of people, such as people you are doing business with. (This reason came up in LJ suggestions, when an individual in Russia was very concerned that his government would see a paid account as evidence of accepting a gift/bribe, even though LJ doesn't offer a way to opt out of receiving gifts of paid time.)

[cesy]

That's a good point. Presumably the only way to prevent gifts in a situation like that is to pick the option for no anonymous gifts, and then ban specific users?

[azurelunatic]

Which is still after the fact, unless you know who is going to give you a gift ahead of time.

[(Anonymous)]

Personally, since I'm not sure there's a way for other users to tell from looking at my DW that I didn't pay for it myself, it would look like I wanted a paid account, which I don't (it doesn't have any value to me). I had a paid account here for a month, didn't find it worth continuing to pay for, and let it lapse. I took the time to decide what type of account I wanted here, and I don't see why anyone else should get to change that. Frankly, that's enough of a reason for me. And I really wouldn't want anyone wasting their money on giving me a paid account. (I'd love it if what Denise said above was not true, and we could opt out of receiving ANY paid account time, anon or not. I DO NOT WANT money being paid for me to have features I have considered and rejected as not being of value to me.

I appreciate that we CAN turn off the paid account gifting option, and I have done so, but the feature has been live for some days now without any official info on how to opt out being posted (that I have seen, anyway). Someone who didn't realise the feature was now live (missed the news post, was offline for a few days, whatever) could easily end up with paid account time against their wishes. And that just feels incredibly unfair and wrong to me.

[pseudomonas]

I think, as a matter of principle, people shouldn't be able to modify other people's accounts, even if it's in a manner that the powers that be think is unobjectionable.

The mechanism I'd favour (coding considerations aside) is that rather than having their account auto-upgraded the recipient recieves a "gift certificate" that they can convert to paid account time or keep as a certificate indefinitely. Not sure whether they should be able to pass it on to someone else - I think it'd be nice but it's kind of a business decision - but if so someone who gets a gift they don't want can pass it to someone who does, or a random user.

I see no reason to convert the thing back to cash.

[medrin]

Another bonus with this system is if you receive a gift for a month paid time, but know that you are for example going on vacation for two weeks, you can just wait to activate your paid month until after you get home.

[yourlibrarian]

I think the gift certificate idea would be very handy. For example some people have regularly paid accounts and don't really need free time, but might gladly use a certificate for something else.

[distractionary]

+1