Hi all,
We are thinking about offering payment plans as a way for people to pay for series subscriptions (we essentially have a choose your own package setup). We're worried about whether the economy will affect subscriptions and we think that maybe by allowing them to pay in installments they won't shy away from getting a subscription.
Do you offer this? How do you do it, if you do? Do you just do it with people who provide credit cards? How many installments in a payment plan do you allow, and do you allow the patron to pick the number of installments, or do you set it? Do you set a minimum? Do you ever have problems with nonpayment or bad credit cards?
One of the concerns that's been raised is that we offer discounts during the subscription period so that we can get the money in advance. If you've offered payment plans for awhile, have you seen more and more people take advantage of them, or is the percentage about the same from year to year?
Thanks for any guidance!
Leigh
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Leigh Chandler
Director of Marketing
Flynn Center for the Performing Arts
153 Main Street
Burlington, VT 05401
802.652.4509 direct
802.863.8788 fax
www.flynncenter.org
www.flynntix.org
MTC has been offering an installment plan for ages (3 pauments). It's a great incentive for renewal for our patrons. We offer it free of charge as an early renewal benefit, and after that period passes we charge a small admin fee.
We as well use invoice billing so that we can "pay" the order off in full and bill the invoices. Our finance dept doesn't like partilally unpaid orders. This way you can print before your last installment if need be (we don't though)
The only issue that we have usually is with expired cards, and that's just to be expected. But when using the invoice billing report, you get a nice list of rejected cards and it makes follow up really easy. There is ususally about a dozen follow up calls needed after each billing run. But out of around 1000 orders, that's pretty darned good.
The process of installment plans pre-Tessitura was a 2 day affair of manual credit card entry, so it really was a pain...but now it's about an hour long process and it's finished. We LOVE it!!!!
If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to drop me a line.
TSO has had a few different versions of payment plans over the years.
Currently we have a "5 instalment" option, the total ticketing cost is broken up into 5 equal payments and charged on the 15th of the month, Feb-June.
When we process subscriptions in Oct/Nov, the year prior to the subscriptions season. (our season runs Jan-Dec) the tickets are posted out to our subscribers and the payment type of 5 instal is used. Our first main concert of the year is generally in March so the first payment will have been taken by this date and any problems will have been noticed. We have had very few problems with customers probably one a year we have had to chase for payments if the card was declined.
Every year the number of people opting for the instalment method has increased, approximately 40% of our subscribers for this current season.
When we were doing our call back to unrenewed subscribers for the 09 season it was great incentive for people that were worried about commiting to paying up front. Despite it being promoted quite clearly on our "how to book" section of the brochure a number of long time subscribers had not realised it was an option.
Brenda