To entice new users to a SVOD service it is fairly common for tenants to offer a free trial period. End users are required to enter payment details that are subsequently used to create a subscription. The first payment is then charged to the account when the trial period expires.
To prevent users from continually signing up for free trials we will employ the following checks in a best effort attempt to prevent users from gaining access to multiple free trials for a given tenant.
- Check if user has already had a free trial
- Check payment details provided by customer to see if they were used previously on another account to access a free trial
Key Flows
Check User
The Payment Service must be able to determine if a given user has received a free trial period. Therefore if a tenant decides to prevent users from receiving multiple free trial periods then before creating a subscription for a user it must determine if the user has previously received a free trial and override any default free trial setting in order to prevent the user accessing additional free trials.
Check Email Address
If a tenant is not constrained to ensure users have a unique email address there is a potential that a user can register two different usernames with the same email address. In order to prevent the same person from accessing two free trials we will use the email as a unique identifier and if we detect that the email address has previously received a free trial, present the option for the user to continue without the free trial.
Check Payment Details
Tenant may wish to prevent a given person from accessing multiple free trials but there us nothing to prevent a person from registering more than one user on the service, for example by using alternative email addresses. At this point we will employ payment detail checks to attempt to determine if someone reuses a payment method for another registered user.
For example, Jovino Smith has two email addresses Jovino.Smith@emailserver.com and JSmith@emailserver.com. However, he has a single debit card. He registers for a free trial Jovino.Smith@emailserver.com using his debit card and then cancels the subscription before the first payment date. When he then attempts to register with is alternate email address JSmith@emailserver.com and enters his debit card details he is notified that the payment method used has already received the entitled free trial and given the option to continue without the free trial. At this point, the user will also be flagged as already receiving a free trial to prevent the check being circumvented with an additional payment method.
This check will only be performed against the direct payment method chosen. We can not cover a scenario where a free trial is issued to a debit card and the same card backs a paypal account that is subsequently used be another user to access a free trial.