Gift subscriptions?

[mbartens]

Is it possible to set up a gift subscription?

[mazhar]

Can explain it a bit? What do you mean by gift? Will it be some shippable product or you are talking about gift certs? Are you talking about free subscription?

[mbartens]

Person A would like to purchase ($30) a subscription (not a shippable one but could be changed if needed) for person B.

[mbartens]

Does this functionality exist?

[Katie]

So you want to setup a non-shippable Gift Certificate product and also make it a Recurring Order subscription? I don't see why it wouldn't work.

[mbartens]

Perhaps I'm not understanding the functionality of Gift Certificates - should you elaborate on how I could use that for Gift Subscriptions?


Ok I'm doing some testing on the Demo store trying to figure out how this is possible.

I created a copy of "Personalized Gift Certificate". Then I went to the Subscriptions Tab and created a new subscription group.
I selected "One-time charge of $50"
Set the expiration to 12 Months


I went into the store and added the Gift Certificate to my cart. I began the checkout process and selected "different shipping address". I didn't see any place to enter an email address for the shipping address. I complete my check out.

I don't see how this is going to work if at no point I can enter the recipient information? Please advise, thank you.

[Katie]

For electronic gift certificates, the customer making the purchase needs to inform the recipient of the gift. You can probably customize the order receipt page to provide the gift giver a form or email link where they can write a nice message to the person receiving the GC. One thing to keep in mind is that a Gift Certificate serial number is the same as cash. So sending it via email is not the safest idea. When the feature was implemented, I think we probably expected that the person sending the GC would print out the info and place it in a card or something.

If you want to submit a feature request, you can use the green Feedback button from the Merchant menu.

[mbartens]

Is there any functionality where the BillToAddress and ShipToAddress have different emails?
I'm confused, I thought purchasing a gift card and being able to enter the recipient email address was pretty standard? What exactly is the functionality of gift certificates in the cart? You purchase a gift card, wait for it in snail mail and then give it to someone in person?

[Katie]

It is up to the customer on how they want to deliver the GC code. As I said, we never found a secure way to deliver the GC code to the recipient. Using email is not secure, and requiring the recipient to register an account in order to view the certificate didn't seem practical. If you have any ideas, please submit them as a feature request.