Canceling Product Offers

Subscription, one time, and global product offers can be canceled at any time for a subscriber, group, or device and can be configured to trigger a notification to be sent at the cancelation time. A contract product offer terminates either when the contract term ends or when the subscriber terminates the contract early through a cancel offer operation.

A purchased offer's validity period can be configured to end immediately at cancelation time or at the end of the current billing, balance cycle, or purchased item cycle. The behavior is configured with the Offer Cancel Type property of a product offer, which you set when creating product offers with My MATRIXX.
  • Immediate invalidates the product offer for rating immediately when it is canceled. All cancelation pricing is applied, the product offer is removed from the subscription or group, and no further rating of the associated balances can occur. Any remaining balance amounts are either refunded or forfeited, based on the proration settings. If a cancelation notification is configured, it is sent.
    Note: When the Offer Cancel Type is not set to Immediate, the following settings in the Proration tab are set and cannot be modified:
    • The Cancel Proration Type option in Charge Proration Settings is set to Refund Nothing.
    • The Cancel Proration Type option in Grant Proration Settings is set to Forfeit Nothing.
    • The Cancel Proration Type option in Charge in Arrears Proration Settings is set to Charge Full Amount.
  • Billing Cycle, Balance Cycle, and Purchased Item Cycle apply all cancelation operations immediately but leave the product offer valid until the end of the current cycle. This makes the product offer valid for usage rating until the cancel end time so subscribers can use any assets or currencies in the balances associated with the product offer. Therefore, no proration pricing is applied (nothing is refunded or forfeited) and the balance is available for use until the end of the current period of the current cycle. Also, first-use pricing and recurring pricing are not valid during the cancelation period. For on-demand balances, no more entries are created after the current (in-cancelation) entry.
Note: An in-cancelation status in MtxPurchasedOfferInfo indicates that an offer that is configured to end at the end of the current period has been canceled and is in the interval to end the period. If an offer is in a suspended state and it passes the provisioned end date, the offer state becomes inactive. Inactive indicates the offer end date has passed, either from cancelation or by setting the end date during provisioning.

For product offers that are canceled at the end of the current balance cycle, the end times of all valid, required simple balances and periodic balance entries associated with the offer are examined. The end time with the latest expiration date is used, which drains the remaining balance amount up to the cycle end time. If a valid balance does not have a validity end time, it is ignored for the calculations. If no valid balances have an end time set, the cancelation occurs immediately without proration.

Setting a product offer to be valid until the end of a current cycle allows subscribers to use any existing balance amounts rather than forfeiting them. The validity end time for a product offer is determined by the Offer Cancel Type value in the product offer: Immediately, Billing Cycle, Balance Cycle, or Purchased Item Cycle. This value controls whether the product offer is applicable during rating after the purchased product offer is canceled, which allows the associated balances to be consumed. Non-usage pricing components are not applied.

The cancelation operation is slightly different, depending on the Offer Cancel Type. When a product offer is canceled, the following operations occur.

  • If recurring pricing is pending for any recurring cycles, it is applied. Pending recurring grants are applied after charges and discounts.
  • If there are multiple periodic balances associated with the product offer, the one expiring last is used to apply the pricing.
  • If the Offer Cancel Type is set to Immediately and recurring charges exist, if the balance end date is set to the cancelation time, the refunds and forfeitures are applied based on the cancel proration settings.
  • If the Offer Cancel Type is set to Billing Cycle, Balance Cycle or Purchased Item Cycle, no cancel proration occurs. Instead, the balance is available for use until the end of the current period of the current cycle.
    Note: The canceled product offer is not used for recurring or first-use processing, even if the cancel end time has not been reached.
  • Cancelation price components are applied. Cancelation grants are applied after any charges, discounts, and meters.
  • A cancelation notification is sent regardless of the Offer Cancel Type settings.
    Note: Detailed balance information is included in the notification when a balance is updated as the result of an offer cancelation. For more information about notifications, see the discussion about notifications in MATRIXX Integration.
  • A Cancel Time flag is set internally, which prohibits further grants associated with the product offer from being applied to the associated balances, but it allows charges to occur against any unused balance amounts for product offers valid to the end of the cycle. This allows further rating until the future Cancel End Date is reached. When the Cancel End Date occurs, the product offer is deactivated and no longer valid for use during rating. Any balances required by the canceled product offer are kept in the subscriber or group wallet in case they are required by other product offers owned.
  • When MATRIXX Policy Application is configured, if an offer is canceled or expires, MATRIXX Engine sends an SNR to the PCRF/PCF with a default counter status for each policy counter associated with the offer. The SNR is only sent if the default policy counter status has changed since the initial SLR. Each policy counter can be configured with a different default status if required. The SNR can be delayed a configurable amount of time if the end of the offer is transitional (for example, one offer is ending and another offer is added in its place) to reduce the number of messages sent to the PCRF/PCF. If there are no defaults configured, the SNR does not include a policy counter status.

    The SNR with a default policy counter status can be used to set up PCC rules to establish a Gy session.

When future rating occurs during subscriber usage, if a canceled, but valid, product offer is applicable and has multiple periodic balances associated with it, the balance expiring first is used to apply the pricing.

Note: A cancelation operation on an expired product offer results in a cancelation. An explicit cancelation or maintenance task expiration that triggers a cancelation on a product offer that has already been canceled has no affect. When an offer is canceled, the Charging Server checks the required rules of the other active purchased offers to determine if the required rules are satisfied by any of the remaining active offers. If a required rule is not satisfied by the remaining active purchased offers, the cancel operation will fail. The Charging Server does not allow canceling the last offer that provides an eligibility feature that is required by other purchased offers. The charging server skips eligibility rule evaluation for inactive offers.

When canceling a product offer or bundle using the SubMan APIs, you can include an array of information about the cancelation (MtxCancelOfferData). For more information, see the discussion about MtxCancelOfferData in MATRIXX Subscriber Management API.

The CancelOffer SubMan APIs use the resourceId to cancel a product offer for a subscriber or group. The offer being canceled is a specific instance of an offer, which is a specific revision to a specific version of that offer.
Note: The resourceIdArray and the CancelDataArray are mutually exclusive. You can specify one or the other in the SubMan API call but not both. Use the CancelDataArray if the cancel behavior specification must be overridden, if the cancelation Reason must be provided, or if the Info must be provided. If you attempt to provide both the resourceIdArray and the CancelDataArray, the request will fail.
When purchasing and canceling catalog items using the SubMan APIs, the SubMan API responses and notifications include a list of updated balances with the following information:
  • Balance ID
  • Owner ID
  • Balance validity
  • Type of balance (main balance, actual currency balance, or cost balance)
  • Total updated amount
  • Current amount
  • A list of update amounts and the update types:
    • 1 — Charge
    • 2 — Discount
    • 3 — Grant
    • 4 — Adjustment
    • 5 — Cancellation Refund
    • 6 — Cancellation Forfeiture
    • 7 — Forfeiture
    • 8 — Usage Refund
    • 9 — Transfer To
    • 10 — Transfer From
    • 11 — Rollover To
    • 12 — Rollover From
    • 13 — Payment
    • 14 — Tax
    • 15 — Cancellation Tax Refund
    • 16 — Usage Tax Refund
    • 17 — Recharge
    • 18 — Payment Refund
    • 19 — Late Charge
    • 20 — Early Termination Charge
    • 21 — Write-Off
    • 22 — Finance
    • 23 — Debt Payment
    • 25 — Tax Payment
    • 26 — Payment Tax Refund
    • 27 — Tax Paid Previously
To prevent bill shock, the PurchaseOffer and CancelOffer SubMan APIs can be called in advice mode (Advice of Charge) to estimate the cost of the purchase or cancelation. Response APIs describes the response SubMan APIs.
Table 1. Response APIs
Response Description
PurchaseOffer APIs When a PurchaseOffer SubMan API is called in advice mode, the response includes estimates for the purchase cost (charge and tax), any recurring charges, the amounts of granted assets, the cost of financing for a given down payment, including the principal amount financed, and the amount and number of installments in the finance contract offer.
CancelOffer APIs When a CancelOffer SubMan API is called in advice mode, the response includes estimates for the cancelation cost (charge and tax), the amount of the refund for any recurring charges, the amounts of forfeited assets, or the early termination charges in the finance contract.

For information about one time offer cancelation refunds, see the discussion about US tax refunds in MATRIXX Pricing and Rating.

For information about canceling pre-active purchased items, see the discussion about pre-active purchased items in MATRIXX Subscriber Management.