If subscribers are going on vacation or, for other reasons, cannot make use of the subscription for a period of time, it can be made possible for the subscription’s delivery address to be changed to a temporary vacation address. You also have the option to let customers choose to pause delivery. It is up to the publisher whether these options should be available to subscribers.
The setting can be changed under all business policies. The overall business policy can be found under the account menu > Primary settings > Business policy > go to the Pauses and vacations section.
If the setting is set to “Allow pause/vacation”, you can choose one of the following options:
Pause deliveries
With this option, you can also choose whether the subscriber should be credited during their pause period. This is relevant if you offer subscriptions with both print and digital delivery, as digital access can be used online.
Pause deliveries and donate
Covered by the same terms as mentioned above, but you can choose which organisation to support with the credited amount.
Send to another address
This option is selected if you want the customer, while on vacation, to have the option to have their print publication sent to another address. By default, this is only possible within the relevant publication country. If you want to allow customers to receive deliveries in other countries, you must tick “Allow other country”.
Pause subscription
This function puts the subscription completely on hold for both print and digital products. No revenue is recognised while the subscription is paused.
In addition, you can choose whether the options should be available to customers so they can change them themselves via self-service by ticking the option.
You can add options by clicking ‘Add option’. Remember to save the changes when you are finished.
You choose which and how many vacation types should be available.
Please note that all vacation options created in the policy can also be accessed by the publisher’s customer service. If customer service should not be able to create a certain type of vacation, it should therefore not be created as an option in the policy.
Register vacations or pauses
It is important to be aware that the vacation address must be registered on the subscription itself and not on the subscriber. This also means that if the customer has multiple subscriptions or different media, the vacation address must be registered on each of them. However, a vacation address that has already been entered is saved, so it is easy to create a vacation period on other subscriptions once it has been created on one.
A vacation address overrides the subscriber’s normal delivery address during the specified vacation period. You can register as many vacation periods as you want – but the customer can of course only stay in one place at a time.
Self-service
If you have enabled the option for customers to register a vacation period or a temporary pause, the button ‘Vacation and temporary pause’ is shown under the relevant subscription.
When the customer clicks the button, they are taken to a page where they can specify the period for the vacation or pause and, if relevant, enter an alternative delivery address, etc.
Iteras
It is also possible to register changes directly in Iteras. When you are on the relevant subscriber, you must open the relevant subscription – either by clicking ‘More info’ or on the green bar with the subscription name.
Under the subscription info, you will find the button ‘Create vacation’.
When you click it, in addition to specifying the vacation period you can also choose which type of vacation should be registered. The options automatically adjust based on the setup, and if you choose, for example, ‘Send to another address’, additional fields are displayed so you can enter the desired delivery address for the period.
Remember to click Save. The created vacation period will then be shown under the subscription information. If the customer has multiple subscriptions, the vacation must be created on each of them.
When do the changes apply from
For print publications with both a delivery run date and a publication date, it is the subscriber’s place of stay on the publication date (i.e., the delivery address on that day) that determines where the publication is delivered.
For a vacation change to be able to affect the delivery of a specific publication, the vacation must be registered before the publication is dispatched.