Skip to main content

Hi all, 

I was doing some testing while creating new coupons, and I may have found a way that users could potentially abuse the system?

To my understanding based on the properties applied when creating coupons, you can set them to either be:

  • Used multiple times by every user with the code
  • Used once by every user with the code
  • Used once by any user with the code, but with an upper limit of how many users can redeem it

 

 

 

And discounted 

  • a % amount​
  • a $ amount​​​​

 



The issue:

Scenario: I want to provide a single-use coupon to 4 users, to be redeemed on any single paid course they choose.

As such, I set the parameters to :

  • Single-use coupon with limited usage - 4 users
  • 100% discount (not $ amount, since we have varying prices based on course content)
  • 3 month expiration

However, since the coupon is applied at checkout, the user could potentially load up the cart with every paid course we offer, and the one-time coupon will be applied to everything - not just 1 course.
 


This is a pretty significant potential for lost revenue. 

Am I missing something here? Or misinterpreting the wording of the “Coupon Application” section?

If I’m not missing anything, is there a way to close this gap? Like using a “course credit” instead of a % or $ discount?

Any feedback would be welcome!

Thanks


 

In your case you would need to create 4 separate coupon codes, as “Single use” coupons.

rio control what courses this can be applied to, go to the “Assigned Courses” tab (at the top) and add the courses for which this coupon can be applied. If left open, it will apply to any and all courses in the cart (as you show above)

 

Unfortunately, the issue would still be there if I created 4 separate “Single-use” coupons and added assigned courses. The user could still load up their cart with everything on the “assigned list” and get the 100% discount for the entire cart.

It seems to me that the only way to prevent this would be to have the user decide ahead of time what course they want, then only assign that one course to the coupon? However that’s not the experience we were hoping for.

 

The user would need to know what other courses the coupon applies to but this is not shared with them. If by chance they were to pick all the courses you assigned to the coupons, then yes, they would get them all at a discount; but isn't that OK? If they check out with only 1 course the coupon applies to but not the others in the cart, they will still need to pay for the others.

In this case, the coupons only applies to the course I assigned to the coupon, not the other.

 

Am noticing that an issue we had in the past seems to be back but this is not related to the coupon; it has to do with the Content Partner discounts not applied to final check out price...that’s another issue...If you use Content Partner discounts, you might want to check that too.

 

Yeah, we’d have to know what course they want beforehand. However, if that’s the case we would just enroll them in the course directly and skip the coupon process entirely. 

We wanted to give prospective clients a “pick any course and try it for free” promotion to be used at their discretion - to let them browse our catalog in their own time, and make a selection when they’re ready. In this scenario, we wouldn’t know what course any of them had chosen ahead of time. It may be that coupons just aren’t suited for this kind of use.

At the end of the day, unless the user already had other items in their cart, it’s unlikely that they would stumble across this loophole. Still, it’s worth noting that the loophole exists.

I agree it’s not perfect….your case is pretty unique in that you ant to give your users a one-time, try any course access in an automated way...the LMS is not really designed to allow that...I tried several other scenarios and they all end up with either too much access, or not enough...Like you say, it’s unlikely they will find the loophole and if you make the coupon single use only, the risk will be reduced. You can slats audit from your e-commerce transactions periodically should anyone abuse the coupon.

Such is life! Thanks for your feedback 👍

Reply


Terms & ConditionsCookie settings