Managing Purchased Charge Offers

Canceling Charge Offers

You can cancel a charge offer immediately or backdate the cancellation to a date earlier than the current date. You can also cancel a charge offer in the future by modifying the charge offer end times.

See these topics for more options:

You can cancel individual charge offers or cancel all charge offers in a bundle at one time by canceling the bundle.

Note:

Deferred cancellation is available only for the entire quantity of the charge offer in the account.

If a charge offer's cycle forward fee allows proration, the customer is credited for any cycle forward fees that have been charged for but not used. BRM prorates based on the pricing in effect at the time the charge offer was purchased.

When you close an account, all of the charge offers it owns are canceled.

Note:

In the case of deferred charge offer cancellation, the cancellation is applied when the pin_bill_day billing script is run.
If the charge offer is contained in a required bundle, you must either transition the package containing the required bundle or close the service to cancel the charge offer.

Canceling Charge Offers Without Charging a Cancel Fee

You can specify the amount of time after a purchase that a charge offer can be canceled without charging the customer. For example, you might want to specify a charge offer cancel tolerance of 30 minutes in case a CSR assigns the wrong charge offer to an account and needs to cancel it without charging the customer.

To specify a cancellation tolerance:

Open the CM configuration file (BRM_home/sys/cm/pin.conf).
Change the value of the cancel_tolerance entry:
- 0 (Default) to always charge.
- Any other value entered in cancel_tolerance is in minutes.
For example (15 minutes):
```
- fm_bill cancel_tolerance 15
```
Save and close the file.
Stop and restart the CM.

Including Event Adjustments in Charge Offer Cancellation Refunds

By default, when a charge offer is canceled, BRM does not apply event adjustments when calculating the refund amount.

To configure BRM to include event adjustments in charge offer cancellation refunds, run the pin_bus_params utility to change the EventAdjustmentsDuringCancellation business parameter. For information about this utility, see "pin_bus_params" in BRM Developer's Guide.

To include event adjustments in charge offer cancellation refunds:

Go to BRM_home/sys/data/config.

Create an XML file from the /config/business_params object:

pin_bus_params -r BusParamsSubscription bus_params_subscription.xml

In the file, change 0 to 1:

<EventAdjustmentsDuringCancellation>1</EventAdjustmentsDuringCancellation>

Save the file as bus_params_subscription.xml.

Load the XML file into the BRM database:

pin_bus_params bus_params_subscription.xml

Stop and restart the CM.
(Multischema systems only) Run the pin_multidb script with the -R CONFIG parameter. For more information, see "pin_multidb" in BRM System Administrator's Guide.

Calculating Conditional Discount Offers When Canceling a Charge Offer

When canceling a charge offer, discounts that are based on conditions cannot be reliably calculated. When a charge offer is canceled, the discount calculated during monthly charges is recalculated because the condition values applied during the monthly charge may be different from the values applied at the time of charge offer cancellation.

For example, suppose a customer receives a 5% discount when the total monthly charge is less than $100, but receives a 10% discount when the total monthly charge is greater than $100. At charge offer purchase time, the total monthly charge is just the purchase amount, which is likely to be less than $100, so a 5% discount is applied. If the charge offer is canceled in the same month or in a subsequent month, but the total monthly charge is greater than $100, a 10% discount is applied as a prorated charge (if the discount is set to be prorated). This occurs because the charge offer cancellation occurs before the end of the month.

Note:

Conditional discounts are rarely used for purchase and cancellation events.

To ensure that conditional discounts are reliably calculated when canceling a charge offer, do one of the following:

When you define a discount, select options to prorate the balance impact for the amount to ensure there is no refund at the time of charge offer cancellation.
If the discount calculated at charge offer cancellation is not correct and the customer calls to get a resolution, the CSR can manually calculate the correct discount and the prorated refund amount.

Deleting Canceled Charge Offers

You might want to delete canceled charge offers from your database (for example, to improve performance by reducing the amount of data stored in the database).

Oracle recommends that you not delete canceled charge offers and discount offers because other external systems might also use them.

Note:

Do not delete canceled charge offers if you use delayed billing. By default, BRM does not delete /purchased_product objects (charge offer instances) when you cancel them. When BRM is set up to use delayed billing, BRM requires information about the canceled charge offers to charge for the delayed events that were generated before the charge offer was canceled. To charge for events for canceled charge offers, the canceled charge offer instances must persist as /purchased_product objects, which is the default behavior.
Do not delete canceled charge offers if you rerate events. Events that use deleted charge offers cannot be rerated.
You cannot delete a charge offer if provisioning tags are defined for that charge offer. Charge offers with provisioning tags are updated by the provisioning system and therefore must remain in the BRM database.

To automatically delete /purchased_product objects when a charge offer is canceled:

Open the CM configuration file (BRM_home/sys/cm/pin.conf).
Change the value of the keep_cancelled_products_or_discounts entry.
- 0 deletes the canceled /purchased_product objects.
- 1 (default) keeps the deleted charge offers in the /purchased_product objects.
Save and close the file.
Restart the CM.

Enabling Charge Offer Purchases from Closed or Inactive Accounts

By default, closed and inactive accounts cannot purchase charge offers. You may, however, want to make such purchases possible.

For example, you may want CSRs to create accounts that are closed, then purchase charge offers for the account. This allows the customer to verify that the charge offer is correct before charging the account. When the account is made active, the customer is charged.

When you purchase a charge offer for inactive or closed accounts, the offer's status must be inactive. If the offer's status is active, rating modules rate and apply charges for the offer. If you do not want charges to be applied, change the offer's status to inactive at the time of purchase, or use PDC or Pricing Center to set the offer's status to inactive in the bundle. When the account is activated, change the offer's status to active for charges to be applied.

To enable charge offer purchases from closed or inactive accounts:

Go to BRM_home/sys/data/config.

Create an XML file from the /config/business_params object:

pin_bus_params -r BusParamsBilling bus_params_billing.xml

In the XML file, set the value for <DealPurchaseForClosedAccount> to enabled:
```
<DealPurchaseForClosedAccount>enabled</DealPurchaseForClosedAccount>
```
Load the XML file into the BRM database:
```
pin_bus_params bus_params_billing.xml
```
Stop and restart the CM.
(Multischema systems only) Run the pin_multidb script with the -R CONFIG parameter. For more information, see "pin_multidb" in BRM System Administrator's Guide.

Changing Charge Offer Quantity

You can change the quantity of a purchased charge offer; for example, a charge offer that gives one hundred included minutes as a sign-up bonus.

If you increase the quantity of a charge offer that has a discount offer on purchase fees, that discount offer is applied to the entire purchase rather than to each unit of the charge offer that is added to the account. For example, if you increase the quantity of a charge offer in an account from one to five and the discount offer on purchase fees is $5, the customer receives a discount offer of $5, not $20.