Subscriptions: Automatically suspend subscription when dispute occurs

[allendav]

When a shopper disputes a payment related to a subscription, the subscription is unchanged and will continue attempting to renew. This behaviour could be improved :)

Suggested approach from @thenbrent :

Build a direct integration between Subscriptions (both built-in and the extension) and WC Pay. e.g. something like Subscriptions core listening out for dispute webhooks (or some other data source for dispute events) and suspending relevant subscription/s when a dispute is created.

Previous description from @allendav

to avoid the subscription continuing firing (thereby resulting in more disputes, more fees)

We might want to NOT do this for product_not_received

@bmccotter @thenbrent thoughts?

[thenbrent]

This should be handled in Subscriptions rather than WC Pay, because it should be uniform across any payment gateways. Subscriptions handles disputes using the on-hold status in some cases already, but it doesn't integrate with the new wc-disputed-* statuses coming with #714, so it will need patches to handle those.

I've opened subscriptions/issues/3715 for that. We can leave this Issue open to track progress on that and make sure it ships alongside Subscriptions support in WC Pay.

[jessy-p]

@Automattic/helix Could you test this and close if handled.

[haszari]

helix Could you test this and close if handled.

Looking at the issue in Subscriptions repo ( 3715-gh-woocommerce/woocommerce-subscriptions ) I see that this is not implemented, no plans to work on this in the near future. Let's leave this open; looks like a nice enhancement.

[haszari]

Assuming this affects both the integration and built-in WCPay Subscriptions - if not please adjust labels.

This feels like an impactful enhancement, especially as TPV for subscriptions ramps up. Disputed subscriptions should only dispute once!

[thenbrent]

This should be handled in Subscriptions rather than WC Pay, because it should be uniform across any payment gateways.

While this is still true today, and long term the best solution, because we still don't have dispute status proposed #714, and no clear path to getting that in place, we should implement something in lieu of that now also.

The simplest approach is to build a directly integration between Subscriptions (both built-in and the extension) and WC Pay. e.g. something like Subscriptions core listening out for dispute webhooks (or some other data source for dispute events) to suspect the subscription/s when a dispute is created.

[james-allan]

e.g. something like Subscriptions core listening out for dispute webhooks (or some other data source for dispute events) to suspect the subscription/s when a dispute is created.

Personally, I feel like this is a little unrealistic as Subscriptions couldn't listen to every payment gateway's dispute webhook to handle the subscriptions context. I suspect gateway dispute webhooks would likely include a transaction ID in the webhook payload that the gateway would need to have the knowledge on how to pull that out (eg index/key) and map to the order. Subscriptions doing that wouldn't scale at all.

I think the best way to handle this would be for WooCommerce to introduce a function that payment gateways can use when an order is disputed. That function could update the order status and trigger an action that Subscriptions could hook onto to process subscription related order disputes.

Alternatively, Subscriptions could introduce a function that gateways could call when an order is disputed, that Subscriptions function could then handle the subscription end of that process.

[haszari]

I think this is another good reason for us to look at a real disputed order status in core. Linking in an issue in WooPayments about that, though there may be other discussions elsewhere and on core side.

• Disputes should have custom order statuses rather than using on-hold #8306

Labelling as subscriptions focus in the mean time, though I imagine it's challenging to prioritise work on this.