A user reported earlier today that when they tried to subscribe they got a “purchase unavailable” message (this is translated from Spanish). I’ve added an image showing the error they received.
They were trying to make the purchase from Panama and the user was on their smartphone at the time.
Is there anything on my end that could prevent the purchase or is this related in any way to Google Pay being down? Any info would help… I’m worried this may have turned other users away and I’m only finding out now.
Thanks,
Luis
The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]
Hi @astromono, thanks for getting in touch. You’ve reached the Google Site Kit forum so we are able to help you with any Site Kit related questions or issues you have. Unfortunately, Google pay is not a part of the Site Kit plugin so we can’t help you with that. For help with Google pay, you can reach out to the help center here.
Are there any Site Kit related questions or issues you have that we can help with?
Hi @adamdunnage, thank you for your reply, however I only mentioned Google Pay as a speculation.
A user tried to subscribe to my website and got an error saying they weren’t able to subscribe. Please see the image I provided in my original post. I believe this falls within the scope of support for Site Kit since they’re still not able to subscribe as of 8 hours ago.
What could be causing the error and why aren’t they able to subscribe?
@astromono Thanks for clarifying this. I’d be happy to look into this further for you to see if there is an issue with your Reader Revenue Manager setup. To investigate further, please can you share the information below:
Does the user trying to subscribe see any console errors alongside the message you have shared?
Are others able to subscribe without this issue?
From the message you have shared, it looks like this may be an issue with the users location. Reader Revenue Manager is being rolled out in different countries at different times so it’s possible that this could be a restriction on the users location and Reader Revenue Manager may not be supported in their location at this time.
You can find the list of supported Countries on this page within the Supported countries for Reader Revenue Manager drop down.
Thanks for the prompt reply. I have filled out the Google form and requested the user to provide a screenshot of their console. The latter will take a bit of time as the person may have things going on today.
A new user subscribed on Oct. 17 without issue, although they are located in Spain, not Panama (where the user with the error is located).
From the link you shared, I understand that RRM is available to setupin these countries, but subscribers can come from any of the regions listed in the paywall tier settings. For example, I was able to set the dollar value for each of my paywall tiers in Panama, so I assumed that a user in Panama would be able to purchase a tier without issue.
@astromono Thanks for sharing the information. I have performed some tests with this and can confirm that the issue is as I expected related to the location of the user. Panama is not a support Country at this time which is why the user is seeing this message.
I confirmed this by visiting your site using a VPN located in Panama and see the same message as the user trying to subscribe on your site. See the screenshot I captured on your website here.
As this is a restriction on the Reader Revenue Manager side and that Country is not yet supported, there isn’t anything else I can do for this. If you do have any other Site Kit questions or issues then please do let me know and I will be happy to help.
Thanks for the update, @adamdunnage. The user replied with this image saying they don’t see any errors in the console. They claim to be using Chrome, but I can’t really tell from the image they sent.
This feels to me like a major discrepancy in terms of how the internal RRM platform is presented. On the one hand, why would Google let me set the pricing for my paywall tiers in Panama if it didn’t allow for users to subscribe from that country? There are a lot of countries in that list too, way more than appear in the link you provided earlier.
My content is made with people from Panama and Latin America in mind, how is it that they can’t access the content fully or support me when Google Publisher Center clearly implies they can?
I’ve built my platform around Google RRM and Site Kit, so this comes as a huge shock that’s making me question if I made the right call.
From what I see, it doesn’t seem like something is working as it should…
If nothing can be done, I guess that’s it, but it would be rather disappointing and may force me to look for other solutions, sadly.
@astromono Sorry to hear that and I can certainly check this further with the team to see if I can get anymore useful information for you but as mentioned above, it looks to be a location issue. I will try to get a bit more context on this and why you can still set your costs for the Country of Panama.
If I do have any updates on this I will leave them here for you and sorry I can’t do anymore to help you with this.
Hey thanks but you don’t need to apologize @adamdunnage, I know you’re responding a lot of these messages daily and it can be exhausting being on the receiving end of it. Apologies if my reply was harsh, but it isn’t aimed at you in the least. You can’t control how other teams roll with RRM and Site Kit.
Thank you for your patience dealing with this and hopefully it can be sorted favorably for both of us in the future. If you need to mark this resolved (with the hope someone from Google will get in touch with me) that’s ok. If it’s not possible for anyone from Google to reach me out, then I would need to keep this thread open while we get a reply.
@astromono Thanks for your patience and understanding it’s very much appreciated. I did reach out to the Reader Revenue Manager team who confirmed that this is why the user in Panama was unable to subscribe on your site.
While I am still in conversation with the team I will share anything useful for you on this here. They did share with me a possible workaround for you.
They said that using the new Rewarded Ads CTA and its potential for infinite repeatability, it’s possible to configure the paywalled content funnel such that end users never actually hit a hard paywall. Instead, once they’ve made it through the beginning of the funnel, on every page load they will see the rewarded ad (unless they pay for a subscription).
Hopefully that helps with your situation and as mentioned above, if I do get anymore useful information I will share it here with you.
Thank you for the reply @adamdunnage, I’ll be on the lookout for any additional useful info you can provide.
Rewarded Ads isn’t really a thing I want to implement in my website and the option isn’t available in my RRM dashboard even if I wanted to use it. I purposely chose a subscription-based revenue system to curtail the need for ads.
Thanks again for the support. Hope the Site Kit team can figure out this region blocking soon since it’s hurting me as a user big time.
