[ic] Discounts and coupon tracking?

[Paul Jordan]

Jonathan Clark [jonc at webmaint.com] wrote:
[snip]
>> You mentioned ..."Apply to one specific user". I recently needed to
>> apply similar discount for 10 customers. This was kinda clumsy, as
>> they were all single use. I ended up making 10 coupons for them.
>> When I rewrite
>> mine, I think
>> I allow a field to insert multiple usernames into. So a TEXT
>> field that you can
>> insert 50 names into, then check against the discount_log table
>> as each user
>> uses theirs.
>>
>> OK, So if Kevin Walsh reads this, I must revise my plan. He
>> wouldn't talk to me
>> anymore if I placed many id's into a TEXT field. I think I should
>> just extend
>> discount_log:
>>
>> discount_id		username		order_number	date_used
>> 00230			halleberry		028422
> 20040316
>>
>> This would extend you schema to allow one coupon (and its
>> definitions) to be
>> applied to many people. You could mulipart-key the above
>> (discount_id, username) to disallow accidental duplicates.
>
> I have constraint_type and constraint_cond fields. I suppose a
> constraint type of username would work here.. but you would not be
> able to limit to one-user-one-use. I think separate coupons would
> still be a better solution, unless it was 10 people get issued the
> coupon and told the first 10 orders any of them placed use up the
> coupons. (can already do the qty usage)


I agree with everything you said, but as for the above, what I do, is part of
my coupon code simply checks to see if a customer has used that coupon code in
the past. If they have already used that code, and it is a single use coupon, I
present a message like "you used it already!". So, you can issue the same
coupon to 20 people, and limit them to only one use.

Paul