Playbook, online course
The reset worked and the course was still not there
A course buyer normally has exactly one account, and it was created by the checkout form at the moment they paid. That means the address on it is whatever was typed while somebody was holding a card, and the reset form has no opinion about whether that is the address they have been trying ever since.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for password resets holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The account was not chosen, it was generated by a purchase, so nobody sat down and decided which email to use: they typed it into a payment form, sometimes wrongly, and never thought about it again.
- The split that produces most of these is a course bought at home on a personal address and then read at work, so the learner signs in with the address they use every day and finds an account with no course attached.
- A reset against an address that never bought anything still succeeds, which produces a working sign in, an empty library and a learner convinced the course has been taken away from them.
- The welcome message usually carries a link to set a first password rather than a password itself, and that link expires, so somebody opening it weeks later is not resetting anything and the two routes look identical from outside.
How it arrives
- i reset my password and the course is gone
- i think i typed my email wrong when i paid
- can you move my course to my work email
- i never set a password i just paid
- the set password link says it has expired
- i have two logins and only one has the course
What has to be indexed for this to work
| What the checkout does with the address it is given | Whether paying creates the account, whether the address can differ from the one on the card, and what happens if it was mistyped. Learners assume the payment record and the login are joined, and knowing they are not explains almost everything they are seeing. |
|---|---|
| The difference between setting a first password and resetting one | Which message carries which link, how long each lives, and what a learner does when the first one has expired. These are two separate routes described by one word, and the wrong one is a dead end rather than an error. |
| Your position on moving a purchase to a different address | Whether an enrolment can be moved from a personal address to a work one, what you need before doing it, and how long it takes. Publish it, because half the learners in this pair are asking for that and calling it a login problem. |
| Where the sign in messages are sent from | The sending address, so somebody can search their mail rather than scroll it, and so a work mail administrator has something to allow. A quarantined message never bounces, which is why this looks like nothing was ever sent. |
The reply
If the reset worked but the course is not there, the likeliest explanation is that you are signed into an account created at a different address from the one you bought with, which happens most often when a course is bought at home and opened at work [1]. A reset against an address with no enrolment behind it still succeeds and leaves you looking at an empty library, so it is worth trying the address you would have entered at the checkout. If you never chose a password, the welcome message carried a link to set one and those expire, which is a different route from a reset [2]. I cannot reset anything, look up an account or move a course between addresses, so leave your name and both addresses and somebody will find the enrolment.
It explains the empty account before offering any instruction, because the learner is currently deciding whether they have been robbed. Naming the two addresses turns a hopeless message into a search they can do themselves. And the handover asks for both, which is exactly what support would otherwise write back to request.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor says the reset succeeded and the course is missing, asks for an enrolment to be moved between addresses, or cannot say which address they bought with.
I cannot reset a password, see an account or move a course to a different address. Leave your name, the address you have been trying and the one you might have used when you paid, and somebody will look at both.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never ask for, repeat or acknowledge a password or a sign in code, whatever the learner types.
- Never confirm whether a given email address has an account or an enrolment behind it, since that is a useful answer to give to the wrong person.
- Never say a reset message has been sent, resent or delivered, because nothing here triggers one.
- Never tell a learner to buy the course again to get in, as that creates a second purchase and a refund argument on top of an access problem.
Questions
- Could it move the enrolment if we connected our platform?
- No. It reads documents you give it and writes nowhere at all, so moving a purchase between addresses is always a person. What it removes is the exchange where somebody explains for the fourth time that they definitely reset the password.
- Should it ask which address they used?
- One question, phrased as which address they would have been signed into when they paid rather than which one the account uses. The learner does not know the second and can usually work out the first, and that difference is the whole cell.
- How do we cut the volume of this permanently?
- Put a line at the checkout saying the address entered is the one the course will live at, and repeat it in the welcome message. It is the cheapest fix in this trade and it is missing from nearly every course sold.
Keep reading
- Everything for a online courseWhat is included, how long access lasts, refund and cooling off rights, and the honest limit that it cannot see a learner's own progress.
- Handling password resets in generalAn assistant cannot reset anything. It can walk somebody through your real flow and name the step that usually breaks.
- Delete everything, except the thing that proves I did itErase me and keep my certificate do not sit together. What a provider holds afterwards, and why lifetime access ends with the record.
- The request is nearly always captions, and the answer is per moduleMost accessibility requests here are about captions on older modules. What to publish about what is captioned and what is machine generated.
- Paid on a Sunday night, and now whatWhere to start, how much of a week it needs, and getting live session times into a calendar in the right time zone.
Try it on your own material
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