First note Logan's post above.
Even with the above correct is seems a few are having an occasional issue, we need to figure out what the common theme is with these issues in order to solve it. Be SURE to include the date and time (in GMT) of the order as well, as I've been receiving Paypal notifications about live site issues.Everyone who is having a problem with payments stuck in pending status - please double check your PayPal account configuration inside of AbleCommerce. There is an account name that you must enter - the paypal email address. Make sure this email address is the *primary* email address for your paypal account. The only identified cause of this problem so far is that the email address entered within AC does not match the primary paypal account address. PayPal tells us during the IPN who the payment was made to and it is identified by the primary account address. We check this against the configured value to ensure they are a match - it is part of a number of fraud checks that PayPal recommends to validate an IPN request as valid.
So if the values mismatch, we ignore the IPN.
Notification: Major Impact to PayPal APIs and Website - Nov 28 - Live Site
We are experiencing a system issue which may be affecting PayPal APIs and Website on the Live Site. We will send an update with additional details within the next 15-30 minutes. Sent Nov 28, 2:13 AM PST by BA
There were also issues on the 17th Start time: Nov 17, 4:41 AM PST (Nov 17, 12:41 PM GMT)Resolved: Major Impact to PayPal APIs and Website - Nov 28 - Live Site
RESOLVED: This issue has been resolved as of Nov 28, 2:47 AM PST (Nov 28, 10:47 AM GMT). A history of updates can be found at the end of this notification or at our Live Site Status blog post. Sent Nov 28, 2:55 AM PST by BA
RESOLVED: This issue has been resolved as of Nov 17, 5:50 AM PST (Nov 17, 1:50 PM GMT).
The Internet is not a perfect thing, so if this is random (as it appears) it could be latency issues at anyone of a hundred of points along the way during peak periods of the day. We see it from time to time with UPS and other gateways not returning a rate.