Paypal Express payment shows unprocessed but paid in Paypal

[dandersonMLT]

We received an order that was paid with Paypal Express.
The order payment shows "Unprocessed" in AbleCommerce, but Paypal shows the order as "Paid"

Why would this happen?

Thanks,
Dave

[nadeem]

This might be happening due to the IPN failure. Can you check the error log to see if there is any error in the log?

[dandersonMLT]

I only see a few paypal warnings or errors such as this:

"Error in PayPal GetExpressCheckout. User ID detected in PayPal response: UID11098657, Customer User ID: 11098699 "

"An error has occured at http://www.websitename.com/PayPalExpres ... NYMQJCPRLL
Exception: Exception of type 'System.Web.HttpUnhandledException' was thrown."



They are seldom though. And there are far less than the number of paypal orders marked as unprocessed.
I don't see anything specifically with IPN in the error logs, unless they would be in a different log file. I looked in paypal.log as well, but I don't see anything in there indicating an error either.

Thanks,
Dave

[nadeem]

Another theory is, some times notifications fail if the server is down. You can see the notifications history at PayPal IPN history page. There is drop-down with delivery status of Failed, Sent, Disabled, Retrying Queued so IPN can be in either status.

The PayPal has automatic notification resend mechanism. If it re-sends notifications a bunch of times and it keeps failing they could put them on a much longer queue. PayPal will resend those when server is up again within 4 days and the number of re-send requests less than 15.

[dandersonMLT]

Response from Paypal:

"The IPNs aren’t failing; sent you full validated response of one; shows the status as ‘completed’ which the payment should have been updated on the order side of able. You can try and do what he says but I highly doubt that’s the issue. It’s a programmatic matter when we’re sending the response back; improper updating the order."

Any other ideas?

[Katie]

I've worked on issues like this before, and the problem ended up being the firewall. If the code was broken, then we would see every transaction fail plus a whole lot of customers complaining. I've literally spent weeks of my time on trying to resolve these random issues with Paypal. We never could track it down to the code, so there might be some other issue.

It's nearly impossible to solve random issues because we need to be able to reproduce an issue in order to fix it. BTW, the last time I've seen the error "User ID detected in PayPal response" was back in 2008 with a different version.

What is the exact version of AbleCommerce you are using? A better error message would also be helpful, and trying to understand why there are two different User ID's. Sometimes, you can look at the Page Views record for the user for some hints as to how they went through the checkout process.

[dandersonMLT]

AbleCommerce Gold R10

[dandersonMLT]

Any updates based on version Gold R10?

[Katie]

We updated PayPal in Gold R9.

http://help.ablecommerce.com/index.htm# ... _to_r9.htm

[dandersonMLT]

So we should have the most up to date PayPal code.
Any other ideas of how to work around or fix these issues?

[Katie]

Yes, please see my post from Fri Nov 18, 2016.

You have to first identify the issue which means you need to get some full error messages and be able to reproduce the issue.

In my experience, if it is random and only happens on occasion (not for every PP order), then it is not the code but some underlying issue with the server whether it be network, firewall or something else.

Thanks,
Katie

[dandersonMLT]

Where can I obtain the full error messages?
Firewall seems unlikely since it works many times and only fails occasionally.

Paypal is willing to help where they can, but they aren't seeing anything on their side.
If you can point me in a direction of where to get the "Full" error messages I'll be glad to provide them.

If there is a higher level support ticket that we can open, even paid, the customer might be willing to do that as well.

[Katie]

Hi,

You can view the full error message by going to the Help > Error Log page, or you can open the \app_data\logs\app.log file.

If you would like to open a support ticket, we can explain the details of paid support.

https://www.ablecommerce.com/helpdesk.aspx

You can't necessarily rule out the firewall. I've seen clients who are blocking inbound traffic and Paypal uses different servers to send the IPN. However, in your case, the error message makes me think this is a different issue.

Thanks,
Katie

[dandersonMLT]

Thanks for your help. I have created a ticket at the link provided.