PayPal error on many subscription purchases/renewals

The description is not correct. We send the basket item name as the description. I've no idea why it's "Shopping Cart" in PayPal. PayPal Pro is a separate gateway and is for onsite payments. PayPal Standard is included with CBSubs and is for hosted payments. See the below downloads page for all available CBSubs integrations and gateways.

www.joomlapolis.com/downloads/cb-paid-subscriptions

Thanks for the clarification. We are definitely using Paypal Standard as far as CB Subs is concerned--Paypal hosts the credit card payment for us, no credit card info on our site. It was confusing me because our Paypal account says "Paypal Payments Pro", but that only means that they want us to think we're getting special service.

This could be a common problem for CB Subs users who use the Paypal Standard gateway. When I called Paypal tech support they said I was the second caller reporting this error in two days

I think we've had this problem before, and Paypal claimed to have resolved it. Is there any way to disable the item mismatch fraud filter in CB Subs? Does it work based simply on any mismatch between the item name (from Paypal) and the description (as sent to Paypal), or does it work on the verification result? The verification results seem to be stored by CB Subs as if they were unique data, even though there are only as many unique errors as we have plans.

I'm 99.99% sure that it is again a Paypal.com-side bug.

Please PM me the exact error log entry of a mismatch (clicking on the log number will show you the exact entry.

Will see if I can make another workaround.

But very first, please make sure that you run the very latest CBSubs build and are still experiencing the error, as I added already workarounds in the check of item description for the last 2 times when Paypal.com got a bug.

I'm also 99% sure it's a Paypal bug, but we've had this recur over and over in various forms, the payment isn't recorded because of an item name mismatch consisting of item name as blank, or as our item name with + signs replacing spaces, so I'd love to have a workaround even if Paypal fixes this particular mismatch (i.e. Shopping Cart instead of plan name).

First off, we're using CB Subs 4.1.0, see my first message for other website particulars.

attached is a pdf of the history log for one of the erroneously rejected payments.

The pdf has the header obscured, here's what I can read on our admin site

Received back from paypal: cbpaidPaymentNotification::__set_state(array(
'user_id' => '11014',
'notify_version' => NULL,
'verify_sign' => NULL,
'payment_basket_id' => 11362,
'payment_method' => 'paypal',
'gateway_account' => '1',
'log_type' => 'R',
'time_received' => '2017-08-21 17:09:01',
'raw_data' => '$_GET=array (
\'cbpgacctno\' => \'1\',
\'cbppdtback\' => \'2f06b873c327f8ba3ba914cb340531fd\',
\'cbpbasket\' => \'11362\',
\'result\' => \'success\',
\'cbpid\' => \'cbp599b13464a43a079042401\',
\'amt\' => \'297.00\',
\'cc\' => \'USD\',
\'cm\' => \'11362\',
\'item_name\' => \'1 year for Amin Zargar\',

So it looks to me that Paypal sent back an item name of 1 year for Amin Zargar

The error log continues

$_POST=array (
);
$transaction_info=\'SUCCESS
mc_gross=297.00
invoice=U660632593958452
protection_eligibility=Ineligible
payer_id=BDHT29PYV8PNL
tax=0.00
payment_date=10:08:53 Aug 21, 2017 PDT
payment_status=Completed
charset=windows-1252
first_name=Amin
mc_fee=6.83
custom=11362
payer_status=unverified
business=payments@cal-sailing.org
quantity=1
payer_email=billstevens0922@gmail.com
txn_id=1VK75467XF3584255
payment_type=instant
last_name=Zargar
receiver_email=Treasurer@cal-sailing.org
payment_fee=6.83
shipping_discount=0.00
insurance_amount=0.00
receiver_id=RLD8NFQH8WGEG
txn_type=web_accept
item_name=Shopping Cart

now the item name is Shopping Cart

BUT,

On Paypal's site, I can see that Paypal is sending "Item Title: Shopping Cart"

The wierd thing is that other payments went through fine, interspersed among the ones that weren't recorded.

Thanks!

I don't mean to hijack this post, but want to chime in stating that I am having the exact same issue. It started a few weeks ago and is random in nature, but is increasing in frequency. I too am certain that it is a PayPal side issue, but have found no explanation or correction.

Here is the error reported: Payment notification mismatch: currency, item name or number or quantity mismatch: IPN item_name (Shopping Cart) does not match basket item_name (US Membership for miller207) nor their trimmed sizes for IPN (Shopping Cart) and basket (US Membership for miller207).

As with petekuhn's issue the term "Shopping Cart" is being substituted for the plan name, but payment is accepted and processed. It then becomes an administrative task to correct.

Unfortunately, I am in the process of migrating the site which is still J2.5.28 running CB 1.9.1/CB Subs 3.0 and cannot update to current CB versions, so I know I'm missing updates in CB/CB Subs.

As very first step you should contact paypal support and give them description of issue, you can also point to this thread here. We haven't seen that problem here, as paypal.com has many different servers and software versions running on their servers. It's a major bug at Paypal.com and they should fix it really quickly.

I guess that with such stupid bugs, we will have to add a setting to ignore the item description, but it's a real pain, as Paypal itself recommends to check price, currency and item descriptions !

Edit: Workaround tracking number:
#6737