Strange communications error with PayPal

petekuhn
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4 months 1 week ago #338866 by petekuhn

Strange communications error with PayPal was created by petekuhn

CB created a basket with no gateway assigned, allowed Paypal to take the money, and flagged a comm error with the gateway assigned.Here's the error log:Event type
Error log
Event time
08/11/2024 14:16:36
Message

Code:

Paypal: Error at notification received: could not reach Paypal gateway for notification check at [url=https://www.paypal.com/]https://www.paypal.com[/url]. COMMUNICATION ERROR


Call trace:
called in class cbpaidHistory::logError() on line 571 in file cbpaidPayHandler.php
called in class cbpaidPayHandler::_setLogErrorMSG() on line 1561 in file cbpaidsubscriptions.paypal.php
called in class cbpaidpaypal::handlePaypalPDT() on line 339 in file cbpaidsubscriptions.paypal.php
called in class cbpaidpaypal::handleReturn() on line 136 in file cbpaidHostedPagePayHandler.php
called in class cbpaidHostedPagePayHandler::resultNotification() on line 743 in file cbpaidControllerCBTab.php
called in class cbpaidControllerCBTab::getTabComponent() on line 1155 in file cbpaidsubscriptions.php
called in class getcbpaidsubscriptionsTab::getTabComponent() on line 92 in file cbpaidControllerCBComponent.php
called in class CBplug_cbpaidsubscriptions::getCBpluginComponent() on line 880 in file cbPluginHandler.php
called in class cbPluginHandler::call() on line 1611 in file cbTabs.php
called in class cbTabs::_callTabPlugin() on line 1725 in file cbTabs.php
called in class cbTabs::tabClassPluginTabs() on line 731 in file comprofiler.php
called in function tabClass() on line 284 in file comprofiler.php

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krileon
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4 months 1 week ago #338867 by krileon

Replied by krileon on topic Strange communications error with PayPal

Does this happen with every payment or only with one now and again? It's usually caused by an issue on PayPal's end generally due to server timeout problems. That code specifically is for verifying payment information from the notification (whether PDT return or IPN) to ensure the authenticity of the information. Please be sure "Your PayPal Identity Token" is absolutely set correctly as it's used for this API call and it being set incorrectly will cause that API to fail. The recommended configuration is as follows.

PayPal Business (email or secure merchant ID): Merchant ID
PayPal Main receiver account (email): Email address marked "primary"
Your PayPal Identity Token: Token as provided by website payment preferences (be careful about copy-paste errors!)

Kyle (Krileon)
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petekuhn
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4 months 1 week ago - 4 months 1 week ago #338868 by petekuhn

Replied by petekuhn on topic Strange communications error with PayPal

Thanks for the reply! We'll check the API to be absolutely sure. This kind of problem -- namely our customers paying but not getting a new or renewed subscription -- is happening to about 5% of our transactions. It seems wierd that the basket would be created without a gateway, then Paypal would process the payment as if everything is fine, then CBSubs would file a comm error that has a gateway assigned to it. Again, we'll check the API, but it has worked for us for years, only in the last six months or so have these errors become so frequent. It takes an hour to print out the Paypal activity download, sort by member, and check it by hand against the CBSubs user management interface, but so far that seems to be the only way to be sure we aren't ripping off our members.

Last edit: 4 months 1 week ago by petekuhn. Reason: detail about gateway assignment after error

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krileon
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4 months 1 week ago #338873 by krileon

Replied by krileon on topic Strange communications error with PayPal

Normally when this happens you should be able to tell PayPal to re-send an IPN to force CB to process it again. We've seen a few reports of this issue and never found a definitive answer beyond a temporary issue at PayPal of some kind or was due to configuration problem, but since it's only happening to 5% of transactions it's likely a PayPal issue of some kind. We'll be rewriting the PayPal gateway in a future release to latest PayPal API in hopes that can solve this as they might be trying to get people off the older APIs either by force or by accident with issues like this.

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petekuhn
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4 months 1 week ago #338878 by petekuhn

Replied by petekuhn on topic Strange communications error with PayPal

Thanks again for the reply! I'm interested to know if the new Paypal API will reject payment if it doesn't receive confirmation from the vendor's website that the communication went through and that the vendor has accepted the order? We've got a lot of members who were upset when Paypal told them they'd paid, but our website told them they didn't have a new or renewed membership.

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krileon
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4 months 1 week ago #338883 by krileon

Replied by krileon on topic Strange communications error with PayPal

It's not that PayPal rejected the payment it's that the API call to PayPal to verify the payment failed for whatever reason. PayPal doesn't give us enough error responses to really know why they rejected the API call, but without that API call we can't verify that a payment was legitimate (otherwise someone could spoof a payment, which is of course not good). Sometimes it's just due to a server issues on PayPal's end (e.g. connection got dropped). The newer API may or may not help with this.

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