PayPal Instant Payment Notification Warning?

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  • vitrag24
    Senior Member
    • Aug 2006
    • 309

    PayPal Instant Payment Notification Warning?

    Hello ******,

    Please check your server that handles PayPal Instant Payment Notifications (IPN). IPNs sent to the following URL(s) are failing:

    http://www.mysite.com/payment_gateway.php?method=paypal

    If you do not recognize this URL, you may be using a service provider that is using IPN on your behalf. Please contact your service provider with the above information. If this problem continues, IPNs may be disabled for your account.
    Thank you for your prompt attention to this issue.

    Thanks,
    PayPal
    If U Think Ur Life Getting Necrosed,Ur Dreames Inflammed,Ur Thoughts Thrombosed,Then Try This Out.Spread D Neoplasia Of Love Around U.
    V.H.SHAH
  • vitrag24
    Senior Member
    • Aug 2006
    • 309

    #2
    Reply please.
    If U Think Ur Life Getting Necrosed,Ur Dreames Inflammed,Ur Thoughts Thrombosed,Then Try This Out.Spread D Neoplasia Of Love Around U.
    V.H.SHAH

    Comment

    • cbiweb
      Senior Member
      • Apr 2004
      • 2658
      • 4.1.x

      #3
      I just got one of those too (and I'm running vB4). Is it a vBulletin problem or coincidence that we both got one around the same time?
      ~ Life isn't always fair, but you can be. ~

      Comment

      • fatmouse
        New Member
        • Sep 2006
        • 25
        • 3.6.x

        #4
        Just got one too..Googled to see what was up and found this thread. VB 3.8.4

        Comment

        • cbiweb
          Senior Member
          • Apr 2004
          • 2658
          • 4.1.x

          #5
          I contacted PayPal and this is their reply:

          Originally posted by PayPal
          We recently activated a feature that will proactively notify (email) you that your
          Instant Payment Notifications (IPN) are failing. Please note that this is not a bug
          but intended functionality. These emails inform you of the IPN failures and tell
          you the URL that is failing. You can begin to troubleshoot and research the issue
          from the IPN History located in your PayPal account. You can do this by taking the
          following steps:
          • Login to your PayPal account and hover the mouse over “History”
          • Click on “IPN history” from the menu
          • From the Instant Payment Notification history page select the dates to search (Last 5 days recommended)
          • Select either “Failed” or “Retrying” from the Delivery Status drop down menu
          • Click “Search”

          From the list of transactions, you can click on the “Message ID” and this will show
          the message we are trying to send and the URL we are trying to send it to. This
          will help you to determine what you need to update to resolve the issue.

          • IPN is not an email notification, it is a feature that sends an electronic communication to a URL of the seller’s choosing whenever a payment is received.
          • IPN can be turned on in two ways:
            • From the merchant’s Account Profile under “Instant Payment Notification Preferences”
            • From the seller’s website; an IPN URL can be within the code that redirects a customer to PayPal for payment

          • This feature does not affect the merchant’s email notifications
          • You will receive this Warning email after they’ve crossed a set threshold for allowed IPN failures. After 5 warnings you IPN will be disabled. IPN can be re-enabled from their account profile.
          The strange thing is, when I checked the IPN settings of my PayPal account, it shows http://www.mysitename.com/forums/subscriptions/paypal.php as the Notification URL. But that URL has never existed on my domain. I don't even use /forums/, I use /forum/. So why is PayPal using the wrong one? There is also a transaction number involved that has no relation at all to that particular domain.

          So it's all a little strange. I've replied to them and now waiting for more feedback. Will post here if/when I get it.
          ~ Life isn't always fair, but you can be. ~

          Comment

          • vitrag24
            Senior Member
            • Aug 2006
            • 309

            #6
            Just got similar email again today and same time.
            I hope VbulletinGeeks will find some solution of this error.
            If U Think Ur Life Getting Necrosed,Ur Dreames Inflammed,Ur Thoughts Thrombosed,Then Try This Out.Spread D Neoplasia Of Love Around U.
            V.H.SHAH

            Comment

            • vitrag24
              Senior Member
              • Aug 2006
              • 309

              #7
              @cbiweb,
              I've read paypal reply to you and checked i my ipn history.
              There is notification that IPN is tunred off in my paypal.
              When i click on that turn on IMP link, they redirected to page where we've to enter notification URL.

              I'm confused what to do..

              If you understand, please help me.

              Thanks,
              If U Think Ur Life Getting Necrosed,Ur Dreames Inflammed,Ur Thoughts Thrombosed,Then Try This Out.Spread D Neoplasia Of Love Around U.
              V.H.SHAH

              Comment

              • sross
                Senior Member
                • Mar 2004
                • 660

                #8
                add me to the list..

                Comment

                • BBR-APBT
                  Senior Member
                  • Nov 2005
                  • 456

                  #9
                  You do not have to do any configurations on the PayPal site for your account to identify the IPN URL. This is because the IPN URL is part of the data sent to PayPal when the customer clicks on the buy now button.

                  So its in the vbulletin code.
                  My statements are based on the forums not the CMS as I do not and will not use it.
                  If I wanted faulty software I would code it my self. When I pay I expect to get what is advertised. I do not feel I got what I paid for.
                  In an honest opinion I feel I paid for vB 5.0 beta 7

                  Comment

                  • cbiweb
                    Senior Member
                    • Apr 2004
                    • 2658
                    • 4.1.x

                    #10
                    Originally posted by BBR-APBT
                    You do not have to do any configurations on the PayPal site for your account to identify the IPN URL. This is because the IPN URL is part of the data sent to PayPal when the customer clicks on the buy now button.

                    So its in the vbulletin code.
                    If that's the case, when someone clicks the Buy Now button, why does vBulletin send a non-existent URL for my site?
                    ~ Life isn't always fair, but you can be. ~

                    Comment

                    • BBR-APBT
                      Senior Member
                      • Nov 2005
                      • 456

                      #11
                      well payment_gateway.php is a file in vBulletin. Why it fails to send the url I am looking now to see if I can find the issue.

                      It is in the forum root directory.


                      Edit: Well what I am wondering is if paypal uses static URLS

                      When you go to mysite.com/forums/payment_gateway.php?method=paypal it loads a blank page.
                      But when you go to mysite.com/forums/payment_gateway.php you get redirected to the forums index page.

                      That is my findings so far searching now about paypal and dynamic urls.


                      Paypal made a announcement here: https://ppmts.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/p...hp?p_faqid=875


                      In the template subscription_payment_paypal is where the url gets sent to them.
                      <input type="hidden" name="notify_url" .......

                      when the url fails follow the link above to the paypal announcement and see if the faild urls include the ?method=paypal

                      I do not have any failed urls so it is hard for me to check this.
                      Last edited by BBR-APBT; Fri 5 Feb '10, 5:30am.
                      My statements are based on the forums not the CMS as I do not and will not use it.
                      If I wanted faulty software I would code it my self. When I pay I expect to get what is advertised. I do not feel I got what I paid for.
                      In an honest opinion I feel I paid for vB 5.0 beta 7

                      Comment

                      • Sean James
                        Senior Member
                        • Apr 2004
                        • 478

                        #12
                        Also getting this error, any solutions?
                        Bluepearl Skins - vBulletin 4 & 5 Skins

                        Comment

                        • cbiweb
                          Senior Member
                          • Apr 2004
                          • 2658
                          • 4.1.x

                          #13
                          Originally posted by BBR-APBT
                          That link contains less info than the reply I got from PayPal in my above post.


                          Originally posted by BBR-APBT
                          In the template subscription_payment_paypal is where the url gets sent to them.
                          <input type="hidden" name="notify_url" .......

                          when the url fails follow the link above to the paypal announcement and see if the faild urls include the ?method=paypal

                          I do not have any failed urls so it is hard for me to check this.
                          My URL doesn't include "?method=paypal". But the URL that PayPal is trying to contact doesn't even exist and hasn't existed for three years! I wasn't even aware that it existed at all until I questioned them about it (it was put in place by a former admin). So why this problem popped up only now is beyond me. And another question I asked that they totally misunderstood and answered with a crap reply, is why a particular transaction is associated with the URL when it had nothing to do with my site. It was an independent transaction with a friend.

                          In the end I changed the IPN URL to /forum/payment_gateway.php. We'll see what happens.
                          Last edited by cbiweb; Fri 5 Feb '10, 7:00pm.
                          ~ Life isn't always fair, but you can be. ~

                          Comment

                          • sross
                            Senior Member
                            • Mar 2004
                            • 660

                            #14
                            a bit OT but paypal has the worst support system I've ever encountered and that says a lot. I had a minor issue with them once and it took 5 days and several hours of calls to even begin to get anywhere. Their system is designed to make you give up imo.

                            Comment

                            • Mike Robinson
                              New Member
                              • May 2008
                              • 16
                              • 3.7.x

                              #15
                              Looks like Paypal has just decided to send out these warnings in the last few days. I have three so far so I'm worried if they disable IPN after 5 warnings. I've spent quite a bit of time over the last couple of days trying to find out exactly what the problem is.

                              I set up a subscription system on our forum (currently still runing on vB 3.7) almost exactly a year ago which is actually used for voluntary donations to help cover the costs of running the forum. Right from the start I noticed a large number of 'failures' in the transaction log but I had no idea how to deal with them and everything seemed to be working as it should, so at the time I just let them be. But with the threat from Paypal it is now imperative to get it sorted out.

                              In my Paypal account I examined the IPN history and see that for most (but not all) successful transactions (marked 'sent') there is a 'failed' item related to the same transaction, each with 16 retries. The transaction log in vB admin CP shows all these retries as 'failures'. The interval between retries increasing from less than a minute to 24 hours, the last about 4 days after the first.
                              This is all confirmed by Paypal's 'How to' page's at https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?&...admin_IPNIntro which I got to via the 'read the instructions' link in my Paypal account Instant Payments Notification Preferences page.

                              It seems the failures come when PP sends the IPN to the forum but does not get a response back within 30 seconds. So this seems to point to the vBulletin code not responding fast enough or not at all. The fact that some transactions are not subject to the failure perhaps suggest it is a speed problem. In my case the HTTP response code given in the failed IPN details is 503 which means 'Service unavailable', i.e. "The server is currently unable to handle the request due to a temporary overloading or maintenance of the server."

                              In the vBulletin Transaction log the failures show 'unhandled_payment_status_or_type'. So does that point to the fault being with Paypal not sending back the right details?

                              My investigations revealed a further problem in that Paypal is sending IPNs for payments received in the Paypal account which which are not Forum subscriptions. These inevitably always appear as 16 failures both ends and are indicated in the forum transaction log as invalid_subscriptionid. Does this mean I have to have the Paypal acouunt dedicated to forum subscriptions and nothing else? I think I'll have to ask Paypal about whether it is possible for the IPNs to be selective and only sent for subscription payments.

                              Can we have some response from the vBulletin team on this problem?

                              Comment

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