PayPal Instant Payment Notification Warning?

[choccyclaire]

Just received the email for the first time today.

I am still getting all my payments but I have to manually change the member's usergroup and also add a paid subscription to their account.

Checked every solution posted in this thread as well. This only started happening for me 3 days ago and I have never changed settings anywhere prior to this.

I've been using the paypal paid subscription option for around 2 years now with no problems.

I'm on 3.8.5 by the way but found this thread via google.

[Carsafety]

I disabled IPN altogether in the Paypal options. I am no longer getting warnings by email from Paypal. My subscriptions appear to be working normally and I no longer see IPN errors in the history at Paypal, either. So far so good.

[TROLL]

As best I can tell, payments are coming through to me via Paypal but subscriptions are not being renewed on vBulletin (3.8)... users are emailing me because of this and its creating a mess and everything is out of sync.
After reading this thread I have not seen a conclusive solution, but I know this is costing a lot of us a lot of money... where do things stand now?

[gpzzone]

After reading this thread I have not seen a conclusive solution, but I know this is costing a lot of us a lot of money... where do things stand now?

Exactly the same as 8 months ago when the problem was first ID'd.

My membership regime is totally and utterly trashed.

I'm totally convinced it's a Paypal issue, but trying to get them to take ownership is impossible.

[klaush]

You wrote there:

2. Check your Paypal IPN settings and make sure your Notification URL is empty.

Thats not possible because the pp configuration wants an URL be given there.

You see, we get the same errors as well and need a fast solution for this.

Thanks!

Please see this for help troubleshooting Paid Subscription problems, specifically post #2:

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=255511

[sross]

I still get them in 4.0.5. I get about 3-5 per day, all I can do is ignore them and hope ppal doesn't give me the boot.

[gpzzone]

I've truly had a skinfull of the IPN issue - I remain convinced that it lies with PAYPAL, and am now about to vote with my feet. Paypal have refused point blank to accept ownership of it despite the thousands of voices out here idenntifying the problem.

I also use Netbamx as a PSP for an online store, and they have the capacity to handle recurring payments, so my question is this.

What modifications will I need to make to VB (3.8.5) to implement this new (unlisted in subscriptions manager) PSP. How easy is it, or will I need to enlist the help of knowledgable types.

This IPN issue and Paypal are slowly destroying my membership database, and I simply cannot allow it to continue to go unchecked. Not only am I losing money, but I am losing the confidence of those members that have supported me over the past years.

[pistils]

IPN Failure - Disabling IPN = Manual User Account Upgrade is required!!

Well, I am running vb3.8 with a paid site sponsor account upgrade option, I seem to be getting intermittent warnings regarding IPN not communicating with PayPal and the usual check the notify URL ,messages with a threat that my account's IPN will be disabled !!

I have checked all settings and cannot make head or tail of why some are successful and others are failing... some accounts get upgraded and some don't.. ?? I have tried disabling IPN messages but this results in the users account not being upgraded automatically as is supposed to... sigh..

I have followed all the threads relating to this and still there doesn't seem to be a fix..? Come on VBStaff, use your vast scripting knowledge to release a workaround as you must have an idea why 503 errors are being generated by the Server ///

any updates?

regards

Pistils

[Carsafety]

In my case, I believe all my errors were from transactions that were initiated through Paypal directly, rather than through vbulletin. For example, anytime I logged into paypal and issued an invoice and had that invoice paid, it insisted on sending notifications to vbulletin even though the transaction had nothing to do with vbulletin.

My response was to go to the Edit Instant Payment Notification (IPN) settings area within my Paypal account and click "Do not receive IPN messages (Disabled). This solved the problem for me, though of course it may not solve other problems.

Inititally, I tried the suggestions in this thread ( http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showt...k-these-things. ). The problem in my case was that Paypal does not allow you to enable IPN settings AND leave an empty notification URL field. I simply could not do what Steve Machol suggested in step #2. So, I kept getting the warnings from Paypal. Once I disabled IPN (contrary to the instructions in step #1), I no longer got the IPN errors or Paypal warning emails. My subscriptions seem to be working normally. I can only conclude that the IPN settings from within your Paypal account only affect notifications on transactions initiated from within Paypal. It does not appear to restrict notifications requested by external applications like vBulletin. If this is true, the fault is not with vBulletin itself, but rather with the instructions on how to resolve the issue. Again, of course, there may be other cases where my fix makes things worse, I just know it solved the issue for me.

[gpzzone]

I've just revisited this today, after spending the whole of 2010 tolerating this IPN problem.

I've just noticed this feature which suggests that it is an intermittent problem at Paypal's end. Is there any possibility that Vb developers can liaise with Paypal and establish what exactly the situation is, and perhaps ID a timeline for Paypal to address it?

http://smartmediapro.com/site-news/account-specific-paypal-ipn-issues-2/

http://blog.statcounter.com/2010/09/to-paypal-or-not-to-paypal/

It is spreading misery across the VB paid subscriptions and E commerce world, and costing us all money. I have contacted Paypal on this, but frankly don't expect a timely and meaningful response - I haven't had one yet!

[VTXCafe.com]

Recurring payments seems to be what triggered this for me. Never saw this error till I enabled recurring payments for a few usergroups...it was a test so I disabled it and now I'm curious if it stops.

[VTXCafe.com]

For anyone still having this problem....contrary to what's posted you HAVE to have something for the URL at Paypal....

I just did my url like this and had a few members test and it worked...at Paypal in the History/IPN History I added the URL like this:

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

And all subscriptions are now working. For now anyway.

[Carsafety]

For anyone still having this problem....contrary to what's posted you HAVE to have something for the URL at Paypal....

You do have to have something in the URL if you have IPN messages "Enabled".

I have collected hundreds of payments through my forum since my last post. My IPN setting is still "Disabled" with nothing in the notification URL. I also haven't received any warnings or bounced payment notifications since then. I am running vBulletin 3.8.7. It's quite possible there are other factors involved, including forum version, addons, some other Paypal setting, etc. I ran for a couple years at least until I started receiving the warnings. I don't know if something changed with a forum update or if it just took them that long before they send the warning.

[VTXCafe.com]

If they are disabled you have to put something to enable them...not sure if you already have them enabled. Heck, it couldn't hurt to disable them, add the link and enable them again if its not working...that's what I did.

[aviv_e]

I think I'm onto a bug handling a similar problem with my subscriptions (vb 3.8.x).
If you're removing one of the subscriptions completly, but there are still reoccurring subscriptions, vBulletin will return 503 to IPN, because there is no subscription with the right price. After a while, the IPN will be disabled, because it got too many errors.
Can anyone confirm this problem?