PayPal Instant Payment Notification Warning?

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  • David Grove
    Senior Member
    • Apr 2008
    • 3507
    • 5.5.x

    #76
    Originally posted by gpzzone
    PM sent as requested.

    (Sent twice, but it's not featuring in my sent iems folder) Let me know if you don't get it. CD
    Thanks for the PM. You do have cURL support, so that rules out what I was thinking. For your specific problem, can you open a support ticket titled "gpzzone Paypal IPN issue" and ask for it to be assigned to me. Please provide FTP login information for your server in the 'sensitive data' field and link back to this thread. Thanks!
    ~~~~~

    Comment

    • David Grove
      Senior Member
      • Apr 2008
      • 3507
      • 5.5.x

      #77
      Originally posted by Mike Robinson
      IPNs enabled but still turned off sounds very confusing to me but I am trying to follow your instructions. From what you say it seems I must ask Paypal to enable them because if I try to enable them myself from the IPN history page it turns them on as well as enabling them. And as we have found, we cannot turn them off without disabling IPNs.

      So yesterday I sent an email to Paypal support to ask for IPNs to be enabled on our account but remain turned off and they seem to have completely failed to comprehend my request (as I say, it is all very confusing to me too). This morning I had a reply to say they checked my account and my appeal for the limitations to be removed from my account has been granted and I can now use my Paypal account to send and receive money. Great! There was no problem with that before. As far as IPN is concerned nothing has changed which I verified by making a test subscribtion myself on our Forum.

      I have just sent a support ticket through the Paypal Merchant Technical Services system to request the same as I did by email yesterday. I'll report back when I get a response.

      There must be an easier way to get the subscriptions working properly!

      Mike
      I agree that the difference between "turned off" and "disabled" is downright confusing. I'll try to clarify:

      Turned off -- This is if you choose to turn off the IPN feature in the Paypal interface.
      Disabled -- This is an automatic Paypal sanction that is applied to accounts that have too many failed IPN messages. (has nothing to do with you turning the IPN feature on or off)

      According to the replies you have received from Paypal, I think the IPN feature had been disabled by Paypal due to too many failed IPN messages, and since your "appeal for limitations to be removed" has been granted, I think that means that the IPN feature is once again enabled.

      So to proceed from here, we need to wait until you get another Paypal transaction to see if the IPN message goes through or not. You may leave your IPN feature turned off, or if you decide to turn it on, be sure to correctly fill out your Notification URL to http://your-domain.com/path/to/vbull...?method=paypal (For the purposes of testing this, either one should be fine.)
      ~~~~~

      Comment

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

        #78
        Originally posted by David Grove
        I agree that the difference between "turned off" and "disabled" is downright confusing. I'll try to clarify:

        Turned off -- This is if you choose to turn off the IPN feature in the Paypal interface.
        Disabled -- This is an automatic Paypal sanction that is applied to accounts that have too many failed IPN messages. (has nothing to do with you turning the IPN feature on or off)

        According to the replies you have received from Paypal, I think the IPN feature had been disabled by Paypal due to too many failed IPN messages, and since your "appeal for limitations to be removed" has been granted, I think that means that the IPN feature is once again enabled.

        So to proceed from here, we need to wait until you get another Paypal transaction to see if the IPN message goes through or not. You may leave your IPN feature turned off, or if you decide to turn it on, be sure to correctly fill out your Notification URL to http://your-domain.com/path/to/vbull...?method=paypal (For the purposes of testing this, either one should be fine.)
        I'm sorry David but I feel more inclined to agree with Patrick from Paypal Technical Support when he says it is not possible to have IPN enabled but still remain turned off (see post #75). When you saw that IPN was disabled for my account in the details of one of the transactions that I sent you by PM, that was after I had disabled IPNs (following your instructions in post 52 & 56). I do not believe it was because Paypal disabled IPNs on my account as you suggest.

        Also I don't think you are correct in thinking that Paypal enabled IPNs for my account when they said they had removed 'limitations' on my account. As I said in my post #74, nothing was changed particularly as regards IPNs as I proved with the trial subscription I did immediately following the 'limitations removal'. The details for that test transaction in IPN history still showed IPNs disabled and the subscriptions transaction log in vB did not show receipt of an IPN message (not surprisingly) so no action was performed at the vB end in response to the payment that was successfully made into the Paypal account.

        Since that test and following the message from Paypal Technical Support I have enabled IPNs again (there is no way I can see to have them turned off whilst enabled). You now seem to be saying it is OK to have them turned on as long as we have specified the correct notification URL. Mine has been correct all along. Some people on this thread have reported the problem being cured by correcting their notification url but I think some of us have been experiencing the IPN problem for other reasons.

        So my situation now is back to how it was from when I first set up a subscription system for our Forum just over a year ago. Presumably I'll start getting more IPN failures again.

        However I wonder if there might have been a possible change to our situation brought about by some updates made to our server which I have just learned were made around the beginning of February. I don't know what changes were made but they seem to coincide with my report in post #35 that we seem to have stopped getting IPN failures (IPNs still enabled at that time). At least that seemed to be the case as far as subscriptions were concerned but a day or two later we did get a failure in relation to a payment into the Paypal account that was not a subscription. So even if the main problem about IPN failures related to subscriptions has somehow gone away (for me at least), we are still left with what can we do about IPNs that are associated with payments other than subscriptions.

        An indication that the main problem might indeed have been something to do with the server is that as I reported in my post #15, the failed IPNs gave a HTTP response code of 503. In post #70 David refers to the 503 code and asked gpzzone to check cURL or fsockopen availability on his server. I have checked phpinfo for our server and CURL is enabled - but maybe it wasn't before the beginning of Feb. Just a thought!

        As David says, as far as I am concerned, we'll just have to wait to see what happens when we get further payments into our Paypal account, for both subscriptions and other payments (however we might have to wait up to a few weeks before the next payment).

        Comment

        • David Grove
          Senior Member
          • Apr 2008
          • 3507
          • 5.5.x

          #79
          Originally posted by Mike Robinson
          Also I don't think you are correct in thinking that Paypal enabled IPNs for my account when they said they had removed 'limitations' on my account. As I said in my post #74, nothing was changed particularly as regards IPNs as I proved with the trial subscription I did immediately following the 'limitations removal'. The details for that test transaction in IPN history still showed IPNs disabled and the subscriptions transaction log in vB did not show receipt of an IPN message (not surprisingly) so no action was performed at the vB end in response to the payment that was successfully made into the Paypal account.

          Since that test and following the message from Paypal Technical Support I have enabled IPNs again (there is no way I can see to have them turned off whilst enabled). You now seem to be saying it is OK to have them turned on as long as we have specified the correct notification URL. Mine has been correct all along. Some people on this thread have reported the problem being cured by correcting their notification url but I think some of us have been experiencing the IPN problem for other reasons.
          Can you try this?

          1. Make sure the IPN feature is turned on and the Notification URL is correct (ending in /payment_gateway.php?method=paypal) in your Paypal account.
          2. Run a test transaction/subscription.
          3. Check the IPN history in your Paypal account and see what the status is for the IPN message for your test transaction.
          ~~~~~

          Comment

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

            #80
            Originally posted by David Grove
            Can you try this?

            1. Make sure the IPN feature is turned on and the Notification URL is correct (ending in /payment_gateway.php?method=paypal) in your Paypal account.
            2. Run a test transaction/subscription.
            3. Check the IPN history in your Paypal account and see what the status is for the IPN message for your test transaction.
            Since reinstating the state of our Paypal account to precisely the same as it was before I tried to disable IPNs, I have just got results of two transactions which are exactly as I expected. One was a non-subscription donation to our Forum and this has resulted in the usual string of failed IPNs. The other transaction was a subscription which went through without any problem at all. This seems to confirm that over the last month subscriptions no longer seem to be the problem they had been before the beginning of February. The only thing that changed a month ago that I can see is that there were some updates done on our server (as I said in my previous post).

            So as far as subscriptions are concerned, we no longer seem to have a problem but we do still have the problem with payments into the Paypal account which are not subscriptions. Can vBulletin be made to just send back an acknowledgement of the IPN to Paypal for such transactions even if no further action is taken?

            Comment

            • Corinthian
              Member
              • Jun 2008
              • 71

              #81
              I have checked everything as detailed in Post #69 and everything is as suggested.

              I have recently sold my domain and forum but am still hosting it until the handover to the new owner is complete. No payments are being made to me (i.e. none are being made to my email address (tied to the domain)) - they are being made to the new owner's email address.

              I've had two notifications from PayPal that IPNs are failing. Given that the settings are correct as suggested in #69, what should I do? Should I simply remove the 'offending' email address from the PayPal account?

              Comment

              • Morrus
                Senior Member
                • Jan 2002
                • 138
                • 3.0.0 Beta 6

                #82
                Same problem here. I use the subscription system for two boards and the email from PayPal indicates that there's an issue with both. Both are 3.8.4 boards.

                I have some people posting on my boards indicating that their recurring payments have gone through, but their subscription usergroup status has been dropped on the forums. Fairly worried, as subscriptions form the largest part of my business.

                In addition - a separate issue - I've had a few people over the past few months indicating that they are being charged twice per month. I've always fixed these manually (by asking them to cancel the subscriptions at PayPal's end, me removing the subscription at the forum end, manually refunding the excess funds, and then hopefully them being willing to resubscribe). But I'd rather find out why this is happening and stop it.

                I'll try the suggestions in post #69 above and report back here.
                EN World

                Comment

                • Morrus
                  Senior Member
                  • Jan 2002
                  • 138
                  • 3.0.0 Beta 6

                  #83
                  Originally posted by David Grove
                  [*] Check your Paypal IPN settings and make sure IPNs are turned off (not disabled) for your account. To check this, visit your IPN History page (My Account => History => IPN History); it should say: "The IPN feature is turned off. You must turn on IPN in order to create history data." If instead of that message, it shows a field with your Notification URL, then you need to turn the feature off. This needs to be off because (a) it is not necessary, since vBulletin sends Paypal the correct URL to send the IPN to along with the payment request.* (This is the notify_url parameter in the subscription_payment_paypal template). (b) If you have your vBulletin URL there, then Paypal will send IPN messages for all of your Paypal transactions, not only the ones that originate from your vBulletin installation. This will eventually cause Paypal to disable (see point #1) IPN for your account due to the failed IPNs)
                  OK, got as far as this second step. It shows neither of the two alternatives mentioned.
                  EN World

                  Comment

                  • Corinthian
                    Member
                    • Jun 2008
                    • 71

                    #84
                    This issue badly needs an urgent fix...

                    Comment

                    • ArchangelX
                      Member
                      • Feb 2006
                      • 51
                      • 3.8.x

                      #85
                      I am still having the same issues...what's going on? Can't the VB team talk to Paypal and work out an appropriate solution for all of us?

                      Comment

                      • Corinthian
                        Member
                        • Jun 2008
                        • 71

                        #86
                        Originally posted by Corinthian
                        Should I simply remove the 'offending' email address from the PayPal account?
                        Would this work? I need an emergency fix.

                        Comment

                        • BfB
                          Senior Member
                          • Jul 2001
                          • 102

                          #87
                          Any update's David?

                          Comment

                          • Corinthian
                            Member
                            • Jun 2008
                            • 71

                            #88
                            Just had this direct from PayPal:
                            Thank you for your question. IPN is not related to your email notifications for payment, it is a back end server script. If you received an email that your IPN is failing it is because there is old or incorrect information in your PayPal Profile. Please login to your PayPal account, go to Profile and select "Instant Payment Notification Preferences" and check your script path. If you do not recognize this or are not using it any longer, you can simply turn it off.
                            Have done as they suggest but something tells me it's all going to go horribly wrong...

                            Edit: why is there such a massive gap between text and quoted text. I tells ya - it'll be a very long time until I update to this hideous v4.0 software!

                            Comment

                            • Morrus
                              Senior Member
                              • Jan 2002
                              • 138
                              • 3.0.0 Beta 6

                              #89
                              OK, the number of subscribers with issues on my site is reaching epic proportions. I'm getting dozens of emails a day from subscribers whose paypal accounts show they made their recurring payment but who no longer have the associated forum permissions, and dozens of cancellations a day. As this means food not being on my table, this is turning into a serious issue.

                              What's the situation?
                              EN World

                              Comment

                              • Corinthian
                                Member
                                • Jun 2008
                                • 71

                                #90
                                ^ PayPal assure me that this error won't affect user accounts/permissions etc.

                                But I'm betting it will.

                                This needs a fix!

                                Comment

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