PSP problems

[asbrins]

Actinic Cat V6.1.3

I wonder if any one can give me some guidance on things I might check to solve a problem that has started to happen in the last 2 weeks.

Our store has been working perfectly for quite a while but now we are getting intermitent problems when downloading orders. Some, but not all, get thrown into the payment pending box. The usual warning window appears when downloading saying that the order(s) will be put there, yet others come straight through normally. There are more than enough of these type of orders to be more than just some one mucking around - and we have had payment for them as well. Just for some reason, some orders are not being handled as 'charge transactions immediately'.

I had not touched the site for months before this happened. When this started I did refresh website as I thought some thing may have corrupted. However, the problem is still there.

As far as I can tell my ISP hasn't made any changes and our PSP (SecPay) say the problem must be our end. Any clues on where to look please?

[cdicken]

Some, but not all, get thrown into the payment pending box.

Do you mean 'Pending Payment Service Provider'?

Just for some reason, some orders are not being handled as 'charge transactions immediately'.

From what you are saying, it sounds like more orders are being filed in the 'Pending Payment Service Provider' folder than normal. There will always be some orders going in there - often around 25%. These will just be orders where customers have decided not to buy the product after all when they have been transferred to SecPay. They close their browser and walk away, leaving you with an order in 'Pending PSP' that you can't do much with.

Intermittent problems normally indicate something wrong with the server, such as a timeout occurring when a Perl script is trying to execute. Do you have a URL where we can see your store for ouselves?

[asbrins]

Chris,

Thanks for your reply. Yes I agree we do see a few where customers have decided not to buy and they download into the Pending psp. But recently there has been a large increase, and most of them have actually paid! Just this weekend we had one lady who tried 4 times. 3 of her attempts ended up in payment psp and 1 got through ok. We spoke to her via email and she said that the problems occured when she got to the payment pages at SecPay.

Anyway here is our url if you want to have a look, any feedback would be most grateful: http://donkeysanctuary.rokkhost.com/adopt/acatalog/

Andy.

[cdicken]

We spoke to her via email and she said that the problems occured when she got to the payment pages at SecPay.

I don't suppose she gave any details did she? I managed to get to SecPay from Actinic with no problems - but I couldn't go any further without actually adopting 'Marguerite'...

[asbrins]

Chris,

Sorry, she didn't give any further details to the lady who was processing the order. I will try and contact her myself via email and ask her exactely where she was in the process when the problem happened. Unfortunately the lady lives in Australia so it could take a day or so to get an answer.

Could it possibly be a time-out problem between secpay and our ISP server? Say, if you didn't put in your payment details within a certain time it bombs you out?

Anyway will contact this lady and let you know if I get any further.

Andy.

[DavidGeran]

Our psp, Protx have been and I think are still the target of a denial of service attack, could be that secpay are experiencing the same thing resulting in a slower or non-existent service?

It took a while for Protx to admit the problem...

[asbrins]

Chris,

Have had a reply from the other side of the world:

"I completed all of the relevant details and then had problems when I transferred to the payment page. When I clicked to confirm payment it kept coming up as an error. Browser didn’t send me back anywhere I had to navigate way back to site. When my details finally went through I did receive a receipt number. Hope that helps."

It looks from what the lady says that they are transfering across to Secpay ok but then the problems start. As this is an intermitant problem it will be difficult to trace.

Any ideas on how we can check who is causing the problems or if you can think of any relevant questions I can ask Secpay?

Your help is most appreciated.

[cdicken]

I hate to say this, but the fact that people are getting to SecPay OK and are then having issues actually submitting their payment, would suggest that SecPay are having issues.

Do you have a test cc number or something like that which can be used for testing?

[asbrins]

I will ask secpay if they do a test cc number and give it a go.

The only reason I thought that there might be something wrong with our actinic setup is that we have another store on the same site running through secpay and this gives us no problems at all.

Anyway thanks for your time and effort in responding. Things seems to have settled down in the last few days and we are only getting the obvious bogus orders appearing in the pending psp.

Will be upgrading to V7 in the next couple of weeks so I hope that goes ok.

Thanks again,

Andy.