PayPal not taking payments.

[MattSMR]

Hi all,

Sally, that fix should work. Check that there is no recurring replacements for similar references in the code.

I believe our issue is that we were testing with duff details, I.E data that was bad. We've made a test account using a real address, and it works fine. Test with duff details, it falls over.

I believe this is due to validation on Paypals end, as part of the streamlining process (which updated March 29th)

I've re-enabled Paypal website payments on one of our test sites -

www.radiatorvalves4u.co.uk/trv/test

(wrapped in code cause I don't want a link hanging around ) - If you test this with real details, it works.

[Mike Hughes]

following on from your last post. For our Northern Ireland orders where we use a code of UKNI could we use something like below?

$sCountry =~ s/^UK$/GB/;
$sCountry =~ s/^UKNI$/GB/;

You could, but better code would this from Louise (Peblaco) in this thread http://community.sellerdeck.com/showthread.php?t=54745

if (substr($sCountryCode ,0, 2) eq 'UK') # edit
{
$sCountry = 'GB'; # edit
}

So any country codes that Start with 'UK' would be changed to 'GB'.

Note that for PayPal this change will have to be made in the paypal script ( OCCPayPalTemplate.pl in the CommonOCC folder in sellerdeck).

I'd replace the line 213 code

$sCountry =~ s/^UK$/GB/;

with the code above. Then save and upload your site.

Note. Make a backup first. This is untested code and so far we've not even clearly identified what the problem is.

It's definitely worth a try in your case. You can easily undo the change if it doesn't work.

[sally01]

Hi Mike, that seems to have sorted my problem out. It failed first time round but then I realised that I had just cut and paste the code from Louise and didn't notice she had $sCountryCode rather than $sCountry

Many thanks for your help.

[Mike Hughes]

Thanks Sally and well done for spotting the error. I've corrected the mistake in my post above.

So, to summarise and include some relevant text to help other people trying to find this thread by searching:

If you get a paypal error box on transfer to paypal that says "Things don't appear to be working at the moment. Please try again later" then this can to be due to a validation routine that paypal is using on it's new streamlined checkout / payment process.

The details from paypal are here: https://www.paypal-knowledge.com/inf...ewlocale=en_US

In this case, the cause was due the use of a three/four character area code that doesn't comply with ISO standards for the country code but is a known way of splitting the UK up into regions for having different delivery charges. One solution that fixes this problem is to edit the paypal occ script so that it sends the correct 'GB' country code that paypal expects and thereby passes the validation check.

It's important to note that Sellerdeck uses 'UK' as the country code by default but then has a line of code in the PSP scripts that changes this to 'GB' to avoid problems. The problem here was that using anything longer than just 'UK' stops this working correctly.

Mike

[sally01]

We have just had our first order through since the fix and payment was received as normal.

Perfect!

[KarenBM]

am having this error message also. PayPal was working fine this morning but noticed lots of failed Paypal orders in pending. On testing there was the "Things don't appear to be working at the moment. Please try again later." message. On two occasions there was an odd message saying I was trying to sign into the sellers paypal account - and I was not using the email address for the test sale so that was just plain odd.

Site uses one "Uk" only, and I cannot see where it is failing.

If anyone can see what's wrong I wouldf be hugely grateful. Will send through a support ticket to Sellerdeck tomorrow. i Rang PayPal who directed me to the email linked in Mike's post. Here is my site: www.charmedcardsandcrafts.co.uk

Thank you.

[KarenBM]

Hmmm, how odd. Refreshed the site and it seems to be working again al of a sudden, which suggests it is intermittent and not governed by rouge parameters. The plot thickens ...

Nope - it's doing it again. Arghhh!

[Mike Hughes]

Hi Karen,

I see what you mean ( I placed a test order).

I'm not at my desk today so can't take a real look but will see if I can find anything obvious tomorrow.

Mike

[Mike Hughes]

OK. I've just tried from my PC here and everything seems fine this morning.

Is it working OK for you ? and did you change anything or did it just start working again?

Mike

[KarenBM]

Hi Mike, Thanks so much for looking for me. It works intermittently, which is what makes it so odd. 9 out of 10 times it fails. Sellerdeck seems to think it's the county and I should remove that, but you seem to do OK with that (I did a test purchase on your site to see how it handled it). I am using 14.02

[KarenBM]

Another error. Along with the other one this pops up sometimes. It's just a random email address.

[Mike Hughes]

Hi Karen,

I'm sorry, I've had to place several test orders to try and see what's happening.

From what I can see:

1. The good news is that all the variables you're passing to PayPal seem fine. There's nothing wrong that I can see there.

2. On you're site, it seems as if PayPal is validating the data that is being passed. So using a real name and address seems to work, using bad data doesn't (much as Matt found in his post above). For example, using my real name and some proper address details, phone number, etc worked but using 'London' for both the City and State didn't work whereas 'London' and 'Greater London' did.

At a guess I'd say they're using the validation routine to dump fake traffic, DOS attacks, etc and are looking at things like duplicate values in the fields, 'test' words, invalid data, etc.

3. The really odd thing is that I just tested my site using lots of what I would call bad signals like duplicates in the address fields, 'Test' for the name and email address, and just 4 digits for the phone number and it still worked. Also very odd is that my site is passing 'UK' for the country code which is a non compliant country code.

This makes me wonder if there is maybe a connection between these two. i.e. maybe because my country code is technically invalid then PayPal might decide that they can't do a proper validation run on the details so just pass it straight through.

It's all very odd.

Can you try a test order on your site using real details and see if that does work for you? I suspect it will.

Mike

[Mike Hughes]

Another error. Along with the other one this pops up sometimes. It's just a random email address.

Ignore this one. It's just paypal remembering who you are from a cookie and then flagging that you're trying to log in and pay yourself.

[KarenBM]

I did use real data, my name and address with real phone number and email. That was also what was so odd with the paypal email login error as I have never tried that email on any test orders. Customers have also been trying, all with real data, and none have succeeded. I've had to call them up and get card details if they still want the order.

Thanks so much for trying to help, I really appreciate it.

[Mike Hughes]

There are only two obvious differences I noticed between your checkout and mine.

1. I'm sending them my paypal merchant ID againt 'business', you're sending your email address.

2. I send 'UK' as the country, you send 'GB'.

So,

1. Check your paypal configuration in sellerdeck. I have my Paypal merchant ID in there, what do you have? Oddly, the sellerdeck knowledge base says to use your paypal email address, which isn't what I do.

The Paypal documents say both are valid

'business' Your PayPal ID or an email address associated with your PayPal account. Email addresses must be confirmed.

2. You can try and comment out the line in the paypal script that converts 'UK' to 'GB'. A simple # in front of it should work.

Mike