Missing Packing list and orders...

[albertstrange]

Hi folks, I'm hoping someone here with more experience can help me resolve this issue, thanks in advance.
I'm using version 1.3.6 right now and I've been running the site for over 3 years now on my own since my web guy turned it over to me. I've been learning a lot but I still just don't know 80% of what's going on or how it works. Here's my current dilema:

Over the last 2 days my site has received 2 orders. I know this because I'm receiving payment notifications from Paypal. However, it's a different notification than usual, there is no order number associated with the payment. I know it's been processed through my shop because in the "Item/Product Name" it says "StrangeHouse Purchase" (StrangeHouse is my shop).

So now I'm left with having to contact my customer an ask them what they ordered so I can then back track, remove the items from my inventory, pack and ship it.

That's the other weird part. If I go to the ZenCart admin section and look up the order, it doesn't exist (that how I know it hasn't been removed from inventory). If I search the customer that placed the order it does pull the customer info. up but it shows that he has never logged on and it shows a zero in the "orders placed". Like this:
Account Created: 02/05/2009

Last Modified: 02/05/2009

Last Logon:

Number of Logons: 0

Number of Orders: 0

Country: United States

Number of Reviews: 0

Customer Referral
1st Discount Coupon

Now, I've had this problem on and off over the years but never twice in a row. I know I'm due for an upgrade to the latest version but I have no idea how to do that, I need to contact my web guy and hope he can do it for me.

Has anyone experienced this before and is there a quick fix to this? Is this something in the way the customer creates their account? Although I don't think it is because it recently happened to a regular customer that has ordered from me many times without incident.

Again, thanks in advance,
Frank

[sparklefish]

Frank - exactly the same thing is happening to me. Yesterday I received orders fine, however today, I get the payment notification email from Paypal but no order is showing in Admin or in my database. I've contacted Paypal to see if they can help. What host are you using - I wonder if we're using the same one? - Vicky

[sparklefish]

Frank - me again. Did you change ANY code or alter any Paypal settings from your last successful order to the order that does not appear? I haven't changed anything and in my experience code does not break randomly. That makes me think that the only 2 reasons why this is failing is a) a change my host has made to their server so that Paypal can't talk to my cart, or b) a change made by Paypal so that it can't talk to my cart.

Does anyone know how to check if Paypal can communicate with Zencart? I have run www.mysite.com/ipn_main_handler.php as per another post and get a blank screen. I also turned debug on but nothing appeared in include/modules/payment/paypal/logs (logs is 777 permissions).

[DrByte]

As sparklefish has stated, the problem is that PayPal's server isn't successfully talking to your server.
Related troubleshooting FAQ: http://www.zen-cart.com/wiki/index.php/PayPal

[albertstrange]

Hi Vicky,

I haven't changed a thing, everything is the same as it ever was. Here's the weirdest part...

Today I emailed my customer and asked him to send me the list of items ordered. He went to the site, logged in and noticed that he still had items in his shopping cart. He clicked on the shopping cart, copied and pasted the items into an email to me and sent it. About an hour after he did that I recieved the correct order confirmation.

I understand that it sounds like Paypal and ZenCart are not communicating but it's got to be something during checkout. Almost like it something the customer is doing. For example: The customer puts his items in the cart, clicks check out, gets re-directed to Paypal, processes the payment. At this point he's probably prompted to "return to store" or "return to Paypal". What I'm wondering is if one of these links is not communicating properly. Meaning you click on it and it processes the payment but it doesn't send the info back to ZenCart to process the shipment out of inventory and complete the purchase.

Vicky, I'll let you know privately who my hosting company is only because I don't want it to sound like I think it's their fault, I'm sure it's not. I'm also not sure if it's acceptable to mention a hosting company (might sound like an advertisement).

Thanks for the troubleshooting link also, I'll check that out to see if it has any additional information that might help.

I really do think it's a communication issue when returning from Paypal to my store.

Thanks and please feel free to continue adding to this thread. I'm trying to learn as much as I can about this system so eventually I can have add ons and functional attributes. Not to mention gift certificates, coupons, blah, blah, blah...

Frank

[albertstrange]

Oh, one other thing. This is totally random. The fact that it happened twice in a week is unusual. Sometimes I'll go 2 months without a glitch then all of a sudden I'll have one of these without the order confirmation. Then 2 weeks of no problems, then it happens again, then all will be normal for 3 months before it happens again.

It just doesn't make sense. If it were a change made by Paypal or by the hosting company it wouldn't go back to working fine, it would stop working completely until I fixed it. Tomorrow I'll probably get a couple of orders that go through perfectly.

Thanks,
Frank

[misscharlotte]

I experienced a similar issue with PayPal last week. All had been working for months and then all of the sudden PayPal stopped talking to Zen Cart. I double checked all of my settings in PayPal and everything was set up correctly.

In order to "fix" the issue, I changed the response handler line (ie: http://www.your_site.com/directory/i...eckout_process) by simply deleting what was there and pasting the code again. I saved it and that fix it. Ironically, I didn't change the code so I'm not sure how it fixed it other than the act of clicking on the save button which may have replaced a corrupt file on PayPal.

PayPal's Instructions
14. Check your PayPal™ profile settings on paypal.com

* You need your Instant Payment Notification preferences ON
* Instant Payment Notification URL must be set to the URL of your site's ipn_main_handler.php (ie: http://www.your_site.com/ipn_main_handler.php or http://www.your_site.com/directory/ipn_main_handler.php )
* In Website Payment Preferences, your Return URL should be set to your site's checkout_process page. (ie: http://www.your_site.com/directory/i...eckout_process).
* It is advisable to have Auto Return set to On.