PayPal issue with Billing in one country and Shipping to another?

[giftmeister]

Hey, all.

I just noticed this problem- a friend of mine in the USA bought a test item from my Canadian site and used a Cdn. shipping address and PP blocked it saying, "Paypal does not allow your country of residence to ship to the country you wish to."

I saw only one other thread about this from two years ago that recognized the problem and ended with PP not budging from their position. http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showth...=paypal+canada

Well, I just called them and got the following info to resolve it:

"In order to bypass the issue where customers in one country trying to ship to another country are getting the message 'Paypal does not allow...,' your shopping cart will need to pass the "address_override" variable to us in the payment form, with a value of "0". This should resolve the issue."

I believe that's from includes/modules/payment/paypal.php and this line in particular-

    $db->Execute("insert into " . TABLE_CONFIGURATION . " (configuration_title, configuration_key, configuration_value, configuration_description, configuration_group_id, sort_order, set_function, date_added) values ('Address override', 'MODULE_PAYMENT_PAYPAL_ADDRESS_OVERRIDE', '', 'If set to 1 the address passed in via Zen Cart will override the customer PayPal-stored address. The customer will be shown their address from Zen Cart, but will not be able to edit it. If the address is not valid (i.e. missing required fields, including country) or not included, then no address will be shown.<br />Empty=No Override<br />1=Passed-in Address overrides customers PayPal-stored address', '6', '18', 'zen_cfg_select_option(array(\'\',\'1\'), ', now())"); 

I'm going to test it, but would like to hear from someone experienced if this sounds right and if the "0" in question replaces the "1" near the very end of the above.

Cheers,

Robbie

[giftmeister]

Hm, I got mixed results.

My friend in the USA tried three test purchases, two via PayPal Express (PPE) and one via PP Website Standard (PPS). The first via PPE went through fine when he used a USA shipping address. (Though recall that I don't yet ship to the USA.) The second attempt via PPE, he couldn't even enter a Canadian shipping address. He logged in to his account on a separate screen and even under Profile could not enter a Canadian gift/shipping address.

On an another note, the two attempts above did not offer him the option to his PP balance, only his checking acc't on file!

Then he tried again via PPS (after each attempt, I deleted his info from my backend) where he entered a US billing address and Canadian shipping address on my site. He checked out and was directed to PP, his first option shown was to use his acc't balance and the sale went through fine.

I don't get it...I thought PPE was supposed to be this easy option, but unless PP's tech guy replies with a solution I'm not going to offer it.

Even the first successful transaction was awkward- clicking the PP button took him to the PP site and after clicking Continue, PP redirected him to my Checkout page (review Cart, Coupon field, Shipping address, etc.) where he then had to click Confirm to finalize it. I figured the whole thing is done on PP.

Stay tuned...

R

[giftmeister]

The PP guy replied:

Unfortunately, the ability of a buyer to choose or add a specific shipping address from within their PayPal account, or the funding options available from within said account, have nothing to do with your implementation. The customer is encouraged to contact their account rep or Merchant Services in regards of the inability to perform a specific action from within their PayPal account. Even if the address_override wasn't being passed, the customer would be able to add the Canadian shipping address, but it would then generate the error we were discussing earlier (""Paypal does not allow your country of residence to ship to the country you wish to").

In summary, if you are passing the address_override with a value of "0", then your implementation is correct, and the inability to choose a CA shipping address is something which should be addressed with Merchant Services or an account manager, who will have access to the information available to help resolve the issue.

I asked again, "But do you know why there was such a difference between his purchases through PP Express and Standard? The two problems (no Cdn shipping and lack of funding options) were through PPE, while Standard was fine."

He said:

Funding mix options, unfortunately, are also not dictated by your integration. However, I've submitted a query to our engineers on this. Their response was interesting, indicating that as far as they were aware, not even the address_override should allow someone in Country A to be able to have an item shipped to Country B. According to the response I received, this is not due to your integration at all, but to business rules. That, as well as the funding mix available, are both issues which must be addressed by Merchant Services (your integration, from a technical standpoint, appears to be perfectly implemented).