Paypal Express Checkout - Shipping Address Issue

[rebelman]

Thanks Drbyte however in my case the shipping address is not being sent! Please go back and read my initial post.

[howb]

Yes. PayPal offers fields for submitting an address. They are:
SHIPTONAME
SHIPTOSTREET
SHIPTOSTREET2
SHIPTOCITY
SHIPTOZIP
SHIPTOSTATE
SHIPTOCOUNTRYCODE

Can you perhaps see from that WHY Zen Cart would be giving the SHIPPING address for the data submitted in those fields. After all, they're named SHIPTOxxxxxxx.

Presently PayPal specifically does NOT ACCEPT multiple addresses, and SPECIFICALLY does NOT ACCEPT *billing* address submission with orders, because PayPal does billing address handling on their side directly.

So, you can see why Zen Cart does what it does. It's following PayPal's rules.

If you want to have PayPal change how they work, please log a request for changed features with PayPal directly. We'd like them to expand and support submission of billing addresses, but thus far they haven't had enough demand from people like you for them to see how important it is.

Hi DrByte, thanks for the response

I realise that it is obviously a paypal security measure and Zen Cart are just following paypals guidelines! Also I rang paypal to complain about this and informed them that it was losing me custom and therefore losing them money and then I went on to log a feature request.

Hypothetically speaking though to develop a workaround (which would probably violate PayPals guidelines) would it be possible to change the code so that it sends PayPal the billing information into their shipping fields and then when PayPal sends back the information to Zen Cart it over writes the billing information, leaving the shipping info alone? Possibly done by disguising the billing info as the shipping info?

[howb]

...would it be possible to change the code so that it sends PayPal the billing information into their shipping fields and then when PayPal sends back the information to Zen Cart it over writes the billing information, leaving the shipping info alone? Possibly done by disguising the billing info as the shipping info?

Or even if there is a way of just preventing/stopping paypal changing the shipping fields when it sends back the confirmation?

[Ara-]

I have searched and found a lot regarding this subject, but I haven't found an answer:

I am running Zen Cart 1.5 and using Paypal Express Checkout. I have removed the shortcut button from the shopping cart page.

Recently a customer complained that they had not received their package. The customer herself discovered that the shipping address on the order was not correct. It was one of her old addresses and she had not entered it in our shop. At first we did not understand why, but after a while the customer realized that the old address was still registered in Paypal.

We want Zen Cart and the customer to choose shipping address and this should not be overridden by Paypal. Is there any way to fix this? At this point we cannot really rely on the shipping address in Zen Cart because it could have been altered by what the customer selected at Paypal..

[ambwissen]

I don't get it!!
Just to get things right, here is a complete scenario:
Our shop is B2B so you have to be registered and logged in to order products.
ZenCart 1.39h fresh installed

PaypalExpress module configuration:
PaymentZone: kein/none,
EC-Button: NO,
require confirmed address: NO

OK, I'm a registered customer and I want to buy some products. I go to the site, log in and put some products in my cart. After that I go to the cart, check the content and start the checkout process. First I select my shipping address (which is definitly not known by paypal) and shipment details --> continue to payment information, where I accept conditions and select paypal as the payment method of my choice --> continue to confirmation page, reviewing all the information --> continue to confirm the Order. Now I will be taken to the paypal site. I log in at paypal. For what ever reason, I do not change or add my shipto address at paypal, leaving it what ever it points to (most likely my default address). Shouldn't paypal register the new address, which I submitted (from zen cart)?
Anyway, now I hit the pay now button.
Afterwards I get a payment confirmation e-mail from paypal (Shipto is NOT the one sent by zencart, because not known by paypal), I get an order confirmation e-mail from the zen cart shop (Shipto is NOT the one sent by zencart)
ZenCart Admin gets a NEW ORDER info e-mail (Shipto is NOT the one sent by zencart)

The Ship To Address is in all cases the same address, one of the addresses, which are already known by paypal but not the one, the customer filled in at the store.

Me, the customer did not take care about updating paypal addresses. So it's my problem??
How do you handle these orders? Do you contact every customer before processing the order if payed via paypal?
And how do you find out without checking evey paypal log file?
Shouldn't it be at least pointed out in the backend?

[Belangers]

Yes. PayPal offers fields for submitting an address. They are:
SHIPTONAME
SHIPTOSTREET
SHIPTOSTREET2
SHIPTOCITY
SHIPTOZIP
SHIPTOSTATE
SHIPTOCOUNTRYCODE

Can you perhaps see from that WHY Zen Cart would be giving the SHIPPING address for the data submitted in those fields. After all, they're named SHIPTOxxxxxxx.

Presently PayPal specifically does NOT ACCEPT multiple addresses, and SPECIFICALLY does NOT ACCEPT *billing* address submission with orders, because PayPal does billing address handling on their side directly.

I have been speaking to a technical support staff member from PayPal, and they said that Zencart has an error in their coding that is swapping what is supposed to be there. It is not supposed to send the shipping address to PayPal when a different shipping address is added to the "enter new shipping address area" in the delivery information area on Zencart. I have been trying to resolve this issue for months, and just found out about the problem, and why my customers have not been able to make a purchase since April. This has nothing to do with PayPal protection if a customer in the US would want to ship a gift to another part of the US. It is the buyers choice to send the product wherever the hell they wish.

I completely disagree with DR. Byte, because this may be pointed out to a customer who is being billed in the US, and desires to ship an item to a third world country, which I don't blame PayPal for not wanting to offer their PayPal protection for this. First off, I don't think an unverified account has any type of PayPal protection, only the seller's verified account does. And if the seller desires to ship a customer in Siberia a package, and take the risk, PayPal shouldn't offer protection for this. It should be shipped at the seller's own risk, or at least charge insurance on a package.

If a customer comes to my store, like an army Col. did the other day, and the billing address is not the same as the shipping address, the shipping address should not be sent to PayPal instead of the billing address, because PayPal is attempting to verify the card number to the billing address to verify the owner of the card. When the shipping address is placed there instead, the card is automatically declined, and the customer gets pissed.

If Dr. Byte thinks that this is how it is supposed to be now for 8 years, and is not offering an answer for somebody like myself that needs this to work, then I will go use OpenCart, or Magento, or something that will work correctly.

We need a solution that will override this stupid setting, and for us, only shipping to the contiguous 48 states of the US, the shipping address not showing as the billing address will suffice. It's bad enough that the PayPal express module is so screwed up that it needs 100 patches just if you want to display the express checkout button and expect it to work properly, not to mention, if you add sitewide markup, PayPal won't even work, because of the major conflict between the two, and it cancels out the correct communication with PayPal, and return communication sends customers buying more than one item to the whoops page.

We need not the shipping address to show up as the billing address no matter what, so if somebody would like to man up and send the instructions over on how to override this stupid feature, I have already received the ok from PayPal to do so without violating any policy. The express checkout button is shut off, because of the order total glitch in it. So, we don't need any of that to be considered in our answer.

The developers at Zencart, or who write these haven't been losing thousands per month with this issue, we are. Now, if you'd like to give us some insight as how to fix this ingenious swap up, please email it to me at m_v_belanger at yahoo dot com.

We have businesses to run, mouths to feed, and bills to pay. All of this pussyfooting around for 8 years without giving up the answer is horse dung.. just give it up.

PayPal states that it is Zen's error, and it is a really stupid one. I can't wait to call them to say what I have seen here. If I knew this was going to be a problem, I would have never ever used zencart. I have had nothing but really expensive headaches with it, time after time. If I spent all of the money in fixes, updates, and addons in one shot, I could have had the Cadillac of sites.

Just give your users the simple code change. It is our chance if it violates the policies of PayPal, not yours. Even if the issue wasn't there when PayPal completed the card fraud check, how would they know where the item was shipped to anyway? It is supposed to be going to the billing address. Well, what if the customer has a PO Box?

Didn't anybody think when they wrote this stupid module?

Marc Belanger

[Belangers]

Dr. Byte,
That is completely untrue. PayPal does not use the shipping address, in PayPal express, they use the credit cards billing address to compare to the billing address given by the web vendor so they could look and see if the same address is given for the use of the fraud check that they perform.

The answer that has been given since 2004 is complete nonsense, and is a cover up for a miscoded express PayPal module.

First off, if you buy and ship to your own address, this is fine, it is comparing the correct address.
Second, if a customer decides to enter their credit card without having a PayPal account, the address used to check should be the billing address, not the shipping address. PayPal has confirmed with me last night that the system is flopped around, and I could send you the copy of the PayPal support email if you'd like.

If I were the customer, and had a credit card that was set up with a billing address from 10 years ago or better (where they allowed you to set the billing address as a po box) then the shipping address would have to be different.

PayPal does not compare the shipping address of where the item is going to your credit cards billing address. In this example, the payment processor would receive the shipping address as the billing address, and the card transaction would be denied as a fraudulent attempt.

The billing address needs to be sent to the PayPal page period.

How is this done with PayPal express, I have grown tired of seeing the same posts over and over which the answer is the same from you, and still 100% wrong. There has to be a code fix that will allow the billing address to be forwarded to PayPal, and only the billing address, even if the item is shipping to another country.

PayPal does not see where the package is going, they strictly use the address for matching of the billing address to see if the customer using the card has matched the correct billing information in the shopping cart system. If it matches, then they accept the purchase after the card fraud check is complete. They do not the shipping address to perform a fraud check. Nobody in this world would be able to send a gift to another person anywhere on the planet during Christmas time if this were true.

As a matter of fact, here is the copy of the support email.. Maybe you will actually believe this instead of listening to yourself answer the same thing over and over since 2004..


Subject:
addresses being flopped by shopping cart [Incident: 120925-000581]
From:
"PayPal Merchant Technical Support" <[email protected]> (Add as Preferred Sender)
Date: Tue, Sep 25, 2012 10:15 pm
To: [email protected]

Recently you requested assistance from PayPal Merchant Technical Services. Below is a summary of your request and our response.


Subject
addresses being flopped by shopping cart

Discussion Thread
Response Via Email (Tracy) 09/25/2012 07:15 PM
Hello Marc Belanger,

Thank you for contacting PayPal.

During our conversation, you did a test checkout. While going thru your checkout, you determined the address change was not sent to the next page of the cart correctly. Please take screen shots of each page in the cart and pass this to your web developer who can further assist you. It appears some variables have been swapped and the IT professional can unravel this issue and correct it for you.

If you have any further questions or concerns about integrating PayPal with your web site, please feel free to contact us again at: 1-800-852-1973, reply to this ticket, or go to https://paypal.com/integration

Sincerely,
Tracy
Developer Technical Support
PayPal, an eBay Company
Customer By Phone (Entered by Tracy)

[Belangers]

See the bottom of the page, and notice that Dr. Byte did not reply to the note because PayPal is saying the system is working wrong. They told me nowhere in their policy that they need the shipping address from the shopping cart. If a customer is not a PayPal customer, and wishes to checkout as a guest, there is no need for the shipping address to be sent to PayPal. They need the billing address to compare to the credit card to see if the user is the authentic user of the card.. Period! How the hell would they be able to accept a credit card if the billing address was trying to be matched to the shipping address. It would always be declined. It doesn't take a Rocket Scientist to figure that out. that's why the IPN version had an address override setting so it could be set in case there was that problem. The author of this addon has not added any feature to update the modules since then. I think it would be too mind boggling to be able to add something to just allow only the billing address to go to Paypal. PayPal simply doesn't need the shipping address. We need some answers. Will you please post a fix. You've been answering the same wrong thing since 2004. It needs to be flopped if there is a different delivery address so the billing addy goes to PayPal.

[vwebworld]

Any Solution? orders are being lost because of wrong shipping address.

[Ravins]

Hi,
I am setting up site locally. my zencart version is v1.5.1.and it has fec addon. I setup paypal express checkout in sandbox.Tested a sample order (loginto zencart,selected a product,added to cart,clicked proceed to check out. In the check out page, Provided same shipping and billing address.Clicked on confirm order and directed to paypal. Logged into paypal with an account which has different address from shipping and billing.Order is completed and redirected back to zencart. In invoice shipping address is the address provided in paypal.

is it possible to identify if shipping address in zencart and shipping address in paypal(invoice) match. If they do not match let the seller know about it. So that seller contact buyer to confirm shipping address or refunds money back to buyer's account. or I am okay if the order is not processed at all if shipping address in zencart and address in paypal do not match.

This step is very criticalb because user may provide one shipping address in zencart and he may have different address in paypal account.Please help.