No Payment but Orders set to "Processing"

Cart is set up with Express Checkout which has been running fine for a few months. Unpaid orders status set to Pending.

Today, went to process sales and noticed that none of the recent (8) sales actually have the Paypal completion line, and the funds are not showing up in Paypal itself anywhere.

Don't suspect fraud as some recurring customers, and those customers would pay as usual so don't think there is anything untoward happening for the end user. Having said that just had a particularly large order so worried.

Where should I start looking?

Thanks!

Update: Did a test order and same problem, but money not taken out of the Paypal account either. Looking back it seems a few more orders affected in the same way.

Then had another normal order which seems to work fine.

Looks like I have been shipping orders for ages which did not pay because on the erroneous payment status :oops:

Sorry for replying to own thread, but edit button not showing up for me.

Looking through orders it seems that the problem occurs for a period of time encompassing all orders, then it's fine for a day, then it goes screwy for a day. More orders have not been paid for than have and I have been using Express for a good number of months - this is going to be a four figure loss of cost of goods if the payments are lost.

Logging ticket with Paypal after talking to them on the phone.

Some further information (for some reason I can edit a post immediately after posting but after a while it won't let me edit it?).

The IPN option under the Customers drop-down correctly shows just those payments that have been made successfully.

They show a TransID but no Parent Trans ID. I can confirm that this issue has only started happening after switching from IPN to Express Checkout.

Since discovering the problem, we have had a few more orders. Some paid, some not, but all set to processing.

We retested the flow, and again from the end users perspective all is fine except no money is taken.

Accessing /extras/ipn_test.php I get "Illegal Access".

Accessing /extras/curltest.php and data validation was good.

When we noticed the probm, I switched on logging.

Looking at those logs today I notice that that I was previously getting log files prefixed Paypal_CURL_EC, and now that I siwtched on logs I am also getting files marked Paypal_Action_EC.

I have all logs since I switched on logging in a zip. Looking at the time stamps, I seem to get 2 or 3 sets of logs per customer, e.g. more than one combo of Paypal_CURL_EC and Paypal_Action_EC.

I have also, done a screenshot to show the actual chronological order they were in as that will not be preserved in the Zip.

I would rather not post full logs to the forum as it contains customer data like addresses so could anyone wanting to help please PM me for a link?

Thanks.

DMUK:

Some further information (for some reason I can edit a post immediately after posting but after a while it won't let me edit it?).That's normal. If we let you edit things after others had replied to what you originally wrote, the actual meaning and progression of the matter would be lost.
Replying to your own post is exactly the correct method for adding information.

DMUK:

Since discovering the problem, we have had a few more orders. Some paid, some not, but all set to processing.When you look at those orders in the list of all your store's orders, the left column shows an order number, and the next column shows the payment method and shipping method recorded for the order. What does it show for the ones you say didn't get a PayPal payment?
Do you have other payment modules active but set to "false"? If so, you can get some odd behaviour. You should always click Remove to fully deactivate payment modules you're not actually using.

Do you have any of your payment modules set up with any zone restrictions? If so, why? What happens if you remove those restrictions?

DMUK:

Accessing /extras/ipn_test.php I get "Illegal Access".Exactly as expected. That's for developer use only.
The ipncheck.php script is a different tool though.

DMUK:

Looking at the time stamps, I seem to get 2 or 3 sets of logs per customer, e.g. more than one combo of Paypal_CURL_EC and Paypal_Action_EC.There could be up to 12 files per transaction, usually 3 with "CURL" in them, and up to 9 with "Action" in them.
They contain timestamps in the first line of each file so they can be pieced together for reconstruction as needed.

Thanks Dr Byte.

DrByte:

When you look at those orders in the list of all your store's orders, the left column shows an order number, and the next column shows the payment method and shipping method recorded for the order. What does it show for the ones you say didn't get a PayPal payment?

paypalwpp
freeshipper

All orders since enabling Express Checkout show this. I thought it was weird at the time as wpp makes me think it's referring to Website Payments Pro.

DrByte:

Do you have other payment modules active but set to "false"? If so, you can get some odd behaviour. You should always click Remove to fully deactivate payment modules you're not actually using.

No. Express Checkout is the only installed module.

DrByte:

Do you have any of your payment modules set up with any zone restrictions? If so, why? What happens if you remove those restrictions?

Express Checkout is not configured with any zone restrictions.

DrByte:

Exactly as expected. That's for developer use only.
The ipncheck.php script is a different tool though.

Okay. Here is the result of ipncheck.php:

IPNCHECK.PHP - Version 1.0

IPN TESTING - POSTING to PayPal via: ssl://www.paypal.com:443

IPN TESTING - Confirmation/Validation response: RESPONSE RECEIVED - Communications OKAY

Script finished.

DrByte:

There could be up to 12 files per transaction, usually 3 with "CURL" in them, and up to 9 with "Action" in them.
They contain timestamps in the first line of each file so they can be pieced together for reconstruction as needed.

Okay that makes a bit more sense.

DMUK:

paypalwpp
freeshipper

All orders since enabling Express Checkout show this. I thought it was weird at the time as wpp makes me think it's referring to Website Payments Pro.
The use of "paypalwpp" for the name of the express checkout module was an unfortunate result of some problems encountered during development of the express checkout module. However, rest assured that that's the correct name.

The "website payments pro" module is called "paypaldp", where "dp" refers to "direct payment", which is the name of the internal paypal services that the pro module actually uses.

So, in short, at least the correct module has been recorded as processing that transaction. (Sometimes people have other modules enabled and those get mis-selected during processing and that causes problems.)

DrByte:

The use of "paypalwpp" for the name of the express checkout module was an unfortunate result of some problems encountered during development of the express checkout module. However, rest assured that that's the correct name.

The "website payments pro" module is called "paypaldp", where "dp" refers to "direct payment", which is the name of the internal paypal services that the pro module actually uses.

So, in short, at least the correct module has been recorded as processing that transaction. (Sometimes people have other modules enabled and those get mis-selected during processing and that causes problems.)

Okay thank you for the clarification.

Do you have any advice with regards what to do next? I have tried looking at the logs myself and cannot see anything that strikes me as odd but I am not 100% sure what I am looking for.

I had a double order problem with IPN and thought my problems were solved with EC :blush:

Many thanks.

For one of the "odd" orders, post the corresponding log files with "CURL" in the filename, so I can review them.

Thanks Dr.

Attached are two sets of logs each from one transaction, one before full logging was switched on, and one afterwards, named appropriately. The CURL based logs seem to be stored regardless of the logging settings in the Payment module.

Some of the customer data has been masked (just name and address), if you need to raw un-edited files I can send you a PM.

NOTE: logs removed for privacy

Hey Dr,

Did you managed to discover anything in those logs?

Many thanks.

Express Checkout (and Pro) transactions consist of 3 steps handled over CURL: SetExpressCheckout, GetExpressCheckoutDetails, and DoExpressCheckout.
"Set" sends basic details to Paypal and gets the customer to login.
"Get" gets relevant details from PP for the store to use in fulfillment, such as shipping address.
"Do" does the actual payment, ie: when the customer clicks Confirm on the checkout-confirmation screen.

Your logs show only "Set" and "Get", and not "Do". Thus, the transactions are not really being sent to PayPal. It's as if something on your site is switching payment methods for the final Confirmation screen, or something during the processing after clicking the submit button is skipping the payment altogether.

I can't replicate the problem on a clean install. There are two approaches to take:
a) set up a clean fully patched new store on the latest version. Test it and make sure it's working properly. Then progressively build it up to whatever you've got on your store now, testing all the way along to be sure nothing's broken it. Then use the new site.

b) or compare every file on your site against originals, and identify and fix whatever differences are breaking things.

DrByte:

Express Checkout (and Pro) transactions consist of 3 steps handled over CURL: SetExpressCheckout, GetExpressCheckoutDetails, and DoExpressCheckout.
"Set" sends basic details to Paypal and gets the customer to login.
"Get" gets relevant details from PP for the store to use in fulfillment, such as shipping address.
"Do" does the actual payment, ie: when the customer clicks Confirm on the checkout-confirmation screen.

Your logs show only "Set" and "Get", and not "Do". Thus, the transactions are not really being sent to PayPal. It's as if something on your site is switching payment methods for the final Confirmation screen, or something during the processing after clicking the submit button is skipping the payment altogether.

I can't replicate the problem on a clean install. There are two approaches to take:
a) set up a clean fully patched new store on the latest version. Test it and make sure it's working properly. Then progressively build it up to whatever you've got on your store now, testing all the way along to be sure nothing's broken it. Then use the new site.

b) or compare every file on your site against originals, and identify and fix whatever differences are breaking things.

Thank you very much indeed - I am actually in the middle of setting up a clean install which has shown me something I was blind to - I am running an SEO URL mod (SEFU) which I ported over when I upgraded to 1.3.8 - I had completely forgotten.

Not 100% sure that it is the problem but it's certain my prime suspect.

Thanks again! Coffee & Doughnut's will be on me as soon as I get it working.

Good point. Most of the so-called SEFU addons break PayPal processing and other similar things.

Well - a week or so later, on clean copy of the code everything seems to be working fine.

htaccess file is full to the brim with about 30 redirects making sure the pages indexed in the search engines still work and are 302'ed to the new URL's.

My copy is completely stock now - so much less of a headache at upgrade time. Amen to overrides!

Thanks Dr. :smile: