PayPal payments received, but orders not showing up in ZC

My PayPal IPN, Website Payments Standard, has recently started dropping orders. The payment from the customer will show up in my PayPal account, but there is no record of it in my ZC. This is an intermittent error. Out of 25 PayPal payments over the last month, 4 of them didn't show up in my store.

It is limited to PayPal only, not my credit card processor.

I've had PayPal working correctly for years now, and I can't discern any changes made since this problem started happening. I may have done a ZC update that I'm not recalling right now, but I definitely haven't made any changes to the payment module or in PayPal. Also, some of the customers that have been affected have previously made successful orders.

Since this has come up, I've turned on logging, and I just had a new failure. The log follows:

Jul 19 2010 11:10 -- IPN PROCESSING INITIATED.
*** Originating IP: 66.211.170.66

Jul 19 2010 11:10 -- IPN INFO - POST VARS received (sorted):
Array
(
[business] => [email protected]
[charset] => windows-1252
[custom] => zenid=5f6ebc8e580b036389d8bbbe9eb3830a
[first_name] => Robert
[handling_amount] => 0.00
[item_name] => FuelSaver-MPG Inc. Purchase
[item_number] => Store Receipt
[last_name] => Volk
[mc_currency] => USD
[mc_fee] => 7.26
[mc_gross] => 240.07
[notify_version] => 3.0
[payer_business_name] => Transitional Technologies, LLC
[payer_email] => [email protected]
[payer_id] => SQGZCWTKFMRX6
[payer_status] => verified
[payment_date] => 11:10:25 Jul 19, 2010 PDT
[payment_fee] => 7.26
[payment_gross] => 240.07
[payment_status] => Completed
[payment_type] => instant
[protection_eligibility] => Ineligible
[quantity] => 1
[receiver_email] => [email protected]
[receiver_id] => SSRHE4DTFTFYN
[residence_country] => US
[shipping] => 0.00
[tax] => 0.00
[transaction_subject] => zenid=5f6ebc8e580b036389d8bbbe9eb3830a
[txn_id] => 50M18627CR962990E
[txn_type] => web_accept
[verify_sign] => Ai1PaghZh5FmBLCDCTQpwG8jB264ApKJFOB9YHnw745mHk2rgp1ufa5K
)

Jul 19 2010 11:10 -- IPN INFO - POST VARS to be sent back for validation:
To: www.paypal.com:80
POST /cgi-bin/webscr HTTP/1.1
Host: https://www.paypal.com
Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Content-length: 900
Connection: close

Array
(
[mc_gross] => 240.07
[protection_eligibility] => Ineligible
[payer_id] => SQGZCWTKFMRX6
[tax] => 0.00
[payment_date] => 11:10:25 Jul 19, 2010 PDT
[payment_status] => Completed
[charset] => windows-1252
[first_name] => Robert
[mc_fee] => 7.26
[notify_version] => 3.0
[custom] => zenid=5f6ebc8e580b036389d8bbbe9eb3830a
[payer_status] => verified
[business] => [email protected]
[quantity] => 1
[verify_sign] => Ai1PaghZh5FmBLCDCTQpwG8jB264ApKJFOB9YHnw745mHk2rgp1ufa5K
[payer_email] => [email protected]
[txn_id] => 50M18627CR962990E
[payment_type] => instant
[payer_business_name] => Transitional Technologies, LLC
[last_name] => Volk
[receiver_email] => [email protected]
[payment_fee] => 7.26
[receiver_id] => SSRHE4DTFTFYN
[txn_type] => web_accept
[item_name] => FuelSaver-MPG Inc. Purchase
[mc_currency] => USD
[item_number] => Store Receipt
[residence_country] => US
[handling_amount] => 0.00
[transaction_subject] => zenid=5f6ebc8e580b036389d8bbbe9eb3830a
[payment_gross] => 240.07
[shipping] => 0.00
[cmd] => _notify-validate
)

Jul 19 2010 11:10 -- IPN INFO - Confirmation/Validation response
SUCCESS

Jul 19 2010 11:10 -- Breakpoint: 1 - Collected data from PayPal notification

Jul 19 2010 11:10 -- IPN INFO :: Transaction email details.
From IPN = [email protected] | [email protected]
From CONFIG = [email protected]

Jul 19 2010 11:10 -- Breakpoint: 2 - Validated transaction components

Jul 19 2010 11:10 -- Breakpoint: 3 - Communication method verified

Jul 19 2010 11:10 -- IPN NOTICE :: Could not find matched txn_id record in DB. Therefore is new to us.

Jul 19 2010 11:10 -- Breakpoint: 4 - Details: txn_type=unique ordersID = 0 IPN_id=0

Relevant data from POST:
txn_type = unique
parent_txn_id = None
txn_id = 50M18627CR962990E

Jul 19 2010 11:10 -- Breakpoint: 5 - Transaction type (txn_type) = unique

Jul 19 2010 11:10 -- IPN WARNING :: Currency/Amount Mismatch. Details:
PayPal email address = [email protected]
| mc_currency = USD
| submitted_currency = USD
| order_currency = USD
| mc_gross = 240.07
| converted_amount = 257.75
| order_amount = 257.75

The 2 things that look odd in the above are:

1. the txn_id message - is this a transaction ID? Shouldn't it be finding the current transaction? I'm not sure what this is, but it doesn't sound good.

2. the final warning about currency/amount mismatch. This is odd because the payment is coming from a US location, to a US location, and there shouldn't be any currency mismatch.

Can you see anything here that could help me get to the bottom of this?

The problem is the mismatch on price. PayPal is processing $240.07 and the order in your store waiting for PayPal's activation message is expecting a payment of $257.75.
When they don't match, Zen Cart will NOT record the order completion, because that would be typical of fraudulent activity, or at least an indication of a problem somewhere in your site.
Common causes of amounts not matching include currency exchange rate problems (ie: default currency isn't set to 1.00000), or customer shopping on your store in non-USD but having your PayPal account configured to force conversion to USD before submitting, and then PayPal doing another exchange using a different rate ... etc.

You also didn't mention which version of Zen Cart you're using, nor why you're using Website Payments Standard instead of the more reliable and modern Express Checkout.

Ooooops! :blush: I usually always give the version info, but it's ZC 1.3.8a, on a LAMP server with PHP version 5.2.13.

As for why I'm not using the more reliable Express Checkout, well, I guess because I didn't know it was better. I've been set up like I am now for years, and haven't had any trouble. I'll look into how the change to Express Checkout would work... Thanks. That may be the correct solution.

Also thanks for the lead on the error message. I'm not sure why there would be a discrepancy in the amount, but it gives me a clue to continue my investigation if that proves necessary.

If you're sticking with v1.3.8a instead of upgrading, have you applied the security patches for v1.3.8a? If not, you're leaving yourself open to security vulnerabilities.

I most certainly have kept up with the security patches, thank you. I've resisted the upgrade to 1.3.9x because of the number of modifications I've made to my site, including core files. Not to mention all the modules I've installed which may or may not work with 1.3.9. I've been kind of dragging my feet, hoping many of the modules I use, will be made 1.3.9x compliant (if needed).

However, I did solve my issue in a big way. First of all, thanks to the clues you gave me, I found the error in my code that caused Website Payments Standard to not work. I had some custom code involving my quantity discounts, and the discrepancy was due to the discount only being applied to one of the 2 compared figures. So that is working now.

I then went ahead and switched to Express Checkout. The reason I didn't use it before was because I didn't like the way it promoted PayPal with the big orange express checkout buttons. But I was able to easily get rid of those by modding to override files. By also disabling all the "Express" options in the Express Checkout Module admin, it now looks and feels exactly like my old Website Payments Standard module. But I guess this module isn't prone to silent errors.

Thanks DrByte.

kehrli:

I then went ahead and switched to Express Checkout. The reason I didn't use it before was because I didn't like the way it promoted PayPal with the big orange express checkout buttons. But I was able to easily get rid of those by modding to override files. By also disabling all the "Express" options in the Express Checkout Module admin, it now looks and feels exactly like my old Website Payments Standard module.Just be aware that doing so is contrary to PayPal's integration requirements.> kehrli:

But I guess this module isn't prone to silent errors.Correct. The silent errors that the Standard/IPN module suffers from do not cause the missing-orders problems when using Express Checkout.

Just be aware that doing so is contrary to PayPal's integration requirements.

Hmmm. I didn't know that. I'll check into that one.

Thanks again DrByte for all your help.