Payments Without Orders, Orders Without Payment

How to explain this. LOL! I have a customer, from Australia, who has shopped at my store regularly for months. Never had an issue before. She placed an order a couple of weeks ago, checked out through Paypal as usual (we use IPN) and was redirected back to the store, to an old order. Yet the new one was nowhere to be found in her account.

Something similar has happened to me at other stores, too. However, after going to "My Account," my new order was there and able to download. In my customer's case, there is no new order anywhere.

After this happened to her two weeks ago, I installed the Paypal sessions mod, thinking her order was stuck and needed to be pushed through. Unfortunately, no order info was found for her there either, though I did find a bunch of other supposedly stuck orders. After pushing those through, they turned out to be "ghosts." No payments, no downloads were taken (we carry virtual products) and no complaints. Very strange, to say the least.

The same thing happened to my customer again last night. I received the Paypal itemized receipt (well, as itemized as they can make it) but there is no order for her anywhere in Zen. When I checked the sessions/stuck order data, I found one order there, from another customer, but no payment to go along with it. No downloads taken, no complaints. Which you'd think I'd receive if the customer paid for something she didn't receive. And still nothing for the customer in question. Again, very weird!

I'm running 1.3.9f. I believe I was on 1.3.9e when it happened to her the first time. I also use Super Orders and have a host of mods installed. Unfortunately, I did not have the Paypal logs running, since I'd thought all was clear with my original issue, double orders. Thanks again to DrB for resolving that problem. I'm sorry to come up with another one! LOL!

Any help on this would be appreciated. Thanks so much!

The "ghost" entries revealed by the paypal-sessions-viewer addon will be abandoned purchases. Hence no complaints and no payments. Using that tool is something you should tread carefully with since it is not an accurate reflection of all actual completed orders. It should only ever be used as a last resort when looking for real transactions which are missing because of a problem between paypal's server and yours. And it's never needed, nor even useful, if using Express Checkout instead of the IPN module.

Upon returning from PayPal and reaching the checkout_success page, the customer is shown their last-known order number in your store. If your store hasn't received the IPN notification from PayPal during the few seconds it takes the customer to come back to your store, then they'll see their prior order, and not their current one. There are two ways to fix that: either use Express Checkout instead, or fix all the problems with IPNs being received or handled properly.

I'll need to see logs if I'm to help you determine whether this issue is something to do with your store, or Zen Cart code, or whether the problem is on PayPal's end.

Thanks, DrB! I've turned the logs back on and have asked the customer to come shopping again. Will keep you posted! :)

Happened again, to a different customer. Said she had a cart going, and then the items in the cart disappeared. She ordered twice, actually. One was fine - received both payment receipt and order confirmation. On the other, I only received the payment.

Looked in the sessions viewer and I see the original order she said disappeared, but the one without confirmation wasn't there. Logs of both orders have been uploaded for you. Will PM with a link. TY, DrB! :)

Your logs show a successful transaction for $1.80, and a failed one for $6.80, which looks like it's for $1.80 plus $5.00. I've no idea, based on the logs, where the $5 came from.

Thanks for checking it out, DrB. As I mentioned, the first "disappearing" order (on the customer's end) was for a total of $6.80, and is the one appearing presumably as abandoned in the sessions data.

The next thing through was a Paypal payment receipt for $1.80, but no order confirmation. That should have been order 10361. The customer ordered again and spent $5 a few minutes later. I assume to pick up the rest of what was in her cart the first time, which would total the original/abandoned purchase of $6.80. This time, I received both confirmation and receipt, which is order 10361 - according to Zen, even though it really should have been 10362. The next customer who ordered was assigned 10362, and all was fine with that transaction. So I have a $1.80 receipt without an order, and the customer had no download, etc.

I gave you the logs from both times - the payment without order, and the successful transaction, both from the same customer. She did say it was possible she might have hit the redirect link before Paypal redirected her automatically. Please let me know if there's anything else I can do or provide to figure out if that's all it is. If so, I can add a line on the checkout page instructing them to wait for auto-redirect no matter how itchy their fingers may be. ;)

Thanks again for your help! :)

The $6.80 order was rejected by Zen Cart because the order confirmation from PayPal was for $1.80, and the store was expecting payment for $6.80.

Please forgive me if this is a stupid question. How can that happen? I don't recall an opportunity to change my order total at other stores! LOL! ;)

I've no idea how it happened. A lot more details about what exactly happened and in what order, etc, would be required in order to reconstruct it to repeat it. It's doubtful that that can be easily assembled. :(

Okay, then. Thanks, DrB. I guess I'll just keep the logs enabled and let you know if it happens again.