shiptostste problem with UK shipping address

Hello Everyone,

I would like to report a potential bug with the PayPal Express Checkout features in ZC v1.3.7

My setup details are as follows:

Zencart v1.3.7 + PPEC-137-patch + ultimate_seo_urls_v2.103

I have setup the above version so that i can test the new PayPal Express Checkout features. I set everythign up, both in paypal and zencart (paypal live, not sandbox)

When processing a test order, I got the errors reported, below:

As you can see, the error is quite friendly and tells me that there is no value being passed for shiptostate. The shipping address that I used was UK shipping address. Therefore the value for the 'state' field for this shipping address was 'manchester'. The country was 'united kingdom'. In the UK we dont actually really have 'states' perse, but we have region names, such as northwest, southwest etc.

Anyway, as a debugging excersise, I changed the test customers shipping city to 'New York' shipping state to 'New York' and entered a valid New York zip code - to my surprise IT WORKED PERFECTLY - took me to the papal payment page.

However, this does not solve my problem.... for a typical UK address, the PayPal Express Checkout does not work.

To check that my store was correctly set up, I went into Admin->Configuration->Mystore and found that the store 'country' was correctly set to UK.

PLEASE CAN ANYONE HELP WITH THIS ISSUE. thanks in advance!

Errors reported:

(live transaction) --> https://api-3t.paypal.com/nvp
Request Headers: array (
0 => 'Content-Type: text/namevalue',
1 => 'X-VPS-Timeout: 45',
2 => 'X-VPS-VIT-Client-Type: PHP/cURL',
3 => 'X-VPS-VIT-Integration-Product
: PHP::Zen Cart - WPP-NVP',
4 => 'X-VPS-VIT-Integration-Version: 0.1',
)

Request Parameters: {SetExpressCheckout} array (
'LOCALECODE' => 'US',
'PAYMENTACTION' => 'Authorization',
'ADDROVERRIDE' => '1',
'SHIPTONAME' => 'Naani',
'SHIPTOSTREET' => '1 Random Street',
'SHIPTOSTREET2' => '',
'SHIPTOCITY' => 'Manchester',
'SHIPTOZIP' => 'M24 5JB',
'SHIPTOSTATE' => '',
'SHIPTOCOUNTRY' => 'GB',
'REQCONFIRMSHIPPING' => '1',
'EMAIL' => '[email protected]',
'PHONENUM' => '0123456789',
'AMT' => '2.64',
'RETURNURL' =>
'http://www.i_have_removed_for_privacy.com/shop/ipn_main_handler.php?type=ec',
'CANCELURL' =>
'http://www.i_have_removed_for_privacy.com/shop/checkout_shipping.html?ec_cancel=1',
'PAGESTYLE' => 'PayPal',
'METHOD' => 'SetExpressCheckout',
'CURRENCYCODE' => 'GBP',
'USER' => 'xxxxxxxxx_api1.hotmail.com',
'PWD' => '****************',
'VERSION' => '2.3',
'SIGNATURE' => '****************************************************caHZ',
)

Response: array (
'ACK' => 'Failure',
'L_ERRORCODE0' => '81108',
'L_SHORTMESSAGE0' => 'Missing Parameter',
'L_LONGMESSAGE0' => 'ShipToState : Required parameter missing',
'L_SEVERITYCODE0' => 'Error',
)

Turn off the SEO ... does this correct the problem?

Hi Ajeh,

Thanks for your prompt reply. Tried turning off SEO, but no diffeence, identical error, still complaining about shiptostate being blank.

any more ideas?

We found PayPal made some changes in their latest updates ...

There is a new patch released last night for this, see if this corrects the issue and please let us know ...

http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=56216

Hi Ajeh,

Again, thanks for your reply, tried the updated patch, removed the paypal express module and reinstalled it, still no joy. Also found the following thread:

http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-54760.html

I did try one thing which got me further:

I hard coded /includes/modules/payment/paypalwpp.php file:

$options['LOCALECODE'] = '';

and

$options['SHIPTOSTATE'] = 'UK';

now, the method in my madness is this: if the localecode is set to US, (as in my previous posting), the shiptostate is required + it is validated by paypal. However, if you leave localecode as null, it defaults to whatever the paypal account is, i.e. UK paypal in my case. The shiptostate is still required, but you can get away with entering anything in here. I hard coded 'UK'.

However, I am not home and dry just yet. Now it does actually take me to the paypal website, but presents me with a screen which only has two fileds in it, one for the paypal account username and one for the paypal password and then a couple of links, one for sign up to paypal and one to return to the merchant.

what am I missing??? is this something that is required in my paypal account.

Thanks for your help... any more ideas appreciated... i can feel it in my grasp :-)

naani1:

Now it does actually take me to the paypal website, but presents me with a screen which only has two fileds in it, one for the paypal account username and one for the paypal password and then a couple of links, one for sign up to paypal and one to return to the merchant.

what am I missing??? is this something that is required in my paypal account.This is normal.
If you've logged into PayPal from this browser and not cleared cookies, you'll get a PayPal login page. If you don't have the cookie in your browser, you'll be presented with another page that lets you enter payment details w/o being a PayPal customer.

naani1:

I did try one thing which got me further:

I hard coded /includes/modules/payment/paypalwpp.php file:

$options['LOCALECODE'] = '';

and

$options['SHIPTOSTATE'] = 'UK';

now, the method in my madness is this: if the localecode is set to US, (as in my previous posting), the shiptostate is required + it is validated by paypal. However, if you leave localecode as null, it defaults to whatever the paypal account is, i.e. UK paypal in my case. The shiptostate is still required, but you can get away with entering anything in here. I hard coded 'UK'.

1. Valid LOCALECODEs (according to PayPal's documentation) are:
   AU, DE, FR, IT, GB, ES, US. Any other values default to US.
   This shouldn't have any bearing on the reported error returned from PayPal.

2. For the particular customer address you're sending to PayPal when this occurs, what is the state/province value in Zen Cart? If it's blank in Zen Cart, then it'll be blank when sending to PayPal ... thus causing the problem you're reporting...

Hi DrByte,

Many thanks for your response. My shop will only sell to UK, so I have hard coded 'GB' as LOCALECODE. This should do the trick. After clearing browser cache, i managed to see the correct paypal page which offers customers the chance to enter creditcard detials.

PROBLEM SOLVED!

many thanks to Ajeh Also.

I have one last question, which I should post seperately i guess, but I will be cheeky and ask here anyway.

Is there a way to get a more useful description of product sent to paypal, rather than the 'STORE_NAME' Purchase Item 1 etc etc..

Kind regards,

Naani1

naani1:

I have one last question, which I should post seperately i guess, but I will be cheeky and ask here anyway.

Is there a way to get a more useful description of product sent to paypal, rather than the 'STORE_NAME' Purchase Item 1 etc etc..

The detailed line-item information is sent automatically for Express Checkout transactions ... but ONLY if there are no discounts, coupons, gift certificates or other subtotal deductions applied to the order (since PayPal can't do subtraction mathematics).

DrByte:

1. Valid LOCALECODEs (according to PayPal's documentation) are:
   AU, DE, FR, IT, GB, ES, US. Any other values default to US.
   This shouldn't have any bearing on the reported error returned from PayPal.

naani1:

Hi DrByte,

Many thanks for your response. My shop will only sell to UK, so I have hard coded 'GB' as LOCALECODE. This should do the trick. After clearing browser cache, i managed to see the correct paypal page which offers customers the chance to enter creditcard detials.

PROBLEM SOLVED!

Some updates were released in a patch earlier today, incorporating things related to the discussion above. It now detects LOCALECODE based on the Country selected as the store's default ... and only if that fails, it will then select based on customer's selected language.
Patch is here: http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?p=331974#post331974

I am based in the UK. Even Having applied the latest patches I am having the same problem - ShipToState : Required parameter missing

Looking at the log file :

[LOCALECODE] => GB
[CURRENCY] => GBP
[PAYMENTACTION] => Sale
[ADDROVERRIDE] => 1
[SHIPTONAME] => Paypal Test
[SHIPTOSTREET] => Paypal Road
[SHIPTOSTREET2] => 
[SHIPTOCITY] => London
[SHIPTOZIP] => N10 1BY
[SHIPTOSTATE] => 
[SHIPTOCOUNTRY] => GB

The SHIPTOSTATE is blank, but with LOCALECODE (correctly) at GB this shouldn't matter(?)

I have customers in UK, US and Europe, but as previously stated for UK and Europe customers selecting a 'STATE' is counter intuitive.

I am running into the same problem in my testshop - located in Norway. I have not activated logfiles yet, but the email error reports say: Paypal Express checkout error (81108) - and body of email states "Missing Parameter - ShipToState : Required parameter missing"
This parameter should not be required, in Norway (as in most of Europe) we do not have states, we do have counties, but they are never used as part of address.

I am running a clean install of 1.3.7, with the latest patch for PPE and norwegian language, taxes and currency activated.

added: I tried both with and without a Norwegian county entered in the checkout prosess, but I still get thrown back to the startpage of checkout.

However; if I choose Paypal express at once in the shoppingcart, the order is accepted, with the same information put in...

Would like to add that I have the same problem. Find it too confusing asking people in the UK to select State or County as they are called here. For UK you generally need house number and postcode and deliveries work fine. I am turning this module off until the UK is included by Paypal.

Is there anywhere we can let Paypal know this is a feature they need to recognise - probably DrByte is the one to answer/forward. this.

Pulsatilla:

added: I tried both with and without a Norwegian county entered in the checkout prosess, but I still get thrown back to the startpage of checkout.

However; if I choose Paypal express at once in the shoppingcart, the order is accepted, with the same information put in...

Correction - I tried it without logging in to Paypal, just adding information through the creditcard-page - and when I am returned to shopping cart; I have a billingadress in Norway and a ship-to adress in United States. Easy to spot the error, but this brings me problem with the taxes, as I charge all norwegian customers 25% VAT, but when shipping out of the country, the VAT is deducted. Any fix to the problem?

This is still a problem for our UK store, still getting (81108) Missing Parameter - ShipToState : Required parameter missing, with the latest patches installed.

While a bandage approach is possible, I have escalated the root cause of this to PayPal tech support, as there are some issues they need to address on this matter.

One thing you could do is add actual "zones" to your "United Kingdom" and "Norway" etc countries in your Zen Cart admin. This way, your new customers will be auto-linked to working zones, and then possibly the "state" field will be correctly populated with the defined name of the zone.
In the case of UK addresses, counties could be used as zone names. There's a contribution in the downloads area that addresses UK zones, which you might consider trying out after doing a database backup.
Not sure what zone info to use for Norway.

PayPal requires that a State be supplied ... and it cannot be blank. Repeating the city name would probably suffice, but of course that doesn't look as pretty in your order-detail records.

ChrisK:

The SHIPTOSTATE is blank, but with LOCALECODE (correctly) at GB this shouldn't matter(?)

No - the "LOCALECODE" is used primarily to determine the language of the page viewed on the PayPal site. I don't think PayPal uses it to drive any other specific rules such as address format exceptions.

I was following the logic of what Naani1 had said:

if the localecode is set to US, (as in my previous posting), the shiptostate is required + it is validated by paypal. However, if you leave localecode as null, it defaults to whatever the paypal account is, i.e. UK paypal in my case.
I thought the LOCALECODE setting then determined if state was required.

The zone option presents a problem as I have customers from every country in europe and > Not sure what zone info to use for Norway. YEP! (or sweden, germany, france etc etc.)

and it cannot be blank. Repeating the city name would probably suffice, but of course that doesn't look as pretty in your order-detail records.
This doesn't seem to work. On the log file test - posted above. The customers state was set to London - but passed a blank value. I'll double check this. From what I read on the paypal dev forum the shiptostate has to be a recognised two letter US or Canadian format. ie. CA...