PayPal/IPN works BUT no product details...?!

During the PayPal payment process the actual specifics of the product/s being purchased are NOT shown…

Example:
Instead of showing the product details:
1 x Kinergetics Unit 1 = $0.22
Course Date: 1-2 Sept 07

--> it shows “Store Name - Purchase”

This seems a little odd, as it would mean that the customer doesn’t know what they’re actually paying for!??

QUESTIONS:

1. Are the actual product/s details meant to be shown in PayPal?

2. Have I missed something in the set-up or configuration?

STORE DETAILS:
Store URL: http://www.baysidekinesiology.com/index.php (under development)

Test products:

http://baysidekinesiology.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=13_14&products_id=24

http://baysidekinesiology.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=20&products_id=17

ZenCart: 1.3.7

CAPTCHA Using TTF GD
Categories Dressing 1.0
Expanded Category List 1.0
HTML Image Manager 1.0
Ultimate SEO URL’s 2.103 (but disabled as it makes the CAPTCHA images not display!)

No the items are not supposed to display in paypal,
they customer and yourself will get an itemized receipt from your Zen Cart, as long as you have the paypal site setup correct,

make sure that the email address you are using in zen cart for paypal is the primary email listed in paypal.com

and that its case sensitive

I agree it is surprising that no product details are passed to PayPal, but AFAIK there are only a couple of custom fields that can be used to transfer additional info and they are limited to 256 chars.

Are product details passed to any of the other gateways? :dontgetit

I am very concerned that this limitation will cause abandoned carts. I see customer confusion if the cart details are not passed to PayPal.

Really, this is a MAJOR flaw in the payment process. Can this be reworked?

I'm not trying to compare one cart to another but "for the record" our main cart, an OSCommerce store, passes the product titles through the PayPal IPN just fine. I was hoping to go live with this new cart today, but now I'm not sure if I should...

Any thoughts??
StoryBook

this is a short coming on paypals part, it DOSNT work passing all items IF you have any discounts,
it will NOT work,

your customer gets a FULL itemized list to confirm before they go to paypal

Merlinpa1969:

this is a short coming on paypals part, it DOSNT work passing all items IF you have any discounts, it will NOT work,
your customer gets a FULL itemized list to confirm before they go to paypal

Thanks for responding.

You say "this is a shortcoming of PayPal". Please explain "this", if you would. All I'm looking for is the product title to be passed.

I don't use coupons or discounts, and I don't see in the PayPal IPN setup of ZenCart an option to use either aggregate or itemized carts like I have in my OSC setup.

If in fact I can't pass the product title, is there a way to at least suppress the "item 1" line that shown up at PayPal? Again, if I use an aggregate cart with OSC, just the total gets passed. No item line shows at all. It's confusing to show "item 1" if a customer has five items in their cart...

That is the main complaint I have with this module, because my potential customers will be buying multiple items...that's the nature of the site.

Any help here would be GREATLY appreciated!!

Thanks again,
StoryBook

you can open the paypal.php and replace item1 with whatever you want,
1.3.7 with patches I believe pases the store name

paypal will literally choke on an order passed to it with discounts,

while this may not affect you it does others, this is the reason this was taken out,

you can always use paypal express

I took a look at the osCommerce IPN mod for PayPal and it does indeed pass the product name for a single product, but it isn't clear what happens if you buy more than one item. I don't use OSC so I cannot say.

I have a JavaScript form that can be used with PayPal 'buy now' buttons which concatenates several input form fields into the two available custom PayPal fields. However, there are limits to what you can include. Even if Zen Cart could pass more data to PayPal, if someone purchased 20 items in one order it would probably choke PayPal, with or without attributes.

I must agree with StoryBook, zero points to PayPal for this limitation. The point at which you press 'debit my account' is the time you need to see what you are actually buying on screen. :no:

thats why there is a CONFIRM page and button,

I understand what you are saying, and I appreciate it may not be Zen Cart's fault, but for a user it is bad. They wind up on the PayPal website with a 'Pay £200 now' button and nothing on that page to indicate what they are paying for.

Many people are still nervous about buying online and this does nothing to reassure them. It is poor design and I agree that some customers may chicken-out at the last minute.

I recently paid for some software on a site that took CC details directly and my order details were visible right to the end of the transaction. Do all the gateways work this way, because I may seriously recommend a change for our client.

If you choose to use the PayPal Express Checkout module instead of the IPN module, all the shopping-cart details are passed to PayPal and visible on the PayPal receipt etc.

At the present time, there are limitations to the way PayPal and the IPN module share the information. As such, the aggregate cart approach is currently embraced. That may or may not change in the future.

In the meantime, the Express Checkout module shares all the details.

As for other gateways ... when you pay by Credit Card through a gateway like Authorize.net ... your customer never cares about the line-item details ... and they never see them. Just like paying by debit card or credit card at any brick-and-mortar store ... you get a separate receipt for the payment, which they staple to your store receipt showing all the details of the items purchased.

While some customers may prefer to see details, many also only care that the final total matches the amount they confirmed on the order-confirmation page before they got to PayPal to login and finish their payment.
If the majority of your customers are more finicky than that, then you may need to embrace the Express Checkout module if you want the line-item details to show up on the PayPal receipts etc for now.

Thanks everyone for your responses!

Last question. I can live with IPN not passing the description at this time, except for the line item issue. I need to require accounts at my site for customer support issues, so the Express option doesn't seem to be a good fit for me.

When Zencart passes off to PayPal, the payment window shows two lines.

1. Shop Name
2. item #1

The second line says "item #1" no matter how many items you actually have in your cart.

If I can't pass the Item Title, can I edit that string to say "Purchase Total"? Which file do I need to modify in order to accomplish this?

I'm kinda new to this...my wife does the OSC site. Please direct me to the appropriate file (path location), and maybe even an idea of the string I'm looking for??

Really, thanks bunches for any help!

Kevin
(StoryBook)

StoryBook:

I need to require accounts at my site for customer support issues, so the Express option doesn't seem to be a good fit for me.The Express Checkout option actually "does" create an account for your customer automatically. And it will email their password to them also. So your customer-support issues will not be hindered by using the Express Checkout option.

StoryBook:

When Zencart passes off to PayPal, the payment window shows two lines.

1. Shop Name
2. item #1

The second line says "item #1" no matter how many items you actually have in your cart.

If I can't pass the Item Title, can I edit that string to say "Purchase Total"?Yes. If you install the latest PayPal patch you'll notice that it's been changed to say "Store Receipt" instead of "1", making it a little more friendly.

Thx DrByte. I'll take a look at PayPal Express.

In the meantime I will add some text to my Zen Cart checkout so customers are forewarned that when they reach the PayPal page it only deals with processing the gross order value.

You live and learn. :cool:

Dr. Byte, you're a genius! thanks for helping us with Paypal. I had the same problems as everyone and did everything you said and now it works beauuuuuuuuuuutifully! Thanks a bunch and God bless you abundantly! Check me out at
http://www.mygenesisnow.com :clap:

DrByte:

it's been changed to say "Store Receipt" instead of "1", making it a little more friendly.

Any easy way to have it display the order number instead of "Item #Store Receipt"?

(I'm using the External Order Number Generator http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showpost.php?p=404625&postcount=3 in case that matters)

kaz:

Any easy way to have it display the order number instead of "Item #Store Receipt"?

(I'm using the External Order Number Generator http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showpost.php?p=404625&postcount=3 in case that matters)

No. The order number is not generated until after PayPal has been paid.