We have implemented paypal subscriptions and have been testing them in the sandbox for about 2 months. In out IPN transactions, there are several events that we see that are unexpected:
the occasional 'subscr_failed'
the even worse 'recurring_payment_suspended_due_to_max_failed_payment'
Some of our test sessions were for subscriptions recurring daily, some weekly, and some monthly.
Neither of the two events above were caused by us in the sandbox account.
Can anyone tell me where these come from, any why they occur in the sandbox? I am afraid to go live if the behaviour can have randon events like this.
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I'm currently using PayPal's adaptive payment system to process purchases on my e-commerce platform.
This has been working successfully for the past 5 years. Last week, there was a situation where my platform's system did not record IPN responses from PayPal. This was an intermittent issue. Lets say, 5 transactions were made in a day - 3 were recorded and 2 weren't. Note that there was no code change done in recent times. I also tried resending IPN messages from PayPal's IPN history page, but to no success.
On contacting PayPal, I was asked to check my IPN listener, which again had no issues. I'm quite puzzled as to what might be causing these issues.
In the last 24 hours, all the transactions stopped receiving IPN messages. On checking PayPal's IPN history page to retry sending IPN messages, I could not find any of the messages for the transactions that happened today. I am unable to process confirmation numbers for my customers without the IPN message from PayPal.
Any insights to this issue would be greatly appreciated.
This may not be the silver bullet answer you're looking for but I'm in a similar position as you. We've only been intermittently receiving IPN messages from Adaptive Payments for the past few days. Other IPN messages seem unaffected. Last night we received a number of IPN messages from transactions as far back as 5 days ago and as of today everything appears to be normal. I have no idea what was wrong and so I'm not ready to call it "fixed", but I'm hopeful.
The only action I've taken (besides spending the past two days manually confirming payments), was opening a ticket at paypal-support.com. I can't say for certain if that had any effect as they have yet to tell me if they've taken any action, only asked for more details.
As a side note, I can't find any service status pages for Adaptive Payments. Presumably this is because it's a limited release product, however it's slightly frustrating as we do depend on it until PayPal offers a better alternative for chained payments to multiple endpoints.
I have a web site thats been operating for months, if not years. It takes payments via PayPal. IPNs are used to track the payment status against an order.
If the paypal account owner issues a refund, the IPN from that is tracked, and the order updated with the amount refunded.
Now: The problem: This was all working in February 2015. But since then I have made 4 refunds (buy logging into the PayPal website and refunding). Each one was days apart. In each case they were partial refunds.
In all cases the monies have reached the recipient, and logged transactions IDs etc in PayPal.
The first one, I never received the IPN.
The second one I did received the IPN (and decided the first one must have been a glitch, unusal though it would seem)
However the third and fourth also have not generated an IPN that I received.
From looking at the Apache logs, there appears to not have been even an attempt from notify.paypal.com that Apache received.
So I am much puzzled, have googled around but not found anything. Can anyone suggest what I have missed that have caused these IPNs to stop?
Perhaps I should add that I continue to receive all the payment notification IPNs just fine. It seems to be just the refunds that I miss.
I thought at one time there was a flag about IPNs in settings, but I can't see it anywhere in the new web interface.
Regards
Monathan
I am able to subscribe for free trial period in paypal but unable to get any response from paypal in terms of return parameter so that I can update the same in my database. Can anyone please help me out in this matter.
I would recommend using Instant Payment Notification (IPN) to handle any database updates, email notifications, or anything else you might want to automate based on transactions with your PayPal account.
IPN will handle payments, subscription profiles created, profiles canceled, profiles expired, refunds, disputes, etc, so you can automate all sorts of things based on different types of transactions.
I am using paypal to handle subscriptions to my website and am concerned because PayPal emails users each month when their payment is sent. I realize this is very transparent but I see it as detrimental to my business. Other subscription services I purchase don't send me an email each month reminding me that I am paying them and how to cancel. I'm not trying to hide the fact that I am charging my users but I also don't want paypal activelty reminding them that they are paying money and giving them a link to cancel their accounts.
Does anyone know how to stop automatic emails from being sent from the merchant end or can it only be done by each individual user?
If it can't be done does anyone know of other services I can use to run my subscription billing that give me that control? Thank you!
I currently manage 3,000+ subscriptions via PayPal and have used PayPal for subscriptions for three years. You are correct, this is for transparency. I've never seen the option to disable this, and I doubt PayPal would ever offer it. You'll learn that PayPal is much more interested in catering to buyers than sellers. They keep the buyer happy to the detriment of the seller. For example, PayPal recently reversed 7 months of subscription payments because the buyer called into PayPal and claimed it was unauthorized. We keep plenty of records to prove this isn't true, but PayPal consistently rules in the buyer's favor regardless (we have, yet, in three years to "win" a claim against us). There is very little protection for sellers of digital goods.
Depending on how you decide to run your business, the payment reminders can be used to your advantage. I often receive emails from buyers who claim that they've canceled, yet, we've charged them again, or, they claim they've been charged for months and didn't know it. Thanks to the emails from PayPal, I know, without a doubt, that they were notified each time they were charged, and that if they had actually cancelled, they wouldn't have been charged.
There are many other payment processing services like PayPal that are more "hands-off", but their rates are equal or greater. The only one I've found that's comparable is Payza. Again, there are others, but you have to weigh the benefit of full control (including being the help desk for payment issues), and higher rate, versus PayPal's practices.
I have a .NET site which integrates with PayPal. I am currently working with the Sandbox, and with recurring subscriptions.
I have created my buttons, and I am able to subscribe with them. I see the money go out of my test user accounts and into my test business account. I receive notifications back to my notification URL...all good.
My buttons are currently set to recur subscribe payment every day.
My problem is that the recurring payments are never made, and I never receive any notifications.
Everything looks good in the Sandbox...all of my subscriptions appear active in the business account profile, and all of the buttons look correct.
NOTE: I used to get many recurring notifications when I was in early development and failed to unsubscribe. I cleaned out my accounts by resetting them, and I now unsubscribe correctly, but I don't get notifications beyond the initial signup.
Questions:
Any ideas? Has anyone else seen this issue?
What is the best way to ask for help with this other than SO?
Should I delete and recreate all of my test accounts? I have
tried to reset them all, with no change in behavior.
UPDATE: The problem isn't me. I found out by browsing the forums on x.com that PayPal subscription notifications in the Sandbox has been down for over a week!!!!! Not good, but the problem wasn't me.
I'm actually currently dealing with their recurring payments API as well.
When working with their DoDirectPayment API, the money wasn't always transferred from test account to test account. However, after switching to live mode, every thing worked fine. Although, I did receive payment notifications in sandbox mode.
To be more helpful, I would suggest registering at x.com. There, the forums are moderated by PayPal technicians, and can provide helpful insight and well-suited solutions for your problems. They can also personally check your sandbox accounts for you.
I assume from what you say that you are receiving an IPN for the initial payment but no recurring IPNs. In that case I would strongly suspect that the recurrence is not being setup correctly.
Can you check the subscriptions?