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Double charge payments in Paypal Pro

Posted: September 19, 2012 at 9:03 am

Viewing 25 reply threads


Troy

September 19, 2012 at 9:03 am

I am having an issue with customers being double charged while entering credit card info on the PayPal Pro screen. Last week I had 5 customers that experienced this and another 6 the week before and 7 the week before that. Apparently they are either hitting the payment button twice or some other strange behavior (hitting back button or refresh button in browser).

I have seen other payment systems use some type of java window with an hour glass showing payment is being processed. Is this possible? If we average 5 a week that will mount to over 20 in a month or 200 in a year. I need to find a fix for this quickly as this puts extra pressure on our staff and sends a poor message to our customers.


Seth Shoultes

  • Support Staff

September 19, 2012 at 9:10 am

What version of Event Espresso? Do you have a Simple Facebook Connect or Simple Twitter Connect plugin (or similar plugins) installed?


Troy

September 19, 2012 at 9:57 am

I have Ver 3.1.26.P. The only Facebook Twitter plugin I have is called ‘Twitter Facebook Social Share’ and it is forced not to display on any of the Espresso registration/payment pages. I experienced the same issue with the prior 3.1.21.P version also.


Seth Shoultes

  • Support Staff

September 19, 2012 at 10:01 am

I thought this was fixed months ago. I guess we will need to revisit it. Question before we do so. Do you have any old templates or gateway files in the “/wp-content/uploads/espresso/” directory on your server?


Troy

September 19, 2012 at 10:47 am

Seth- Here are some templates located in the uploads/esspresso folder:

Error.log
Event_list.php
Event_list_display.php
Registration_page.php
Registration_page_display.php

I never moved these here but I had paid your staff do some custom work for me several times so I am guessing that is why they are there.


Troy

September 20, 2012 at 2:39 pm

Is one of the templates above have anything to do with our double charge issue?


Seth Shoultes

  • Support Staff

September 20, 2012 at 10:39 pm

Not that I know of. I haven’t heard of anyone else reporting this problem.

Can you email us that error log? Do you have any payment logs in your wp-content/ uploads/espresso/logs/ folder? If so, can you send those as well?

Also, can you turn on “Full Logging” in the Event Espresso > General > Settings > Optional Event Settings? That way it will start recording the everything that happens in the plugin.


Sidney Harrell

September 21, 2012 at 1:41 am

Once the payment is marked as completed in the db, it won’t attempt to do another charge. The only way I see this happening is if the payment isn’t being marked completed, or if a second attempt to charge is made before the first one comes back.
I’ve been looking at the Paypal Pro integration documentation, and I think we should break up what is now a single authorization and capture operation into two distinct operations. First an authorization attempt, which will return a transaction id, record that transaction id to the db only if there isn’t one there already, and then do the Capture operation. That’s the only way that I can see that Paypal gives you to uniquely identify the transaction.


jmichel

September 21, 2012 at 7:09 am

Sometimes our customers have been double charged. They say that the confirmation screen says Payment: Incomplete so they hit the Pay button again.

Sometimes, the payment in EE Attendees says Incomplete, but when we check PayPal, the payment is marked complete.


Troy

September 21, 2012 at 8:38 am

Seth – I had just emailed you the requested log files and had turned on full logging.


Sidney Harrell

September 24, 2012 at 10:28 pm

Hey Troy, I’m looking through the log files and I’m not seeing any double entries. Can you email us the names of any attendees that get double charged?


Troy

September 25, 2012 at 7:29 am

Sidney – Here is a random list of several that were double charged in the last 60 days:

Kyle Graham
Kristin Goldman
Abigail Pierre
Abby Jones
Josh Gainey
Cynthia E Stetz
Anthony Bousted
Amanda Jorgenson
Amy Frey
Quinton Wright
Kathleen Kanatz
Cassandra Howard

There were about 50 double charges in last 60 days. Very frustrating for me and all our staff (and our customers). I estimate about one in every 20 registrations/payments will get double charged


Troy

September 25, 2012 at 8:08 am

FYI – I also just updated from Version 3.1.26.P to 27.P and also removed the custom templates in the upload folder just to see if that might help.


Sidney Harrell

October 3, 2012 at 8:55 am

Hey Troy,
Have you had any more double charges since upgrading to 3.1.27.P? I took a look at the log files you sent over and I think it may have been an issue with the payments not being marked as “Completed” and then being resubmitted. There’s been code in place for a while to keep “Completed” payments from getting resubmitted, and there was a fix in 3.1.27.P dealing with payments not getting marked “Completed”.
Just in case, I’m going to go ahead and write up some changes to separate what is now one operation, “Authorize and Capture”, into 2 distinct operations, first an “Authorize”, and then a “Capture”, so that we can take advantage of Paypal’s unique transaction identifier API.


Troy

October 3, 2012 at 11:43 am

Sidney – It looks like the double payment issue has been resolved with the update to 27.P. I will keep you informed if I see it again. Thanks for your help!


jmichel

October 12, 2012 at 8:52 pm

My customers are still experiencing double billing. The screen when coming back from Paypal says Payment Status: Incomplete. There is still a Paypal link below that though and when the customer clicks that again, the same amount is showed in Paypal. They pay again thinking it did not go through the first time. Any ideas on what I should look for?


Dean

October 15, 2012 at 4:48 am

Hi Jmichel,

I would start by upgrading the Event Espresso you have installed to the latest version and see if it rectifies the issue as we continually improve the plugin with each version.

If that doesnt rectify it, please let us know.


jmichel

October 20, 2012 at 5:05 pm

Hi Dean

I did upgrade the plugin and had several successful transactions, but then there was another double billing. Again, the Paypal screen returned an “Incomplete” and the customer hit the payment button again.


Dean

October 21, 2012 at 11:21 pm

Hi,

I’ll pass this onto one of the developers to look at.

Are you just using normal PayPal? Have you enabled logging? If so can we have a copy of the logs, if not can you enable it via Event Espresso > General Settings > Optional Event Settings > Enable full logging?


Seth Shoultes

  • Support Staff

October 22, 2012 at 8:31 am

@jmichel sounds like PayPal can’t reach your payment notification page. You may need to install the transaction page template.


jmichel

October 22, 2012 at 10:55 am

I have enabled logging now and checked to make sure that my transaction page has [ESPRESSO_TXN_PAGE]. It did. Is there a different template I should have?


Josh

  • Support Staff

October 22, 2012 at 11:03 am

Hi there,

We recommend installation a simplified transactions page template for the transactions page. It can be downloaded here:

https://eventespresso.com/topic/problems-with-incomplete-payments-download/

You can also rule out a plugin conflict by deactivating any plugins that may be blocking access to the site’s pages.


jmichel

October 25, 2012 at 8:55 am

I looked at the error log and am getting this:
PHP Warning: explode() expects parameter 2 to be string, array given in [my server details deleted]wp-content/plugins/event-espresso/includes/functions/form_build.php on line 164

That line is : //$answers = explode(“,”, $answer);

Should I uncomment it?


Josh

  • Support Staff

November 13, 2012 at 1:48 pm

Hi there,

That line has been removed from the current version of Event Espresso, so I would not recommend uncommenting it. Have you tried the simplified transaction template?


Dean

November 20, 2012 at 3:21 am

Hi Jmichel,

I’m just checking in to see if this issue has been resolved or not?

If not can you advise if you have tried the simplified transaction template yet?

If so, please advise so we can mark as complete.

Thanks!


jmichel

November 22, 2012 at 9:59 pm

Yes I have the simplified transaction template installed. Most transactions seem to go smoothly. I did see where our billing manager had to refund someone this week. I am looking into whether that was a double billing issue or not. I will let you know.

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