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Todd Withrow
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October 17, 2013 at 11:57 am
Using WordPress 3.6.1
Event Espresso 3.1.34
During development of the site we did extensive testing with Event Espresso. We did this to a)make sure it worked and b)get the layouts the way we wanted them to.
We setup PayPal to use the sandbox. Everything worked great. And we pushed the site live.
Today the client tells us they have had 14 people pay via PayPal but they nor the user received any emails. The payments show in their PayPal account.
I checked their site and all the registrations show that the payments are incomplete. I tested the registration and I was redirected to PayPal, logged in with my account and paid, and was taken back to the website.
However the screen told me my payment was incomplete and it showed the PayPal button at the bottom again.
I searched the forums and checked several things, even disabled the plugins on this site but it still failed.
I checked /wp-uploads/espresso/logs but the last entry in this file was from development, nothing since going live.
I changed the permissions to 777 as was suggested in another thread and tried again, but still it failed and no entry was added to the log file.
In order to continue testing and avoid incurring further charges I put PayPal back in test/debug mode.
When I tried again, to my surprise everything worked. When I got back to the site it told me the payment was completed, I received an email and so did our client.
I checked the log file and sure enough there was a new entry.
So why is this working in sandbox mode but not in live mode?
One note: the sandbox account is our business’ sandbox account and not the client’s. Could it be some setting in the client’s PayPal account?
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Jonathan Wilson
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October 17, 2013 at 1:01 pm
Hi Todd,
This may seem crazy, but are you unchecking the box that says “Use the Debugging Feature and the PayPal Sandbox”? Also, what type of Paypal account does your client have? It will not work with a personal account. The account needs to be a Business account.
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Todd Withrow
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October 18, 2013 at 11:49 am
Yes, I’m unchecking the box when I put the client’s PayPal email address back in place.
Yes, they have a business account.
Any other suggestions? Our client is getting anxious.
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Josh
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October 18, 2013 at 12:04 pm
Hi Todd,
Is the Instant Payment Notification feature enabled in your client’s PayPal Account?
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Todd Withrow
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October 18, 2013 at 7:00 pm
Okay we learned a couple of things today.
1-They did not have the notification feature enabled. When they did so we were getting statements from PayPal that they could not process the payment.
2-When the client called PayPal they were informed that their account is set for Express Checkout. I would have thought that this would be sufficient but not according to PayPal.
What type of account do we need for just the PayPal IPN settings? According to the setup screen: For PayPal IPN to work, you need a Business or Premier account.
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Dean
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October 21, 2013 at 3:01 am
Hi Todd,
A standard Business account should be fine, which is to my knowledge free, you just need to get it verified so that the payment restrictions are lifted.
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Todd Withrow
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October 21, 2013 at 10:44 am
Thank you for your help. They have a standard business account, it appears to be a PayPal issue.
One thing you might be able to help with; on sites where I’ve used a PayPal “Buy Now” button I have an option on PayPal’s site to pay with a credit card with no account creation. However it appears that when using this IPN that I MUST have a PayPal account or else create one. That just seems stupid.
Is there a setting I’m missing either in Event Espresso or in the client’s account?
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Sidney Harrell
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October 21, 2013 at 11:08 am
In your PayPal account, go to My Account > Profile > My selling tools > Selling online > Website preferences, then scroll down to configure this setting:
PayPal Account Optional: On
One quick note, we have seen sometimes where Paypal’s IPN message lags behind the user returning to the site by as much as a minute. So the user might return to the site and see an “incomplete” status, but if they reload the page a minute later, it has changed to a “Complete” status. I worked up a quick fix for it so the user at least sees “Pending” instead of “Incomplete”:
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Todd Withrow
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October 23, 2013 at 10:30 am
Thanks for you help. Per PayPal, the PayPal Account Optional is only for when using their code for buttons and does not affect the API. That doesn’t make sense to me but whatever. The client grew frustrated with this and decided to just go with PayPal Payments Pro so you can close this. Again, thank you.
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