Hey guys! I submitted this problem several weeks ago, but I can't find the original post. So I'll repost.....

(igroops are jimbarber, prospeakeru, and speakergym. Payment processor is PayPal. Website Payments Pro, Virtual Terminal, PayPal Express Checkout, and Risk Controls are all LIVE)

The problem: When I purchase a $1 gift certificate from my online store (speakergym, but same problem has occurred in other groops), everything goes as expected except that the orders database is never updated with the completed order, so the product is not removed from the cart, the printable receipt gives an error message, etc. Everything seems to work OK from PayPal's end (they receive the money, they email-acknowledge the payment), but my store acts like the purchase was never paid for.

I tried resetting my payment info (removing the PayPal payment info from both the member-joining tab in admin-options and the ecommerce module in all my groops, and then reentering it). Didn't help. Then, even though IPN (used with an earlier cart) was already turned off in PayPal, I removed it from my account entirely. Didn't help.

I haven't been able to try to join one of my groups for a fee because PayPal won't allow me to draw money from the same account that I'm paying to. I'll try it with a different PayPal account as soon as I can manage, but if I have the same problem, I'm dead in the water in setting up my paid-memberships sites. (And even if joining-for-fee works, I'm still hurting without access to ecommerce.)

I've tried everything that I can think of, so I'm kinda stumped as to how to proceed from here. Any suggestions / guidance / sympathy? I'm really looking forward to "going live" with my sites, as soon as I can get this payment-issue resolved. Thanks!

jim

OK, I thought of a way to test-join a groop. (I changed my member registration from monthly to yearly -- since it was no longer a recurring charge, I could pay with a credit card without using my PayPal account.)

I then joined groop "speakergym", paying $1 for a year's membership. It took me to PayPal as expected, where I paid the $1. (PayPal confirmed by email that the payment had been made successfully.)

But when I was returned to my groop, it stated that my new membership still had not been paid for. ("Welcome, HarryPotter. You are not an active member of this group. Access is limited. see membership information. • The Speaker Gym"). So I guess this is not an "ecommerce problem", but rather a "payment processing" problem.

(I'll leave the L2 member registration for www.speakergym.com at $1/year in case you want to try it yourself for debugging. Or the Gift Certificate is in the online store.)

So I am pretty much dead in the water at this point. I appreciate any help or guidance you can give me. Thanks!

jim

This issue should be resolved now. Please test, and of course, if you're still seeing an issue on your end, let us know.

I appreciate your efforts, Ryan, but it's still doing the same thing.

I tried both joining (using existing, but not paid for, HarryPotter username) my igroop SpeakerGym and purchasing a gift certificate. As before, the joining process didn't recognize that a payment had been made, and the online store didn't register the purchased product as paid for.

If it helps with the debugging, I captured the PayPal return URLs and I'll send them to you as a Private Message.

Thanks again, Ryan, for all your attention to this problem!

jim

OK Jim, we'll take another look to see what else could be going on here. BTW, are you sure your PayPal account is a PayPal BUSINESS account? Have you been able to accept payments for memberships and online store purchases previously with this same iGrOOp and PayPal account?

Thanks Ryan!

1) BTW, are you sure your PayPal account is a PayPal BUSINESS account?

I'm getting punchy, so I'm not sure of anything anymore. However, I logged into my account and PayPal states:

• Business: The Barber Shop (jim.barber@thebarbershop.com)

• That indicates it's a business account, doesn't it?

• 2)

For this particular igroop (SpeakerGym), no. This is the first time I've tried.

And I just checked, and I don't have any "for money" orders in my Orders database for my original igroop (jimbarber / www.upyourfee.com), and I don't think any of my members were paying memberships.

So I guess I have no evidence that any of my igroops have ever handled payments successfully. Maybe this problem has always existed?

However, I did successfully handle payments for several years using that PayPal account and my own shopping cart (customized OScommerce code), so I know that the PayPal account has worked successfully (at least it did "once upon a time....").

jim

FYI -- I just now cancelled my PayPal Website Payments Pro service and went back to Website Payments Standard, in the hopes that it would help. It doesn't seem to have made a difference --- a purchase from my online store still failed the same way. (I didn't try anything else.)

jim

Hey guys! I'm still trying to figure out why it's not working....

I was poking around "under the hood" at PayPal and I found, under "Website Payment Preferences", that both the "Auto-return for Website Payments" and "Payment Data Transfer" options were ON. Hoping that that might be the problem, I turned both of them OFF.

Unfortunately, it didn't seem to make a difference. A test-purchase from my online store went through just fine, but still didn't register in the Orders database.

(Actually, there was one difference that I noticed. The return-URL that PayPal generated was much shorter than before:
http://www.speakergym.com/members/speakergym/ecommerce/PPR++1+yqxC8nmTDQ

But functionally it seemed not to make a difference.)

I just wanted to keep you posted on the changes I'm making to my PayPal account, even though they don't seem to have an effect on the problem.

Any suggestions?

jim

I've tried everything I can think of to make my PayPal account "plain vanilla", but the problem still exists.

The only thing that I can think of that's different about my igroops account is that I have a groop, Ghoorooz, that I went through step 1 in creating the group, but never paid for it (step 2). (I created it on the same day you were transitioning to your 2010 package, and I think it got caught between being a "free" group and a paid one.)

Anyway, I no longer want the igroop Ghoorooz, but I can't seem to be able to cancel it (because I never paid for it in the first place). Could an incompletely-activated groop be causing my problems in my other groops? If you think that might be the source of the problem, feel free to cancel Ghoorooz (and only Ghoorooz, please!) created under the master account of jimbarber. Thanks!

jim

Jim,

If this is still not working, I suggest trying to create a new PayPal Business account from scratch. In the testing we did, side by side on one of our sites, alongside testing on your site, the PayPal "Thanks for your order" page is different on your site, which leads me to believe something is still set-up differently with your account. Even if you wish to use the original account, if you can get it working on a new account, you'd at least be able to show PayPal the two accounts that you have control and ownership over, and have them help you figure out how you can get the original account working like the new account

"I suggest trying to create a new PayPal Business account from scratch."

Thanks, Ryan! Good idea, and that did the trick! I opened a new business account and everything seems to work just fine with that one. Still don't know what's different about my original PayPal account, but that's not a high priority problem. Now that I'm able to accept payments, I'm hoping to launch two new groups this week.

Thanks for all your help!

jim

Hi Jim,

I'm very glad to hear that fixed it...thanks for following back up with us.