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Subscription Payment going to wrong PayPal

Started by emmanova, October 11, 2011, 09:06:20 AM

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Sir Osis of Liver


Recurring payments are initiated by Paypal, not the forum, so whichever account info was submitted with the initial subscription will be used for the renewal.  The recurring subscriptions should be listed in your Paypal account, but don't know if you can edit the payment data.

Ashes and diamonds, foe and friend,
 we were all equal in the end.

                                     - R. Waters

emmanova

Quote from: Krash. on October 23, 2011, 04:20:05 PM

Recurring payments are initiated by Paypal, not the forum, so whichever account info was submitted with the initial subscription will be used for the renewal.  The recurring subscriptions should be listed in your Paypal account, but don't know if you can edit the payment data.

So maybe the recurring is the problem then, since most of them registered when I was using the gmail account. I never seen recurring settings inside PayPal, I will take a look to see if there's anyway for me to add recurring inside Paypal xecofl and remove it from Paypal gmail.

emmanova

Ok I found the recurring payments under my gmail account, who knows maybe this was the problem all along, that my gmail was doing the recurring but since I changed the email in the forum, the confirmation and member status will never get updated. I read there is no way I can transfer recurring from one paypal account to another, so I guess I may have to cancel it and have them redo it. Will keep you updated.

Sir Osis of Liver


The subscriptions handler should receive a valid IPN from either account when Paypal processes a renewal.  Paypal merchant tech support is very good - [email protected] - you can ask if it's possible to merge the two accounts into one.

Ashes and diamonds, foe and friend,
 we were all equal in the end.

                                     - R. Waters

emanuele

So, the problem here is that emmanova changed the email of the forum and it doesn't match any more the paypal email?

Would it make sense to have a specific email for the subscriptions or it would just be a complication with not enough advantages? (asking because I'm not so expert about subscriptions)


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emmanova

Quote from: emanuele on October 24, 2011, 03:59:40 AM
So, the problem here is that emmanova changed the email of the forum and it doesn't match any more the paypal email?

Would it make sense to have a specific email for the subscriptions or it would just be a complication with not enough advantages? (asking because I'm not so expert about subscriptions)

Yes what happened was that I started the forum using a gmail account. 4 people signed under that gmail account trough the forum. I lately changed the email address to a different email account. So any new or renewal was still going to the gmail regardless of the settings inside the forum.

Installing the patch fixed the first time registration but it seems the renewal is controlled by PayPal which I found. All I need to do now is cancel that recurring charge under the gmail account and have the members renew or get a new subscription and that will go to the right one this time.

Sir Osis of Liver

It would be a good idea to recommend to users that they set up a separate Paypal account for paid subscriptions.  Doesn't cost anything, and would avoid several problems.

If user enables Paypal IPN, they'll receive IPNs for payments into the account that are unrelated to paid subs.  Doesn't cause a glitch, but the subs handler throws an error for 'unknown transaction type'.  It's not necessary to have IPN enabled - Subscriptions-Paypal.php sends a notify_url, which overrides IPN settings and forces an IPN post to subscriptions.php.  Unfortunately, admin settings directs users to enable IPN.

Recurring payments are not well understood, and caused the problem discussed here, and a different one on another forum I'm working on.  The recurring payments are not initiated by SMF, they're handled by Paypal without any input from the forum, and use the data that's in Paypal's database from the initial subscription.  This can cause problems if the forum url changes, the Paypal account is changed in subscription settings, or if the forum cleans up the member database or otherwise deletes members.  Paypal will continue charging renewals for members that are long gone.  I don't know if there's a way to cancel recurring subs in SMF, but we've been doing it in the user's Paypal account.

Paid subs generates a lot of errors for a lot of reasons, and it's difficult to determine what's happening unless you've spent a lot of time tinkering with it.  The front end looks simple and works well, but it's actually doing some complicated things going back and forth with Paypal, and there really should be some decent documentation for forum owners.

Ashes and diamonds, foe and friend,
 we were all equal in the end.

                                     - R. Waters

emmanova

Yes Krash you are right, there is not way to cancel recurring payments inside the forum, everything need to be done inside PayPal. All I can do insisde the forum is deactivate the membership but that doesnt cancel the recurring payment since like you said and I confirmed is handled by PayPal.

Sir Osis of Liver


For the devs, from Paypal support:


"Does Paypal allow SMF users to modify recurring
payments with appropriate script?"


You can use the "ManageRecurringPaymentsProfileStatus" to Cancel/Suspend your subscription using API's:

https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=developer/e_howto_api_nvp_r_ManageRecurringPaymentsProfileStatus


SDK's and code samples (under PayPal API: Name-Value Pair Interface)

https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=developer/library_download_sdks


This way, if a buyer cancels the subscription in your SMF, you can perform an API request:

METHOD = ManageRecurringPaymentsProfileStatus
VERSION = 71.0
PROFILEID = I-7JJWSYHMF77L
ACTION = Cancel
NOTE = Manage RP Note

so that it will be cancelled in PayPal as well.

Ashes and diamonds, foe and friend,
 we were all equal in the end.

                                     - R. Waters

emmanova

Also for everyone's knowledge. I went ahead and cancelled the recurring payments from my gmail account. And guess what, I received an email from the forum saying the following for every account:

mannyz,

The following error occurred when processing a paid subscription
---------------------------------------------------------------
Unknown Paid Subscriptions transaction type.

Regards,
The Xtreme Events: Cars of Florida Team.

Which means that the forum does check the subscription every often, because this accounts are not ready for renewal but I did get this notification as soon as I cancelled the subscription from the PayPal gmail account. So I assume that the website check the PayPal account once in a while to confirm the account still active, since I cancelled inside PayPal now the forum is telling me.

So Krash even that the forum doesnt initiate the recurring or setup the recurring and we dont have any control from inside the forum for the recurring, the forum does check the recurring. :o

Sir Osis of Liver


No, it doesn't.  When you cancel a recurring payment in your Paypal account, Paypal posts an IPN to subscriptions.php for txn_type: subscr_cancel.  It's informing the forum that the subscription was cancelled, but the handler does not recognize the cancellation, and throws the 'unknown transaction type' error.

Ashes and diamonds, foe and friend,
 we were all equal in the end.

                                     - R. Waters

emmanova

Quote from: Krash. on October 26, 2011, 10:46:05 PM

No, it doesn't.  When you cancel a recurring payment in your Paypal account, Paypal posts an IPN to subscriptions.php for txn_type: subscr_cancel.  It's informing the forum that the subscription was cancelled, but the handler does not recognize the cancellation, and throws the 'unknown transaction type' error.

Ok I see what you mean now. Well I cancelled everything, lets see if some of those decide to renew and I get back on track ^_^

Joshua Dickerson

emmanova, do you still think this is a SMF bug? I am thinking it is a bug with that mod. If nobody can replicate it, I am going to move it to a support board.
Come work with me at Promenade Group



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emmanova

Quote from: Joshua Dickerson on February 28, 2012, 08:46:52 PM
emmanova, do you still think this is a SMF bug? I am thinking it is a bug with that mod. If nobody can replicate it, I am going to move it to a support board.

Thanks for the follow up. I guess the answe is yes is a bug and no is not a bug, but it was quite confusing how the whole subscription deal works. Right now is fixed but thanks to Krash help and trying to understand how this work, I was able to resolve it. Here is the summary:

1. When created the forum I used my gmail email. Everything was going to my gmail email including the subscription that was going to my PayPal account under my gmail.
2. I changed the main Forum email from gmail to my xecofl.com email.
3. When someone subscribed, the subscription was not activated and the money was still going to my gmail account. When someone renew their subscription the money was going to my gmail account, account wasnt reactivated and I was getting the error.

I fixed it (well using Krash help)
1. Went inside my gmail PayPal account and I had to delete all the subscriptions.
2. When they renew or signed up for a subscription they started going to the new xecofl PayPal account.

Sir Osis of Liver


Strictly speaking, it's not a bug, but it does highlight some design problems in paid subs, not least of which is lack of adequate documentation.  Had good intentions to put together something for the wiki, but been taking heavy fire in the realworld since end of year, haven't had time.  Will try to get around to it when (if) things settle down, if no one else picks it up.

Ashes and diamonds, foe and friend,
 we were all equal in the end.

                                     - R. Waters

emmanova

Quote from: Krash. on March 04, 2012, 09:56:29 PM

Strictly speaking, it's not a bug, but it does highlight some design problems in paid subs, not least of which is lack of adequate documentation.  Had good intentions to put together something for the wiki, but been taking heavy fire in the realworld since end of year, haven't had time.  Will try to get around to it when (if) things settle down, if no one else picks it up.

Thank you Krash that's a good translation of what I tried to say by yes and no bug lol

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