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Paid Subscriptions - Always enddate 2005 and Status is Finished

Started by agentblackhat, October 20, 2014, 07:45:56 AM

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agentblackhat

I have a Paypal business account, I use the host evohosting.co.uk

A user signs up, creates the recurring payment and the payment is instantly completed. However the user never gets an active subscription.

Here are some screenshots.

I remember seeing someone mentioned in a thread possibly on this forum that delivery options might cause this? Just a shot in the dark.

It is really important for my forum that I get this fixed so I would greatly appreciate someone with the right knowledge such as thew SMF devs to take a look. My forum can't function as a proper subscription forum until I find a solution to this. It is holding everything back.




Sir Osis of Liver

Recurring payments do not work on some hosts.  Are you getting Paid Subs errors in your error log?  If not, usually means PayPal IPN is not reaching your forum.  A few mods and some hosts block IPNs.  PayPal support can confirm IPN is sent, and determine if it's being blocked.

If Paid Subs is logging errors, would need a look at your forum to see what's happening.  If you can pm forum link and temporary admin access, should have time tonight to poke around.
Ashes and diamonds, foe and friend,
 we were all equal in the end.

                                     - R. Waters

agentblackhat

For security reasons I don't want to give access to anyone. The industry im in means it is very difficult to trust anyone and I promised my members that security is a top priority.

I can't see any errors in the log for paid subscriptions.

margarett

That's an issue with your host blocking Paypal's IPN from reaching your site (or so it was always interpreted as such)
https://github.com/SimpleMachines/SMF2.1/issues/1167

If you search this forum for "subscriptions 2005" you will find a bunch of topics about this, always with the same conclusion (or none at all :P )
Se forem conduzir, não bebam. Se forem beber... CHAMEM-ME!!!! :D

QuoteOver 90% of all computer problems can be traced back to the interface between the keyboard and the chair


agentblackhat

I've checked my logs and saw no errors referring to the subscriptions URL. I turned IPN OFF some time ago in october. My host hasn't seen any paypal activity since then, however paypal doesnt seem to be blocked. Two users subbed this morning, the end date again is 2005.

Does anyone have any ideas?

agentblackhat

It should also be noted, some members ahve come to me and asked why they got an email from paypal saying their subscription was cancelled, I also got an email with it being cancelled.

agentblackhat

I've had some success....



I turned on IPN again and checked the IPN history after a fresh transaction.

It sent TWO messages with a status code of 200 which means they were received.

HOWEVER, there are two errors in my forum error log. I'll post as much detail as I can....

I think I asm closer to solving this now, I would REALLY appreciate it if someone could comment on this and save me anymore headaches.



margarett

Se forem conduzir, não bebam. Se forem beber... CHAMEM-ME!!!! :D

QuoteOver 90% of all computer problems can be traced back to the interface between the keyboard and the chair

Sir Osis of Liver

The 2005 end date just means the subscription has not been activated, it should be listed as pending payment.  subscriptions.php is receiving the IPN, but activation fails.  The first error has a valid txn_type, second one doesn't - Subscriptions-Paypal.php does not recognize subscr_signup

What is the subscr_id in the first error?

Have you tried disabling recurring payments?

It makes life easier if you set up a test subscription for $0.10 / 1 day.
Ashes and diamonds, foe and friend,
 we were all equal in the end.

                                     - R. Waters

agentblackhat

Quote from: Krash on November 05, 2014, 12:09:22 PM
The 2005 end date just means the subscription has not been activated, it should be listed as pending payment.  subscriptions.php is receiving the IPN, but activation fails.  The first error has a valid txn_type, second one doesn't - Subscriptions-Paypal.php does not recognize subscr_signup

What is the subscr_id in the first error?

Have you tried disabling recurring payments?

It makes life easier if you set up a test subscription for $0.10 / 1 day.

I-NABHVTLFELSM in both.

I need the subscription to reoccur every month. I can try testing without it but its useless to me without recurring payments every month until cancellation.

I'll setup a test subscription once i get my gf setup in paypal.

agentblackhat

Quote from: Krash on November 05, 2014, 12:09:22 PM
Have you tried disabling recurring payments?

Like most SMF users, to get this to work im going to have to give in and try to find a workaround without recurring payments sine I hear this is supposed to work.

Do I simply create a new subscription and leave the "Allow user to auto-renew this subscription:" unticked?

What about "A subscription must be active for new members to join."?

What exactly does this "Active" option do? The wording makes it ambiguous.

Kindred

Please stop with the hyperbole.

This situation is ***NOT*** "like most smf users"
Your situation is an exception that seems to happen for a very few folks and can not seem to be replicated by anyone who has coding and debugging skills.  While we acknowledge that there seems to be an issue, we can not replicate the issue on any of our systems and therefore can not debug the issue and therefor can not "fix" it.

And, for the last time... "most smf users" do not seem to have any trouble with the subscriptions.
Слaва
Украинi

Please do not PM, IM or Email me with support questions.  You will get better and faster responses in the support boards.  Thank you.

"Loki is not evil, although he is certainly not a force for good. Loki is... complicated."

agentblackhat

Quote from: Kindred on November 30, 2014, 08:57:40 AM
Please stop with the hyperbole.

This situation is ***NOT*** "like most smf users"
Your situation is an exception that seems to happen for a very few folks and can not seem to be replicated by anyone who has coding and debugging skills.  While we acknowledge that there seems to be an issue, we can not replicate the issue on any of our systems and therefore can not debug the issue and therefor can not "fix" it.

And, for the last time... "most smf users" do not seem to have any trouble with the subscriptions.

The hyperbole is the idea that "everything is fine for most SMF users". Please stop being so dismissive of what is a buggy core feature.

I've spent months searching for the solution to this bug SMF has in the paid subscriptions and I've seen A LOT of threads across the net about it. I've seen countless people beg and plead for help and in just about every case their only solution was to mod the forum or not use the paid subscriptions system. And presuming that MOST SMF users don't need the paid subscriptions feature I would say that this bug presumably affects a high percentage of people who wanted to use this feature.

Either way, I've posted several threads and read so so many other threads and pages about this bug. I'm still here and just like the others, there is attempt at a proper solution.

If I had a choice i'd ditch this software and go elsewhere but I've already invested my time, my business and the security of my family in this buggy software so I can't leave it without some major work. I'm sorry if reading my threads has inconvenienced you though.

Arantor

How can I fix it if I cannot ever reproduce it? It has worked perfectly for me for years :-/

agentblackhat

Quote from: Arantor on November 30, 2014, 09:50:24 AM
How can I fix it if I cannot ever reproduce it? It has worked perfectly for me for years :-/

I'm sorry for the nasty thread. It seems to simply be that paypal is sending the subscriber type etc that the forum does not recognize. Its in the screenshot. Paypal has likely changed the way it works in that respect and i'm presuming(based on whats in front of me) that SMF isnt compatible with it anymore.

Your installation might work because your paypal account might not have been recently upgraded or may be in a state that still works with the old way. My paypal was cleanly upgraded to business account, I set it up in the way described in the SMF documentation. However paypal is sending callbacks(i think thats what it is) that SMF doesn't recognize.

Thats my best guess. I've called my hosting several times, I've called paypal several times, everything is getting through to the software.


agentblackhat

Can anyone help me understand what this tickbox does?

"Active: A subscription must be active for new members to join. "



Arantor

See, there is more to this story than you know. The single fiercest critic of this "broken" system is in fact a team member here, one of the few people who does have this problem, and despite the fact that I fixed some of the issues in 2.1 most of a year ago, and repeatedly asked him to test it... Never did. Because if it fixed it for him, I would have pushed changes into the 2.0 branch.

There are three cases I know of: invalid txn-types (fixed in 2.1, never known to cause end-2005 error), invalid currencies like AUD and CAD (fixed in 2.1, never known to cause end 2005 error) and people activating them manually and not setting the start date correctly... When the form ends in 2005. That, in fact, is the only place in SMF where 2005 is even used.

As for active, that means it is active and selectable for people buying new subscriptions. I think, but haven't checked, that this is so you can retire a subscription without kicking people out of what they have paid for.

Kindred

Also, please note that we (simplemachines.org) have a premiere business account on PayPal and do not encounter this error.

As Arantor has said..  If we could ever reproduce the issue and have someone who knows smf coding investigate, we would probably be able to address it.

I am not being dismissive, I am trying to tell you that, while your issue may be real and I am sure it is important to you, MOST smf users do not encounter the issue, and that actually means most users who do use subscriptions. It works for them.  Yes, there is a small subset of subscription folks who encounter this error, and because it involves money, they are very vocal about it... And the ones who have it work are not vocal, because they have nothing to complain about.

So, if you would be willing to share full access to your site with one of our developers, I can see if one of them would be willing to work with you... But without full access to a site one which this is occurring, we really can't do too much.
Слaва
Украинi

Please do not PM, IM or Email me with support questions.  You will get better and faster responses in the support boards.  Thank you.

"Loki is not evil, although he is certainly not a force for good. Loki is... complicated."

agentblackhat

For me, this problem doesn't need fixing anymore as I won't need recurring subscriptions(so long as the tests without recurring work like most say they do). But I do want to help you fix this problem so others are not in the same position. I'm currently reforming my forum and i'm very very busy but i'll try and get time for you guys in the next few days if you want to try and discover what the problem is, even if it turns out to be my fault, at least it may help others.

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