Jump to content

Receiving Thousands of Emails


matchattaxoutlet

Recommended Posts

Hi guys, not sure if this is a bug with Cubecart or something else but twice now (early July and last two days) i have been receiving thousands of blank "New Order" emails at one of my email addresses but they seem to be coming from the address they are received to;

 

Here's the full message contents;

 

just placed order number on .

This order can be managed online by following the link below.



----------------------------------------------------------------------
Billing address:





Serbia


Email:


Shipping address:





Serbia

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Items in Your Order

-----------------------------------
Subtotal:
Discount:
Shipping: --------------------------
Order Total:
==========================

Kind regards,

The Match Attax Outlet Staff
https://www.matchattaxoutlet.co.uk

 

 

 

 

Any ideas as to why this is happening?

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi

 

Are you still running 5.2.2 version of CubeCart and have PayPal payment gateway enabled ?  We had one client a month or so ago that had exactly the same thing and it appeared to be caused by some issue with the PayPal IPN going crazy and causing this.  If you check the headers of one of the emails you are receiving, you will probably see that an IP address of 173.0.81.1 (or similar) is mentioned which belongs to PayPal and if you check your IPN history you will see that there will be a callback at exactly the same time that the first email started !  Why it has an address of Serbia (which it did in our client's case as well), we never worked out.

 

You would need to speak to PayPal to try and find out why their system is doing that (good luck there as they only ever say that there is nothing wrong with any of their systems !) but you can stop the emails from being sent if the same situation happens again by upgrading your CubeCart store to the latest version - there is code in the PayPal gateway now to prevent emails being sent if the order number is blank

 

Thanks

Ian

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Guys, thanks for the prompt responses.

 

I am running 5.2.4 at the moment, just finding the time to upgrade is difficult as i do it all manually due to so many code changes.  Usually use the file diffs from B Smithers but haven't found them for more recent versions yet.

 

Reluctant also to change much right now as i am approaching a really busy period in my sales.

 

The Paypal thing is interesting, i checked my IPN records and an Invoice i created manually via Paypal has just been paid and the notification is being sent to Cubecart and in Paypal it says retrying. Coincidentally, at around the same time this happened in July i had also received payment for an invoice created within Paypal. 

 

Maybe another avenue to follow!!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Paypal thing is interesting, i checked my IPN records and an Invoice i created manually via Paypal has just been paid and the notification is being sent to Cubecart and in Paypal it says retrying. Coincidentally, at around the same time this happened in July i had also received payment for an invoice created within Paypal. 

 

Maybe another avenue to follow!!!

 

Al well knows my personal feelings regarding PayPal - my recommendation is to never use them as we get more customer issues with PayPal than we do with all other payment gateway combined (by a factor of at least 10 !) but I appreciate that it isnt always easy to swap from using them and for some reason they do seem to be popular ! 

 

It is interesting that you have had this happen twice and both times with manually created invoices - I dont believe that this happened with our client previously although I will go and check.  If that is the case it points even more to an issue at the PayPal system end which is what was indicated in our investigations.  The changes to the code dont stop the situation from happening but what they do is to prevent thousands and thousands of emails being generated

 

Thanks

Ian 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I disagree Ian. They provide a solid cost effective service and we have solely used them for our online payments for many years. The vast majority of our customers use them for online payments.

 

PayPal is considered to be in the same league as Visa/MasterCard these days in the sense that they are a recognised payment option (not just an online payment processor). "Do you take PayPal?" is as common as "Do you take Visa?".

 

Back to the topic in question however I am sure upgrading to the latest version will help. I believe we added some code to prevent any order emails being sent if the order id has no value.


If you are not headstrong on PayPal then in the UK SagePay is incredibly popular. I would use that along side PayPal Express Checkout. We just updated the SagePay module in 5.2.13 too. I believe they allow you to have PayPal as a payment option at checkout but the PayPal express checkout integration is way superior.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This also happened:

'?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>>

 

CC5210 introduced this fix in /classes/order.class.php:

Near Line 195:
Was:
// Update order status, manage stock, and email if required
if (!empty($status_id) && !empty($order_id)) {
  $currentStatus = $GLOBALS['db']->select('CubeCart_order_summary', array('status'), array('cart_order_id' => $order_id));
  // Insert order status if it's changed
 
Now:
// Update order status, manage stock, and email if required
if (!empty($status_id) && !empty($order_id)) {
  $currentStatus = $GLOBALS['db']->select('CubeCart_order_summary', array('status'), array('cart_order_id' => $order_id));

  if ((int)$currentStatus[0]['status'] == 0) return false; // no order record

  // Insert order status if it's changed

The problem was that entering Order->orderStatus() with an order_id that isn't in the database will cause an infinite loop that involves the mailer.


 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

They provide a solid cost effective service and we have solely used them for our online payments for many years. The vast majority of our customers use them for online payments.

Solid - maybe if using the standard payment gateway but the experience of a large number of our customers and from postings on this forum when using Express or Pro gateway is of a reasonable number of issues - certainly more than all other payment gateways used by our customers put together !

Cost Effective - again, if you are relatively small then possibly, as you can avoid the costs of having to set up a merchant account but even then I think that is debatable as their per transaction rates are considerably higher. Even with our relatively low number of transactions, PayPal (if we offered them as a payment option) would work out considerably more expensive.

 

PayPal is considered to be in the same league as Visa/MasterCard these days in the sense that they are a recognised payment option (not just an online payment processor). "Do you take PayPal?" is as common as "Do you take Visa?".

PayPal is a massive payment gateway, there is no denying that and are one of those IT companies that you either love or hate. They are certainly easy to setup an account with and start taking payments very quickly (Nochex which is a UK based company offering a similar service to merchants across Europe, is just as easy and while not anywhere near as big or as well known as PayPal, is at least 0.5% per transaction cheaper than PayPal).  Big is not always better though and certainly the level of support is not even close to most other payment processors companies offer

 

Back to the topic in question however I am sure upgrading to the latest version will help. I believe we added some code to prevent any order emails being sent if the order id has no value.

As all have said, the latest versions of CubeCart stop the problem of the emails being sent although doesnt address the cause of the problem - although this does appear to be outside of CubeCart's control but this hasnt been definitely proved one way or the other

 

If you are not headstrong on PayPal then in the UK SagePay is incredibly popular. I would use that along side PayPal Express Checkout. We just updated the SagePay module in 5.2.13 too. I believe they allow you to have PayPal as a payment option at checkout but the PayPal express checkout integration is way superior.

Here, I would completely agree with Al, SagePay for UK merchants (and also increasingly many European countries) are a superb payment processing company with four different integration methods available.  They are very easy to integrate with, have fantastic test payment systems and have probably the best customer support people for any company we work with. Whether you use the built in "Form" integration method or use the "Direct" (there are some PCI considerations using this method) or preferably the "Server iFrame" integration (we have written V4 and V5 payment gateway modules for both of these two methods) the integration just works ! If you would like to apply for an account then you can click here.  As Al said, you can even take PayPal payments through your SagePay account so can still offer PayPal without having to deal with PayPal ! 

 

Thanks

Ian

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We've had zero issues with PayPal the past 14 years, however we use them as alternate payment method for our normal payment gateway (authorize.net, owned by Visa). Now, we did have nothing but problems with Google's horrible payment system. We're going to add Amazon payments once I do the next upgrade this weekend (still on 5.2.10). :-)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Chris

 

Do you use the standard payment gateway or the plugin - I think without exception, all issues that people experience are when using the Express / Pro plugin.  While I personally dont like PayPal as a company and their lack of customer service in comparison to other payment gateways, there is no denying their size, global reach and how easy it is for most people to get started with them.  I think too many people get caught up thinking they are the only choice when there are far better, and for most people far cheaper options.

 

The only experience I have personally with Google was as a customer so cant comment, but Amazon seems pretty good and stable as a choice for V5

 

Thanks

Ian

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...