PayPal Commerce OK for older versions of Cubecart 6?

[jasehead]

I'm still getting a mixture of blank gateway and paypal_commerce from customer orders. Another customer experienced a duplicate order and duplicate payment that I had to cancel today. She said that she seemed to be sent back to PayPal twice. The order numbers indicated a 7-second gap.

Shouldn't the plugin itself resist duplicate payments like this? I don't get the PayPal fee back when issuing a refund so, the more this happens, the more it costs.

BTW, these duplicate orders, the first showed a blank gateway and the duplicate showed paypal_commerce. The processing fee at PayPal was the same for both orders. The transaction history in CubeCart was the same. Only difference was the time.

Edited November 23, 2023 by jasehead

[jasehead]

Also, orders coming from PayPal Commerce that have WA as the state are being interpreted by CubeCart as WASHINGTON instead of WESTERN AUSTRALIA. In the billing/delivery address in the order no state is selected.

[Debyink]

I mentioned about this in June, my customers were being sent back to my store after making payment only to be advised it hadn't and then paid again which created a second new order number.

Have lost lots of £££'s because as mentioned paypal do not refund the transaction fees, not only that customers email me - annoyed I have taken payment twice, even though it's not me.

[Al Brookbanks]

Just now, Debyink said:

I mentioned about this in June, my customers were being sent back to my store after making payment only to be advised it hadn't and then paid again which created a second new order number.

Have lost lots of £££'s because as mentioned paypal do not refund the transaction fees, not only that customers email me - annoyed I have taken payment twice, even though it's not me.

As fas as I am aware this was an uncommon issue that hasn't raised it's head since recent versions that addressed it. In particular there was a JavaScript redirect that could fail. We added a "if this page doesn't redirect click here" message to help move it along. There have been other enhancements but I can't recall what was done. 

This shouldn't happen with the latest version but if it does we can't fix it without steps to reproduce the issue. 

[Debyink]

I have several every month ...

One tonight which has cost me £4.75 in Paypal fees which as mentioned I can't recover.

My customer placed order ending 8852 , paid via Paypal and was returned to my store. Store informed her that one of the items was out of stock (she had purchased the last of one item) but it left her still in checkout to which she then went and checked out and paid again and a new order number was assigned ending 8674.

 

Initial Order:

 

2nd order less the out of stock item £7.08

[Al Brookbanks]

Is the store and extension up to date?

Do we know what steps we need to take to reproduce this?

Can the customer provide any feedback as to what may have happened?

Can you contact PayPal to recover the fees for a double payment?

[Debyink]

Al , I've messaged you a link to the request log so you can have alook and maybe see what's happening.

Answers:

Is the store and extension up to date? I'm running Cburst but skin hasn't been updated since Nitefox handed them over to CC. Paypal commerce 1.9.2

Do we know what steps we need to take to reproduce this? Yes , it happens when someone purchases the last of a product in stock. Stock is set to reduce when payment has been made - original order switches to processing as they have made a payment. But they are left in checkout so go and make payment again and upon return to the store have a new order number.

Can the customer provide any feedback as to what may have happened? as above

Can you contact PayPal to recover the fees for a double payment? No

[Al Brookbanks]

11 minutes ago, Debyink said:

it happens when someone purchases the last of a product in stock

Thanks I don't need to see the request log. I've worked with another merchant who has had this issue on rare occasions. I've spent uncountable hours trying to work out what in earth is happening.

This is a scenario that I haven't tried!! Easy to reproduce so I'll do this early next week.

Sorry about this. Terribly frustrating but if you are right then it should be something I can resolve (hopefully without too much difficulty).

[jasehead]

Bear in mind the original question: Is PayPal Commerce OK for older versions of Cubecart 6?

I would hope that the payment gateway plugin is robust enough to handle a transaction cleanly without workarounds being added to cubecart itself.  Otherwise, the answer would be that the plugin requires (minimum cubecart version number) to work without error.

Edited November 26, 2023 by jasehead

[Debyink]

Al - had another 2 customers place duplicate orders one yesterday, one just now but this time the items they had in their orders were all plenty of stock in fact I don't use stock levels for them as they are products we manufacture.

So in the last 3 days I've now lost £7.87 in non recoverable Paypal fees

I'm still running CC 6.4.5, daren't upgrade as the skin I'm using is modified.

 

[jasehead]

Debyink, can you check the duplicate transactions in PayPal to see if you were charged different PayPal fees for duplicate transactions of the same total value? Also, in Cubecart Admin, can you check the Order/Overview tab for some PayPal Commerce orders to see if the gateway is always showing or not - the gateway should be listed at the bottom of the order in the shipping section, just above the save buttons.

Edited November 26, 2023 by jasehead

[Debyink]

Yes charges same amount if the order was the exactly the same.

BUT - if the 1st order was for where they had bought the last of an item, then after paying and being returned to my store - it tells them that a product has now become out of stock and been removed from their basket, the complete checkout button is still there - they then go and pay again and on return to the store a new order number is created.

Same with the ones you posted - they have different order numbers. check and see what was in their inventory if they are the same .

[Al Brookbanks]

So the stock level is a red herring. Do you have Elasticsearch enabled?

We need solid steps to reproduce this.

What intrigues me is that the vast majority of stores are not prone to this. So what's different? Could there be a common setting between each store with the issue or possibly an common 3rd party extension or skin.

[jasehead]

I had at least one customer duplicate an order only seconds apart for the same item and order total - the PayPal processing fee was different for each order. Plenty of stock, so stock level wasn't involved.  I have had other duplicate orders where the PayPal fee was the same for both.

This thread isn't about the store being up to date, it's about whether PayPal commerce works for older versions of CC6 - so elasticsearch shouldn't apply unless the store is 6.5 or above. If plugins/extensions require minimum Cubecart versions, then perhaps saying "Compatibility: Cubecart v6" in the marketplace isn't enough information.

I'm on 6.1.14 with PayPal, PayPal Commerce, Card Capture and Oxipay/Humm - all fine for the last 4 days, but another blank gateway from PayPal Commerce today. I'd retire the old PayPal gateway if Commerce was working 100%.

Can't the PayPal Commerce plugin just be updated to prevent a duplicate order from the same customer within a time limit? Order numbers will be different so some other identifier needs to be tested. From what I can see from the timestamp in the order number, the duplicate order follows 7 seconds later. This might simply be customer behaviour clicking back and forward, but customers don't remember details about what happened in that moment.

I guess you don't want to throw worrying error messages or confusing freezes at the customer either, but also important for the initial transaction to work and not just look like it did (important for the customer and the store). So maybe a processing countdown?

Edited November 27, 2023 by jasehead
Blank gateway again.

[Debyink]

No elastic search.

The extensions I have are:

Skin: Cburst

Installed Extensions (enabled only)
All In One shipping
Noodleman - Advanced reports/Stock Values
Noodleman -custom order status with traffic lights
Paypal commerce
Smither consulting - Product Appearances

Edited November 27, 2023 by Debyink

[Debyink]

and another one tonight and another £1.90 lost and another annoyed customer:

I've asked for details on what device and browser she was using and also what, if any, messages were displayed before she went and paid again. All items were fully in stock

Please cancel this order 231127-175827-1985 as it is a duplicate of 231127-175819-3987.

There does seem to be a problem paying with Paypal on your site – this is the second time duplicate orders have been placed when following the instructions given by Paypal.

Thank you

N M Howard

[jasehead]

7 hours ago, Debyink said:

Please cancel this order 231127-175827-1985 as it is a duplicate of 231127-175819-3987.

You'll see by the order number, which is date-timestamp-random(?), that the timestamp part shows 17:58:27 vs 17:58:19 - so only 8 seconds apart.
 

[Debyink]

Yes it's when they get returned from Paypal the first time then for some reason between Paypal and CC it tells them they need to pay again or has failed (not sure) so they go and pay again straight away

[Debyink]

Heard back from my customer and she said:

The sign in was on an apple I-Pad, using Safari

After authorising payment on Paypal the message is something like “returning you to the seller’s website to complete the purchase”. On returning to your website you go back to the order page where there is no option to “complete purchase” and no confirmation that payment has been made and so you go through the whole “make payment” routine again, only to find I have paid for two exact same orders.

[Debyink]

Had some more this week and some more annoyed customers.

[Al Brookbanks]

Any pattern or steps to reproduce?

[Debyink]

Customer said same as other customer, was using iphone and safari browser:

My phone is an iPhone SE, I use Safari 

After going to checkout and completing everything I paid with pay pal

It when to PP and I put in my password an pressed pay then I was back to the form you fill in before you pay (no confirmation of order) so I did and went through to paypal this time it worked and everything went through as normal when I checked my emails within 5 minutes  there was 2 confirmations and 2 receipts in my inbox so I emailed straight away 

[Al Brookbanks]

Thanks. I'll dust off the iPad and do some tests...

[jasehead]

On 11/29/2023 at 2:07 AM, Debyink said:

Heard back from my customer and she said:

The sign in was on an apple I-Pad, using Safari

After authorising payment on Paypal the message is something like “returning you to the seller’s website to complete the purchase”. On returning to your website you go back to the order page where there is no option to “complete purchase” and no confirmation that payment has been made and so you go through the whole “make payment” routine again, only to find I have paid for two exact same orders.

I got another duplicate order today - 48 seconds apart (so possibly a customer issue given the extra time). The first order remained Pending but the second went through to Processing. There was only one payment in PayPal, but I had to check anyway because the old PayPal Standard gateway would sometimes have an unexpected error and Cubecart would say Pending but the payment had gone through in PayPal.

No money lost, but time lost investigating every duplicate order with PayPal Commerce.

Edited December 7, 2023 by jasehead

[Al Brookbanks]

Just now, jasehead said:

I got another duplicate order today - 48 seconds apart (so possibly a customer issue given the extra time). The first order remained Pending but the second went through to Processing. There was only one payment in PayPal, but I had to check anyway because the old PayPal Standard gateway would sometimes have an unexpected error and Cubecart would say Pending but the payment had gone through in PayPal.

No money lost, but time lost for every duplicate order with PayPal Commerce.

It it worth asking the customer if they remember what happened?