Strange problem with card transactions...

[Bashton]

I have this problem I don't know how to troubleshoot.

I have customers coming into the store and placing orders. But, for some reason the store tells them their card has been turned down.

But the card has actually gone through into the gateway. But the order has not shown up in my orders for ShopSite.

This results in really problematic behavior. Some customers just leave the site and buy from someone else. Other customers keep trying to place the order, resulting in me having two or more authorizations for them, but only one, (if any), store order. It's a mess to have to communicate with these people and straighten everything out. But I don't know how to go about fixing this.

Is it the Gateway? I've called them. They said it was the store. When I first opened the store I had a 10 minute fraud protection for cards entered twice with the same amount. That ended up with people getting their cards rejected repeatedly when they tried to re-enter them once they were turned down for incorrect info.

A person from the gateway said I could turn down that setting from 10 minutes to 2-3 minutes. I did that and that's when I started having this other problem. But, why would that cause this behavior?

Is it the shopping cart? I don't know. What in the shopping cart could be causing this? I have had a few people tell me that all the info they put in was correct the first time, but they were still turned down.

Is it the server? I'm with JustHost, (a shopsite partner), and I've noticed a couple of times a hang, but why would that cause this problem?

Has anyone had a similar experience? Can anyone suggest a way to troubleshoot this?

Thanks.

[dortchjm]

I was having this problem for a while and ended up turning the time to wait between transactions off or to zero.

Look at your transaction log in your gateway. All attempts should be listed. Are they being accepted or denied? If they are being accepted, this won't solve the problem. If they are being denied, most likely it's due to a typo or possibly over the limit debit card.

When I studied my transaction list, I found I was the biggest problem by mistyping customers credit cards when I took phone orders. Every so often I check the log to see if I'm losing orders, most will grab a different card. I found that removing the time limit helped a lot where a typo was the culpret. It would depend on the type of product you're selling whether it would be safe to remove the time limit or not.

Janice

[Jim]

Under the Commerce Setup > Payment > Processor configuration there is an option to "Display Error Details" Enable that and the message the shopper sees when the card is declined will include details directly from the processor as to what is wrong. Usually these are error codes rather than messages so you will probably need to contact your processor to find out what the codes mean.

[Bashton]

Well, dortchjm, the attempts are being accepted.

Jim: My "Display Error Details" box is already checked. And now I'm wondering if that is the problem: There is something causing it to display an error even though the card went through. So the customers only see the error display and try to enter it again.

But that would not explain why authorizations are not coming through as orders in the store.

[Jim]

What are the error details?
Have you contacted your payment gateway to see what they mean?

What gateway are you using?

Do some orders come through ok or are they all failing?

[Bashton]

I don't know what the error messages are. I just know that I had that error option turned on.

I'm using Linkpoint/FirstData.

Yes, most orders come through fine. But, then one or two people a day will have a problem where I get two or three authorizations for them and they have only one or no orders show up in the store.

I turned off the "error reporting" option last night to see what would happen. So far every order that has appeared in the gateway has also appeared in the store and there are no duplicates.

So maybe that's what the problem was.

[Jim]

Having the display error details option turned on would not cause a problem, it only is displayed IF an error occurs.

Until you know what the error codes are there is no way to determine what the problem is. I would guess however that you have some level of fraud protection on in ShopSite that is not the same as what you have on the LinkPoint side. For example
Reject on CVV2 failure
Reject on AVS Street Address Failure
Reject on AVS ZipCode Failure

LinkPoint may not reject on one of those but if they return a message saying that one doesn't match and you have that option checked in ShopSite then ShopSite will not let the order go through. You would then have an Authorization on the LinkPoint side but no order in ShopSite.

[dortchjm]

I also have Linkpoint/First Data as my gateway. Did you go to your virtual terminal and check your fraud settings? There is also a bunch of manuals in the support section. Do you have a contact person?

Janice