Orders paid via PayPal without products purchased

[FredW]

Hello All,

I have been testing a new ShopSite website that uses buyanywhere buttons. In the case where my test order uses PayPal to check out, sometimes the results are good, sometimes, the results are unacceptable.

The unacceptable results is where a order is processed, but PayPal does not list the products purchased. it only says: "ShopSite Processed order" and lists the total amount. Both the confirmation email sent to the purchaser, the email sent to the merchant, and the order in the backroom in ShopSite do not list what was purchased only that it was a ShopSite processed order.

We are using ShopSite 11 SP1, PayPal business standard.

Does anybody have an ideas as to what the cause of this is?

Thanks in advance.
Fred W

[Jim]

The Paypal standard implementation requires a IPN from PayPal to notify ShopSite that an order has been placed. The IPN can be blocked for a number of reasons such as a firewall on the server, poor internet connection, etc. PayPal continues to send IPNs for the order for a period of time just in case there is a poor connection, however, if the IPN does not make it back to the ShopSite store then ShopSite does not know that an order has been placed. Delays on PayPal side are also a possibliity,

PayPal does not send the IPN until the payment has actually finalized and the money is in the merchants account. This generally happens quickly if the shopper is paying from their own PayPal account or with a Credit card, However, if the shopper pays with a check i can take up to 10 days for the check to clear the bank so the payment is not available until the 10 days is up and PayPal has the money.

For the above reasons it would be better to use the PayPal Express checkout method which does not rely on IPNs and the funds are trasferred at the time the transaction is completed on line.

[FredW]

The Paypal standard implementation requires a IPN from PayPal to notify ShopSite that an order has been placed. The IPN can be blocked for a number of reasons such as a firewall on the server, poor internet connection, etc. PayPal continues to send IPNs for the order for a period of time just in case there is a poor connection, however, if the IPN does not make it back to the ShopSite store then ShopSite does not know that an order has been placed. Delays on PayPal side are also a possibliity,

PayPal does not send the IPN until the payment has actually finalized and the money is in the merchants account. This generally happens quickly if the shopper is paying from their own PayPal account or with a Credit card, However, if the shopper pays with a check i can take up to 10 days for the check to clear the bank so the payment is not available until the 10 days is up and PayPal has the money.

For the above reasons it would be better to use the PayPal Express checkout method which does not rely on IPNs and the funds are trasferred at the time the transaction is completed on line.

Thank you Jim, for one of the best answers I have received from any support in a while. To the point, understandable, and you offered an alternative.
Great!
Fred