Members pay to upgrade but are not promoted

Hello good people,

Recently some members who upgrade have a successful payment but are not upgraded.

1. How can we identify the issue?

2. How can we solve the issue?

Our site is set up so that they must be logged in to upgrade.

We have payment confirmations for them.

In the past we used to review logs to find answers . But now all logs are disabled due to the stern red warning inside s2Member. So secure logs would be handy one day. Logs being useful for logging activities and all.

How can we identify the issue?

Thank you,

Chris

Sorry about the delay.

Well if you’re having issues with your PayPal IPN integration, you should definitely turn on logging, at least for now. We’ll need to see some log files to be able to know what’s going on with your installation. It sounds to me like you have an invalid PayPal IPN setup. That’s normally the case when I see something like this.

Can you turn on logging?

See: Dashboard -› s2Member® -› Log Files (Debug) -› Logging Configuration

In the past we used to review logs to find answers . But now all logs are disabled due to the stern red warning inside s2Member. So secure logs would be handy one day. Logs being useful for logging activities and all.

s2Member’s logs are secured through Apache rules. The reason we do not allow logging to be enabled for our security badge to show is because these logs contain sensitive data, and if someone were to delete the .htaccess file from the /s2member-logs/ directory for some reason, or alter it, it could potentially let anyone see this sensitive data.

As long as you don’t do that, then there’s no way anyone without Admin or FTP access could see your log files.

Thank you Bruce,

PayPal requested that we turn on logs and send them to PayPal so they can review the IPN info sent to them.

This is unusual because we’ve enjoyed successful transactions for several months now. And we didn’t change any of the settings in s2Member–especially any of the PayPal settings because we know things can get ugly suddenly.

How can I send you logs?

And which logs do I send you?

This is AAA Urgent for us. It literally happened right now in the middle of a membership drive where we’ve expended significant resources to get people to go to our site and sign up.

Thank you,

Chris

How can I send you logs?

And which logs do I send you?

The best way would be to just give us Dashboard access via Private Contact Form. We’re going to be taking a look at the paypal-ipn.log file.

See: s2Member® » Private Contact Form

Thank you Bruce.

I’ve setup an admin user and an SFTP user and sent the info in the private contact form.

At the same time we’re also getting new sign ups returned to the sign up page after logging into PayPal and clicking the confirm subscription button.

When this happens they’re not charged a sign up transaction, we’re not credited for a new subscription, there are no emails sent to the would be subscriber, and the sign up page is empty with no message as to why they were returned.

Chris

I’ve setup an admin user and an SFTP user and sent the info in the private contact form.

Got it. I’m taking a look now.

I’m getting an error trying to use the credentials you gave me for Dashboard Access. Is there something I’m missing?

I don’t know. When I typed in the password it only had one field and no verification, and the field was password type so I couldn’t see what I was typing. Maybe I mistyped the password?

I got in via FTP. I’m looking at your logs and there are a lot here and I can’t be sure I’m looking at the correct transactions that went wrong.

Do you have a specific Subscription ID that this happened with?

Bruce,

I just tested the WordPress login and it worked for me.

After login the user is returned to the home page (incl. Admins).

We have a custom admin menu at the very top edge of the screen. Please look there after logging in.

Use the Admin menu to get to the dashboard. We also have an s2Member menu up there to save us several clicks each day.

All of the admin items open new tabs automatically.

Chris

After login the user is returned to the home page (incl. Admins).

That’s because of the login URL that you have set up at the top of your site. If you’ll look, it has an additional redirect_to variable set to send the User back to the homepage:

https://www.yoursite.com/wp-login.php?redirect_to=index.php

I can’t log in with the details you provided. I even tried using the FTP details at /wp-login.php, but it does not work for me. That’s okay though because I have FTP access. Right now I need a Subscription ID for a transaction this happened with.

Hello Bruce,

Thank you for the support.

here are two recent members who paid to upgrade, payment succeeded, they got the upgrade emails, but their user level did not change.

Subscriber ID: RP0000004101

Subscriber ID: RP0000004179

Chris

Bruce,

Here are more:

PayPal sub ID: RP0000004313

Successfully paid, but his username didn’t get upgraded to S2 Member Level 1.

And…

Transaction ID: ETHPAC621E5C
Profile ID: RP0000004341
Paypal unique transaction ID for PayPal Payments Pro: 3AL39237TP6158918
He paid $10 successfully by Visa, but his username was not promoted to S2 Member Level 1

We really need to resolve this issue. We’re working with the two elements involved: s2Member and PayPal and we’re getting no answers.

Thank you for your support,

Chris

Here are more:

Thanks so much. I’m sorry about the delay. I had to go ahead and download all of your logs to take a look, and as I was going through them I realized there is something really weird going on with your PayPal PayFlow integration…

If you’ll look at your paypal-payflow-ipg.log file, the first thing that strikes me as off is the URL that your IPN requests are coming in on:

www.tytnetwork.com/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron=1363110892.8711359500885009765625

I had missed this yesterday, and I’m sorry about this. This is not your PayPal PayFlow IPN URL. This is a WP_Cron URL and it is an automated request.

The second thing I noticed (which I did not notice until now because there are so many requests in this file), is that there are a lot of repeating requests. According to the description for your transactions, you are supposed to be charging Users $10.00 a month, but I’m seeing IPN resposnes for the same transactions 10-15 times in the logs, all within a couple days of each other.

This looks like (to me) not a problem with your IPN setup, but with an external plugin doing weird stuff with the incoming requests from PayPal.

I’m unable to log into the Dashboard so I can’t tell all of the plugins that you have activated, but I can tell via FTP that you do have several installed. I have to recommend turning off all plugins you can and doing some test transactions.

As-is, I doubt any transaction will go through correctly, looking at your logs. I’m not seeing any logged successes in your most recent log files. The earliest I’m seeing log file that look like they are correct is the end of March.

Thank you Bruce.

We’ve had successful transactions up until Monday this week or so.

So rather than turning off all plugins I’m going to look at the last few weeks of updates and installs and limit those plugins.

Chris

Bruce,

I hope you’ll try the login again. It works for me.

It will really help us if you can look at things as an admin.

Also, can you give us more info as to why the URL would have the CRON in it? We’ve changed nothing in the s2M PayPal settings.

Chris

Hello Bruce,

I ran several more tests and discovered each time that a Visa transaction works for a sign up and for an upgrade.

Each time I tried to use PayPal to sign up or Upgrade I was delivered to the PayPal site and then logged in.

Once I logged in I was shown the confirmation screen.

However, every time I did this I noticed that the Order Summary is EMPTY. There is no Description and there is no Future Payment info. So of course I’m confirming nothing and this explains why every time I get dumped back to the sign up page.

1. How can we troubleshoot why our sign up form stopped sending this info to PayPal?

2. How can we have an error return page so that a user isn’t just dumped back to our site when there is an error like this?

Thank you,

Chris

Bruce,

Because Visa works it is clear that s2Member does not send the Order Summary Description and Future Payment info to PayPal.

Until we can figure out why and get a resolution, can I modify this line on the various payment forms:

accept=”paypal,visa,mastercard,amex,discover,maestro,solo”

…to be:

accept=”visa,mastercard,amex,discover,maestro,solo”

…until we can get this resolved?

Will this remove the PayPal payment option from the payment forms?

Thank you,

Chris

Hello good people,

I’ve been in touch with PayPal tech support, tested signing up and then sent them the logs.

Here’s what they had to say:

Hi Chris,

Thanks for the update. I reviewed the log that you provided but that contain the IPN post that PayPal sends to your server after a successful transaction. It does not have the actual API request / response from your cart to PayPal to troubleshoot why the express checkout flow is not working when the buyer selection the PayPal login option.

Since this issue is occurring before the final payment, we need to review the API request and response for the SetExpressCheckout and DoExpressCheckoutPayment from your cart to PayPal; which the log you provided does not have.

When looking at the logs from here, I noticed that your cart is sending the SetExpressCheckout request to PayPal and getting back a successful response but I do not see the DoExpressCheckoutPayment request to charge the buyer or the CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile API to create the recurring profile.

Since PayPal is not getting these requests in the first place, I will suggest you check with the vendor of the application you are using to find out if there are any exceptions or failures on their end that is preventing the final DoExpressCheckoutPayment or CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile request from being sent to PayPal.

If they still don’t see any issues on their end, then obtain the API request and response from them and reply back so we can review those further.

Thanks.
Magarvin
PayPal Merchant Technical Services.
https://www.paypal.com/mts

– – – – –

Please help us get this resolved.

Thank you,

Chris

Did you check the paypal-api log? I tried to check your log myself, but the login info you had sent before seems to have expired already.

Hey Cristian,

I wouldn’t know what to look for in the paypap-api log :)

Give me some guidance here :)

Thank you,

Chris

I’d start looking for those requests the PayPal rep mentioned.

You can also resubmit your site’s info so I take a look. s2Member® » Private Contact Form

~ AUTO-GENERATED NOTICE TO SUPPORT REPS

Action taken: I posted a private contact form and referenced this Topic.

Hey guys,

I need to ping you on this.

It’s a critical issue that we cannot accept PayPal payments for membership on our site.

I’ve waited a weekend plus three days.

Please help us get this resolved.

PayPal tech support has looked at the logs and is pointing to s2Member.

This really is urgent and vital for us.

Thank you,

Chris

Got the login info. Thanks! I reviewed it and still can’t pin-point what’s wrong here. I’m forwarding it to Jason.

By the way, CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile is in the paypal-api log, but the last entry is from several months ago.