PayPal PayFlow API vs. PayPal IPN

Hello,

One of the recent member complaints about being billed again after cancelling led us to the logs…

What’s the difference between the two log files:

paypal-payflow-api-ARCHIVED…

and

paypal-ipn-ARCHIVED…?

We continue our quest(s) to find out why members:

A. continue to be billed again for recurring payments after they’ve cancelled, and

B. to try and understand why they can authenticate with iTunes to get access to our members only podcasts–two and three months after they’ve cancelled memerbship, or been dropped manually by us putting in an EOT.

In that vast (“it’s not our problem”) arena of WordPress, PayPal, s2Member, Amazon S3, iTunes and our dear, dear friends at PayPal (what a high maintenance soup this is), we’re trying to find where to finally, definitively point the finger so we can once and for all resolve these issues.

Thank you for being one of the more supportive links in this chin that wraps around us several times each month.

Chris

PROBLEM RESOLUTION BOUNTY WORTH $ 500

Anybody* want $ 500 to buy presents or pay for tax increases?

I’ll pay $ 500 if the solution is done before Christmas day December 25, 2012.

$ 500 if you can 100% definitively resolve these issues so that:

A. We NEVER again hear from a member that they’ve cancelled and got billed again more than 31 days following their cancellation,

B. We NEVER again have a cancelled member continue to authenticate on iTunes more than 31 days AFTER their EOT date, AND

C. Clean up our existing +/- 9,000 user records so that the:

1. manually added users (without PayPal Transaction IDs),
2. who used to pay for membership in the past–
3. but now are no longer paying members (and were dropped via EOT)–
4. will NOT continue to get access to our system as paying members and
5. will NOT continue to get access to authenticated members only iTunes subscriptions.

We use:

1. WordPress for the platform

2. s2Member Pro for member management and authentication (for Amazon S3 content)

3. Amazon S3 for multimedia CDN

4. iTunes to serve member subscriptions

5. PayPal Pro and PayFlow to manage all payments

And this should be really, really easy–because everything works–on paper.

* By “Anybody” I mean a Pro s2Member user/staff member, who is on Linkedin, and I can verify skills, as well as trust you with access to our system.

What’s the difference between the two log files:

paypal-payflow-api-ARCHIVED…

and

paypal-ipn-ARCHIVED…?

paypal-ipn.log is for IPN Responses that are created when a user registers, while the paypal-payflow-api.log is for info that is sent back from the Payflow API to check the info that is provided by the Pro Form.

—

I noticed that in another post you said:

We don’t use the link to files method. Our users go to iTunes, subscribe and iTunes asks for their authentication.

If I understand this correctly, then iTunes is taking a key of some sort to authenticate users. If that’s the case, then s2Member does not really have any control over what iTunes is doing here. Unless you set up this integration with Dashboard -› s2Member® -› API / Notifications -› Payment Notifications, there’s no way for iTunes to know when a user has canceled their membership..

A. We NEVER again hear from a member that they’ve cancelled and got billed again more than 31 days following their cancellation,

This is probably an issue with IPN, or a server compatibility issue. Have you already run the Server Check Tool?

Hello Bruce,

Thank you for the follow up.

Thank you for the log explanations. A handy, super, wonderful addition to s2Member would be a section where the logs could be looked at! –INSIDE of s2Member, inside of WordPress.

– – –

I dropped the server check tool file (s2member-server-check-120703.php) into our site’s root folder, ran it, saw that it advises to be logged in as an Admin, logged in and hit the page again, and everything comes up with green check marks and passes. It was refreshing to see that everything is working with that area–at least one thing is green :)

– – –

Bruce, can you please explain more about this (it’s the FIRST TIME I’ve heard about this related to iTunes):

Unless you set up this integration with Dashboard -› s2Member® -› API / Notifications -› Payment Notifications, there’s no way for iTunes to know when a user has canceled their membership…

Inside of s2Member® -› API / Notifications -› Payment Notifications, it says:

…the URLs that you list below, will be notified each time an actual payment occurs…

I honestly don’t know where to start to tell iTunes anything using this Payment Notification URL feature. Is there a section here at s2Member on using this with iTunes?

And maybe I don’t understand something, but:

1. I don’t think iTunes wants to get thousands of notifications from us each month as member payments occur.

2. I don’t see how sending payment success messages to iTunes each month will change anything. iTunes doesn’t manage our user access–s2Member does that.

– – –

How does s2Member handle the authentication between iTunes and Amazon S3? That’s where the answer to one issue lies.

Thank you,

Chris

Thank you for the log explanations. A handy, super, wonderful addition to s2Member would be a section where the logs could be looked at! –INSIDE of s2Member, inside of WordPress.

I’ll put this in the list of feature requests for the next major version of s2Member.

I honestly don’t know where to start to tell iTunes anything using this Payment Notification URL feature. Is there a section here at s2Member on using this with iTunes?

And maybe I don’t understand something, but:

1. I don’t think iTunes wants to get thousands of notifications from us each month as member payments occur.

2. I don’t see how sending payment success messages to iTunes each month will change anything. iTunes doesn’t manage our user access–s2Member does that.

– – –

How does s2Member handle the authentication between iTunes and Amazon S3? That’s where the answer to one issue lies.

If I understand correctly, your iTunes integration works like so:

1. User signs up, and pays on a recurring basis

2. They are granted a one-time key for iTunes that grants them access to your content

3. The user eventually cancels subscription, and all access to your site is revoked. However iTunes access is not.

Is that correct? I’d like clarification on this.