Starting to have trouble with PayPa

I had a couple of members sign up lately to my WordPress membership site who had problems logging in to the site.

When I look at their PayPal account they have a status of EXPIRED which none of the other members do.

They also cancelled their memberships straight away so I am wondering whether (somehow) the IPN message to tell my site that they were members didn’t get passed along BEFORE they cancelled their subscription on PayPal which meant they were not sent out the usual emails by the site asking them to fill out their profile, username/password etc.

I cannot think of any other reason and have not seen the EXPIRED status before in PayPal.

A lot of people will subscribe then cancel straight away so that they don’t get charged again (trying it out etc) but I am not sure (as they are not providing me the information I need) what happened. All I know is that I received a “Profile Cancelled” email from PayPal before (although with the same timestamp – maybe my server) BEFORE the “You have received a payment” email from PayPal.

I also didn’t get any “New user registration” emails from the site at all and had to add them in manually.

Has anyone else had similar issues or experienced this before?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Rob,

My most likely guess is that the customer didn’t have suffient funds to complete the transaction via PayPal, was over their limit, or used an expired card (hasn’t updated the expiration info with PayPal).

Did you ask the member to send you their PayPal unique transaction ID? If not, I would ask them to. That way you can look up the transaction in your PayPal account history and be sure the transaction funded. Sometimes PayPal can take a while to let you know the card is not good. Going directly to the PayPal transaction may help clear up the confusion.

Hi

Well both times I had the money come through to my account – they just didn’t get the emails from the website so I had to create them manually.

Today I had someone else sign up with the same thing – e.g they paid and it shows EXPIRED as the Payment Status before COMPLETED e.g CREATED > EXPIRED > COMPLETED.

Have they replaced cancelled with EXPIRED?

The full details with name/email redacted is below

1 Oct 2012 Recurring Payment From XX Completed Details Recurring Payment From XX 11F01646P3492615U Issue refund £5.00 GBP
1 Oct 2012 Recurring Payment From XX Expired Details Recurring Payment From XX …
1 Oct 2012 Recurring Payment From XX Created Details Recurring Payment From XX

Payment Status: Completed

Seller Protection
Not Eligible

Protection for items not received
Transactions without a postal address aren’t eligible for seller protection. We recommend that you contact XXXX to make sure this payment was authorised. For more information, see our tips to sell securely.

We have no postal address on file.

Recurring Payment Received via -PayPal Express Checkout For: (ID11F01646P3492615U) View Details
You can see all of your recurring payments on the Recurring payments dashboard.

Buyer Information

Buyer Name:
XXX
Buyer Email:
XX@XX.se

Total amount:
£5.00 GBP
Amount:
£5.00 GBP
Tax Amount:
£0.00 GBP
Postage Amount:
£0.00 GBP
Fee amount:
-£0.39 GBP
Net amount:
£4.61 GBP

Issue a refund

You have up to 60 days to refund the payment.

Date:
1 Oct 2012
Time:
12:00:00 BST
Status:
Completed

Subject:
XXXXX
Payment type:
Instant

I don’t know if this will help but the person hasn’t complained although from looking at the transaction history the same 3 statuses are in the same order again AND he cancelled almost straight after signing up – I have put notes in the “How to Register” page telling people NOT to cancel their subscription until they receive all emails from the site in case the IPN message is not received before they cancel and prevents them logging in.

Thanks for your help

Rob

Follow up

I have a few more of the same kind of issue so I am wondering if people are trying to do the old Paypal scam of buying something and then asking for a refund from PayPal straight away in the hope of the seller either sending out the item (ebay etc) or a website plugin like S2 member giving access through the IPN message and then getting free access to the site.

It hasn’t happened yet (as in the money does seem to get taken from their account and put in to my own) but the last couple of people who signed up to a weeks trial at £5 have all had the same details e.g

9 Oct 2012	 	Recurring Payment From	 Goldrelics	Completed	Details Recurring Payment From Goldrelics 42837055KT565380N	Issue refund 	£5.00 GBP
9 Oct 2012	 	Recurring Payment From	 Goldrelics	Expired	Details Recurring Payment From Goldrelics 	 	...
9 Oct 2012	 	Recurring Payment From	 Goldrelics	Created	Details Recurring Payment From Goldrelics 	 	...
5 Oct 2012	 	Recurring Payment From	 Chrysostomos Palantzas	Completed	Details Recurring Payment From Chrysostomos Palantzas 8J9750773N6075636	Issue refund 	£5.00 GBP
5 Oct 2012	 	Recurring Payment From	 Chrysostomos Palantzas	Expired	Details Recurring Payment From Chrysostomos Palantzas 	 	...
5 Oct 2012	 	Recurring Payment From	 Chrysostomos Palantzas	Created	Details Recurring Payment From Chrysostomos Palantzas 	 

The reason I set up my week trial at £5 as a subscription/recurring payment and not a “buy now” button was because I have had experience on other websites of scammers trying this method to gain free access to websites and for some reason (I may be wrong) but I think Paypal treats subscriptions (even if they don’t recur) differently from Buy Now buttons when it comes to cancellations. It certainly doesn’t log the members status as CANCELLED in PAYPAL.

Are people trying to scam me and failing (and if so good) OR is there something going on with this EXPIRED status.

Also I am getting cancellation notifications from Paypal in my inbox BEFORE the “You received a payment” email which seems strange.

The users are obviously cancelling straight away after buying and it seems I am keeping the money however the status doesn’t say “CANCELLED” in Paypal which I would expect instead it says “EXPIRED” and the help just says >> When you place an order: The transaction expired. Which isn’t too helpful.

I am not sure what is going on. I don’t mind scammers trying to scam me if they fail and get money taken out but I don’t want a situation where they succeed. I am wondering if it is a BOT that is doing the scraping & submitting as it all seems too fast for a human to do.

Has anyone else had similar issues?

Thanks for any help in advance.