Forum Moderators: buckworks
I’m new to this ecommerce section of webmasterworld. I recently launched my first ecommerce site. I am not a programmer so I hired someone to build it for me using the open source application, OsCommerce. (http://www.oscommerce.com/)
OsCommerce comes with many terrific out-of-the-box features; one of them is paypal integration.
In a different thread THUMPCYC mentioned he had a paypal problem where he received an email notification re: paypal payment but his shopping cart database did not record the order and he had to contact the buyer to ask “what did you purchase?” [Nobody responded to his/her post]
I have had four (4) such problems out of fifty (50) sales. Here’s what I have been able to ascertain …(PayPalDave – feel free correct/add/etc…)
When "Paypal Account Optional" is turned ON, and the customer does not choose to sign up for paypal AND they do not choose to return to the merchant site (in this case, my site!) and instead they just close their browser or go somewhere else, the order does NOT get logged into my OsCommerce database. (And the same may be true for THUMPCYC's Miva Merchant.)
Evidently, paypal sends back a piece of data to the ecommerce database to finish up the transaction.
My web developer called paypal to discuss the problem and said paypal’s position was one of non-acknowledgement of a problem.
THIS IS A PROBLEM! It would be very helpful if paypal had a third option: 1) open paypal account, 2) return to merchant and 3) finished with this transaction.
The 3rd option could bring the customer to their browser’s default start page or paypal’s home page or whatever. The main point here is that when the customer clicked the 3rd option, the necessary data would be returned to the ecommerce database to enable the order to be logged and processed.
This same problem has also happened to me once (1) to a customer who was an existing paypal member. My web developer guesses that if the server is busy or heavy network congestion that paypal does not resend the data to the ecommerce database.
In this case it would be very helpful if paypal had some kind of acknowledgement protocol that would ensure the ecommerce database received the data.
I’m not a programmer or a techie – I’m a marketer, so if I’ve said something incorrectly I apologize.
If PayPalDave or anyone else can shed some light on this serious issue, I would be most grateful.
Thank you,
videobeat
IPN works 100% of the time for me.. Don't have optional turned on, however.
That's the problem. When you do turn ON "paypal account optional" and the customer doesn't signup up to paypal AND doesn't "return to merchant," their order doesn't get posted to the commerce database.
You receive payment but don't know what they purchased. I get 30% more sales by leaving it turned ON. Of those, 60% don't sign up or return. So, I'm working for my money...having to contact them and explain the situation and ask what they purchased.
Try using Freeblisket TM from [weblisket.com...]
[edited by: TallTroll at 11:44 am (utc) on April 7, 2004]
I ask because I did this test and the order did not log to my ecommerce database. I waited...nothing. The moment I clicked "return to merchant" boom! the order appeared in my database.
Please reply if you have done this test.
Thank you!
videobeat
Before I call his coding skills into question (he's done a lot of good work for me) I'd like to have some proof that the problem I described above is not a paypal problem.
It happens because at the end of the checkout process, when the customer hits the payment button they don't press the "Continue" button whilst still on the Paypal server. If they did press Continue this would transfer them and their basket contents back to your oscommerce site.
Since Paypal IPN was introduced on the latest oscommerce build we've already stopped using Paypal (for a different reason) but it's supposedly there to prevent non-orders from coming through.
Good luck!
$xx = '';
for ($i=0; $i<sizeof($order->products); $i++) {
$xx .= $order->products[$i]['qty'] . '-' . ($order->products[$i]['name']) . '**';
}
to modules/payment/paypal.php around line 85 on a clean file after:
$my_currency = 'USD';
}
and before
$process_button_string = tep_draw_hidden_field('cmd', '_xclick') .
This adds details of the products to the Item Title field on the Paypal transaction detail.
It is not a perfect solution, as there are a limited number of characters allowed in this field. We get about 4 products in there, but it depends on the length of your descriptions. You could modify the code to capture the model number which would be fewer characters if you have a large number of items per order.
For us it is better than nothing:-)
I saw it as a contrib or tip, but can't find it now to give kudos to the original author.
videobeat
