Sporadic errors with Google Checkout

[E-junkie_Guru]

Several E-junkie merchants have reported receiving sporadic error notifications from Google Checkout like the following:

We've made several unsuccessful attempts to send order notifications to your notification callback URL, https://www.e-junkie.com/ gc/XXXXXX/ResponseHandler.php As a result, you aren't receiving order status, risk, or other notifications.

These don't seem to affect every GC sale nor every GC merchant, just a scattered few checkouts seemingly at random.



If you are new to using Google Checkout with E-junkie and have received errors like that, the first thing you should do is double-check our required integration settings:

http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/google-checkout-shopping-cart.htm#help

(Note in particular the API Callback URL and Method, and open the Advanced Settings section to ensure you have nothing checked under there.)



That said, if those settings are correct or you have already been accepting Google Checkout payments successfully before you started receiving those error notices, there does seem to be some sort of issue at Google's end lately. Aside from the sporadic error reports from our own merchants, we've also checked with other e-commerce providers who report their merchants are also having similar problems with GC lately. At any rate, it appears to be something out of our hands, but our Lead Developer is bringing this up with some inside contacts on the Google Checkout team to make sure they're aware of the situation and see what can be done.

[bigfoots]

well you say its google issue and google obviously is pointing the finger at you.

[bigfoots]

so I will presume with this mentality the issue will never be resolved since its a finger pointing game.

meanwhile my in-box is filling up with these messages..

[E-junkie_Guru]

Google Checkout's notification-failed messages are completely automated; no actual person has investigated anything when those messages are sent, so nobody is pointing any fingers from their end. All that message means is that nothing happened when their server attempted to contact ours, but that doesn't indicate the actual reason or source of the fault. Think of it this way: if your phone line is cut, we obviously won't be able to pick up when you dial our number, even though there is no problem with our own phone line.



We have personally investigated the issue thoroughly and run tests from our end and found nothing amiss, and we have contacted other e-commerce/cart providers who also integrate with Google Checkout, and they are also experiencing the exact, same sporadic pattern of errors with their Google Checkout callbacks lately, so obviously this issue is not isolated to E-junkie alone, indicating a general problem at Google's end affecting most or all Google Checkout merchants.

[bigfoots]

well their email is pointing to you.. and that's what i meant by finger pointing...

I guess I'm just frustrated with some of the limitations of e-junkie and this is just another issue on the list..

[payments]

The problem I am having with this issue is that Google says E-Junkie, and E-Junkie says Google... To be perfectly honest, I couldn't give a schtick who has the error, but error there is.



I have two orders that I can see in my Google checkout, one placed at 2:35 and one at 6:04, but they do not appear in my e-junkie and I am now getting "wtf" e-mails from those customers. This is unacceptable. I reported this problem a long time ago, and from what I ca tell a lot of "looking into" was done by both parties, and a lot of "nothing at all" was actually done about it.



I am now having this problem with my other three stores that are not using e-junkie, and I'm now putting off moving them over until this is solved.

[tsf]

I'm getting the same error now. And the same unhappy customers.



"We've made several unsuccessful attempts to send order notifications to your notification callback URL, https://www.e-junkie.com/ gc/ResponseHandler.php As a result, you aren't receiving order status, risk or other notifications."



Looking forward to a resolution.

[tsf]

I've checked the Google integration console and this is the error detail.



Time of occurrence: 24 Feb 2010 16:35:54 GMT

Error: We encountered an error trying to access your server at https://www.e-junkie.com/ gc/ResponseHandler.php -- the error we got is org.apache.commons.httpclient.ConnectTimeoutException: The host did not accept the connection within timeout of 10000 ms

[bigfoots]

for the record.. this has never effected my digital delivery of items. its just an annoying message that google sends over and over every time i manually send a google invoice (money request)

as best I can tell this is the only time I get the message.

[payments]

I get the message during normal checkout of items, and it seems to affect a very small percentage of purchases, completely at random - but when it does affect an order, that order keeps causing the same error over and over according to the integration console. The odd part is, other orders come in just fine in between the same order retrying and failing.



I reported this behavior also when I originally reported this problem.

[payments]

Two more orders have done the same thing - one was charged at 1:06am but the e-junkie order didn't come through until 3:49am, and the other was charged at 10:24pm yesterday, and it is now 9:10am and it still hasn't come through e-junkie (!!!)



That's 4 in under 24 hours, one of which hasn't even gone through yet. Nothing has changed on my side, at all. I did not touch the integration, code, Google or E-Junkie accounts, hell I haven't even created a discount code in over a week.



Seriously, what is happening?

[payments]

...and now there's a new error. The original error was:



We encountered an error trying to access your server at https://www.e-junkie.com/ gc/ResponseHandler.php -- the error we got is org.apache.commons.httpclient.ConnectTimeoutException: The host did not accept the connection within timeout of 10000 ms



The new error is:



We encountered an error trying to access your server at https://www.e-junkie.com/ gc/ResponseHandler.php -- the error we got is The host did not accept the connection within timeout of 3000 ms



This new one was a few ticks before noon EST.

[E-junkie_Guru]

bigfootsfor the record.. this has never effected my digital delivery of items. its just an annoying message that google sends over and over every time i manually send a google invoice (money request)

as best I can tell this is the only time I get the message.

Aha, well that's to be expected then. When you follow our Google Checkout integration, you're instructing GC to inform our system every time a payment has been completed. If a given transaction was never started by our purchase buttons in the first place, then our system would ignore that notification which would thus fail, hence the errors you're seeing. If there's any way to disable callback notification for manual payment-request invoices, that would be on GC's end, so you'd need to ask them if that's possible and how:

http://checkout.google.com/support/sell/bin/request.py



@7w: could you confirm that all your purchase buttons are E-junkie buttons and that you don't have any button codes in use that you might have obtained directly from Google?

[payments]

I am using stock e-junkie code and buttons - the only things from google on my site are analytics and conversion code, and that has been unchanged from long before the errors started happening.

[E-junkie_Guru]

Great, just trying to eliminate anything you or we would have any control over.



If you were using GC with E-junkie just fine up until recently, didn't change anything, and yet suddenly these errors started happening "out of the blue", then it's the same problem at GC's end that other cart providers we've talked to are also reporting lately among their own merchants.



If it were due to some problem at our end, it would only be affecting E-junkie merchants alone, but since merchants using other cart systems completely unrelated to E-junkie are also reporting similar, sporadic problems just recently, this indicates the source of the problem and responsibility for fixing it has to lie with Google.