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Sep 2021

We can't speak for PayPal, so you'd need to inquire with them about any potential compensation. As for fixing issues at their end, typically they get things sorted within a day or so at most, so the duration of this case is highly unusual albeit not entirely unheard-of over the dozen-plus years I've been working here.

They still haven't responded to my followup yesterday, asking them to clarify their latest reply -- which may be moot, as our Devs say the cryptic information they'd provided there "doesn't make any sense, Its like they didn't even take a proper look at the issue" and "seems like they aren't that serious about the issue". I can only guess they may be at an impasse diagnosing the issue at their end, so meanwhile they're just throwing irrelevant flack back at us to make it seem like they're working on it or trying to help.

Dev is still scrutinizing our logs for any clues that could indicate any potential tweaks or workarounds we might apply to try mitigating the problem.

Have you heard anything from PayPal in the last few days? I am still having this issue. It is not happening to every order but it is still happening.

Anything yet? This is still happening. This is insane this is still happening over a week later.
I'm at the point where the business owner wants to find another payment processor, which means a lot of work. How is that there is no end in site to this?
When was Paypal last contacted and what was the result?
It's been 4+ days with no updates on the forum, and this is happening every day to me.

We first reported the issue to PayPal MTS on Aug. 23. They finally acknowledged just yesterday that they've identified a relevant timeout issue at their end and are working to fix it.

This corresponds to what our Devs found when they enabled more detailed logging at our end, where we did not see any recalculation callback attempt logged at all for affected orders.

In that scenario, PayPal should apply the precalculated fallback amount(s) passed from our cart -- which appear to be getting reported correctly as tax and mc_shipping in IPN after payment -- but they haven't been adding that to the buyer's payment total.

So apparently their callback routine is sporadically just stalling out completely, failing to perform the callback and failing to add the precalculated fallback amounts, yet still reporting those amounts in IPN, causing the IPNs to fail the Suspected Fraud price-check we perform before processing the order.

If you'd like to offer buyers a different checkout method, this help page lists all the payment services we support5; any of those will add a separate checkout button in your E-junkie Cart for buyers to pay directly with a card.

If you do this and also want to remove the PayPal checkout option from your E-junkie Cart until they resolve this issue, you can do that in your E-junkie Dashboard under Manage Seller Account > Edit Profile > More Payment Options > Show PayPal in shopping cart (unfortunately that can't be disabled if you're using PayPal Payments Advanced or Pro).

Of those services, we'd recommend Stripe in particular if you're based in any of the countries they support2, as they're pretty quick to approve new accounts, very easy to set up with us, and don't even require buyers to enter their card billing address during checkout.

"We first reported the issue to PayPal MTS on Aug. 23. They finally acknowledged just yesterday that they've identified a relevant timeout issue at their end and are working to fix it."

This is good news. Assuming they didn't give you a timeline? And if not, any guestimated ETA?

Thanks

They didn't give us any timeline or ETA, but at least they now seem to have a handle on just what the problem is and where, so hopefully it shouldn't take them much longer to get it sorted. 🤞

4 months later

We've received a few reports indicating this problem has cropped up again. We've already reported the issue to PayPal MTS, so they can fix the glitch at their end causing this. Meanwhile, the 4th post in this thread above suggests a workaround you can use to request any unpaid tax or shipping from affected buyers. We apologize for the trouble and hope PayPal can correct the problem forthwith.

I dumped PP last year forever and have never been happier. Loving Stripe-- great integration E-Junkie! After PP raised their fees (now 3.49% + $0.49), that was it.

I received this error tonight. I noticed when you're redirect to PP to make payment you now need to click a radio button to accept shipping/handling charge.

PayPal MTS is still investigating this issue.

@jsb I tested PayPal checkout but haven't seen that radio button you mentioned, though all your products I tried to test with had free shipping, so I just used a test product of our own. Could you take a screenshot and email that to us?

Just sent over those screenshots. I too was unable to recreate what happened last night but I noticed something similar comes up if you go through the checkout process without logging in to PP. There is a dropdown titled "shipping method". If you don't selected it the shipping/handling charges are not added to the total on PP.

Just got another report from a seller that sometimes the PayPal checkout site is not showing buyers any shipping charge at all nor adding such to their payment total, even when shipping was precalculated in the cart before checkout and the default shipping address from the buyer's PayPal profile was applied automatically.

This seems likely related to the issue discussed above, so I've added details about that to the ticket we opened with PayPal MTS about it.

All this, along with those screenshots @jsb sent us (showing stuff in PayPal checkout that we'd never seen before and could not replicate), seems to indicate PayPal might have rolled out a half-baked update to the way they show/apply shipping charges at checkout. MTS says they're working on it, so hopefully they'll roll back to the pre-update version or iron out the problems in the update forthwith.

Any updates? After the initial issue in the fall it was fine until the recent flare up.

No further updates from PayPal MTS so far, so we're still waiting on them to fix the issue, which seems to be sporadically ongoing according to further reports of it that we've received from affected sellers today. :slight_frown:

Hello. I've been experiencing this issue randomly over the past week. My customers are charged for the product with the tax showing but not added in. It's expensive to absorb the cost of the unpaid tax.

Just got off the phone with PayPal support who claims 100% that the issue is with E-Junkie and not PayPal.

So, feeling stuck in no man's land. Looks like I'll transition to Stripe.

Unfortunately, PayPal's front-line customer service agents don't seem informed about technical issues reported to PayPal MTS, nor trained to handle any technical issues in general at all, and by all accounts their training seems to prioritize quick answers over correct or helpful ones.

As mentioned above here, we have reported this issue to PayPal MTS along with proof documenting the issue could only be occurring at their end, and they have confirmed that they are aware of and working to resolve the problem at their end.

It's the same thing I got last year. But not true. It's PayPal's issue. If you look back in this thread, there is a solid explanation.

Hi there, due to this PP error I lost a few hundred dollars now. How does the claim process works with Paypal since it's their fault? Anyone with a success story ?????

Just an update. I'm having this problem also. PayPal customer support was no help, referred me to their technical support people. Received the response quoted below today. I'll follow up here when I hear more from PayPal

quote

I have determined this is related to a known issue and I have added you to the list of impacted accounts, so the issue can be resolved once a resolution is found. This ticket will be placed on an 'On Hold' status while we await a response from our Engineers on this issue. No further action is required of you at this time and I will follow up with you as soon as I know more.

end quote

We've been sending emails to customers indicating it's a PayPal issue and please PayPal us the shipping amount separately prior to us mailing them anything.