How to diagnose Paypal issues ?

Hello Tuan, Team,

on my site I have a few people that report from time to time (1 every 2 or 3 days) payments process issues with Paypal. When I access the registrants list on the backend, I see that they tried Paypal maybe three times. Two of these were no goo, and no ticket was created (therefore the payment did not go thru) and the last one went OK. In some other cases, the registrants just try once, and then quit.

Now, I'd like to know how I can diagnose Paypal payment process issues. I know that I can set the paypal plugin to "test mode" but this will not be possible on a live site. Ideally, I'm looking for a log file of the paypal transactions, to see how the process went, and what was the issue.

Does this log file exist ? Can we have this method activated to diagnose it ? Or is there anything we can do to diagnose it ?

Thanks!!

Regards Andrea.

Hi Andrea

1. Go to Events Booking -> Payment Plugins, click on os_paypal payment plugin to edit, set Log IPN messages parameters to Yes.

2. However, this won't solve the issue. The problem is that it seems you didn't receive payment, mean they could not make payment at PayPal for some reasons. I am thinking that there might be problem with PayPal system. Could you please contact one of these people, ask them to see whether they tried to make payment? If they tried to make payment, what's the error they receive at PayPal ?

Please let me know their answers. Then we can continue

Regards,

Tuan

Hi Tuan thank-you for your immediate reaction.

1 - To your points: OK will set the parameter as you specify. Then, is a file created or what happens ? Where do the logs appear or are written in what files ?

2 - One of the persons said that they tried to pay, entered all of the details into the paypal screen, card number etc etc and then they have been brought back to the page that is asking to perform the payment. This is what the user was able to tell us, as you can see a very fragmented information, but you know that "standard" users are not very capable of describing issues...

Thanks!

AG

Hi Andrea

#1. The log is in components/com_eventbooking/ipn_os_paypal.txt . It will log the IPN messages after the payment is completed at PayPal. I think this log is useless with your case

#2. As you can see, the problem is from PayPal payment system. Users could not complete Payment when they are already on PayPal website, so this is nothing Events Booking can control. If you want to know the root of the error, you will have to ask Paypal about it. However, I am afraid of even PayPal doesn't know the answer for the issue.

There is not much thing we can do in this case

Regards,

Tuan

Hello Tuan many thanks for your reply. I have activated the log function. Yes in this case I suspect the issue was on the client's side, or on paypal's an not on our EB side. I will closely monitor the situation and in case re-open the ticket to further investigate. Thanks for your support!
Kind Regards Andrea

OK Andrea. I would suggest you to disable the log once it is completed. As you can see, the log file at the moment is a text file, so someone can access to that file to see the information logged (not good for privacy)

Regards,

Tuan

Done, thank-you!
Rgds AG