Miva Merchant 5.x - PayPal Communication Errors

[licenseplateguy]

We process lot of orders through our Miva Merchant site and have been having a high rate of PayPal transactions that were either timing out or taking too long for PayPal to process which is resulting in incomplete orders.  Some PayPal customers have emailed us saying they received an error message "...saying PayPal was taking longer than expected to process the transaction and if they did not receive an email order confirmation to contact you..."  We average 3-4 PayPal orders per day and one out of ten or fifteen fails to complete. 

We've used the same settings for at least 2-3 years and no changes have been made on our end so I doubt it's a settings/URL issue.  While we still get the PayPal payment, the invoice doesn't close out.  Consequently the order confirmation email usually sent to us and the customer is not sent, which leads them to believe that the transaction was bogus or fraudulent.

Someone once told me that this happens when there is a delayed response from the PayPal servers.  Regardless of the cause, I don't believe that I can be the only person experiencing this problem.

Does anyone know why this happens or what can be done to fix it?  I'm getting tired of explaining the situation to customers and figure there should be some kind of fix available, either with Miva Merchant or PayPal, or at least a better way to handle it so the business doesn't look incompetent.

Thanks,

Scott

[RWDesperado]

Scott,

I'm not certain we are having the same exact problem but it does sound similar.

When I receive an order through the Miva Merchant shopping cart my payment notification email from Pay Pal is incomplete.  It provides only the $ amount, Customer Name and Customer email address. 

What is missing is the Product Item #, Product Description and Shipping Address.

Like you I feel very incompetent when I have to email the customer and ask them what they ordered and where to ship it to.

I'm not certain wether my customers are getting a confirmation email or not.

I always have to contact them and plead "technical issues" and hope my businesses credibility remains intact.

I have been using Pay Pal for years with another shopping cart and the payment notification email from Pay Pal is complete with all of the order fulfillment information.

I am only having these problems with the products in the Miva Merchant shopping cart.

I was moving all of our products into the Miva Merchant until this problem was discovered.

I have contacted the Miva Merchant support team through our web hosting service and they have closed our help ticket as they are emphatic that the problem lies with Pay Pal. 

I have contacted Pay Pal and they have not yet responded.

This is a huge problem for my business right now.

I want to use the Miva Merchant for all of its superior features, and paid a lot for it, but can't fully implement it until this problem is resolved.  As of now I have some of my products in MIva Merchant and some in the old shopping cart.

This creates a very unprofessional feel to my business online.

The transition was only to take a few days but now I am stuck in limbo.

Did you resolve your issue?

Anything you can share?

Sincerely,

RW

[Williaim]

I have the same problem. I find the order in Miva and pretend to my customer that all went well. It took me a while to figure out how but i finally realized it was easy, just click on order and look at the list and find the custoemr name. I got no help from Miva

[RWDesperado]

As of the date of this posting I gave up on MIva Merchant.

I pressed the issue with my web hosting service until it was finally escalated to a support ticket that got past the common support tech and connected us with a manager who actually "knew" what was going on.

It seems that Miva Merchant used to be compatible with Pay Pal but that Miva Merchant has purposefully chosen not to be anymore.

It was explained to me vagualy about contractual issues and stuff like that.

Bottom line... Miva Merchant no longer works well with Pay Pal.

I did learn to go into processed and unprocessed orders in my MIva account but the same incomplete information was there.  Perhaps I could have learned more as William did but it is too late now.

A Shopping cart that does not process Pay Pal payments with corresponding order fulfillment information is no shopping cart of mine.

I am also concerned that this being a help forum for Pay Pal business users that a Pay Pal Moderator did not come in and explain the problems between Miva Merchant and Pay Pal. 

It could have saved a lot of time and frustration.

Calling Pay Pal was the best help I received during this crisis but the rep only informed me of Pay Pal being sent incomplete information.  When I asked about Miva Merchant and its compatibility specifically... the tech stated that there were just too many shopping carts and he he had no idea which ones were compatibe with Pay Pal and which ones were not. 

I really wish he had a list to refer to.  Miva Merchant is a known shopping cart.

It would also be wise of Miva to remove the function where you set up their cart using Pay Pal.

If Pay Pal is not an option it shoud not be included in the set up process.

This entire experience has been frustrating and confusing.

In all of the phone calls to techs for all parties involved... I have concluded that you may or may not be connected to someone who has experience and knowledge to help you.  It is a crap shoot.

I think tecks should have more education, experience and resoursed available to them than the majority of them do. 

I think help forums in Pay Pal should have Moderators a bit more involved too.

You take the time to find the Forums... create an account... articulate your problem... and no response from  Moderators over a problem that is harming your business.

Quite dissapointging.

RW