Let me start by specifying that I have a PayPal account registered in Europe and my account type is "Personal", since it may matter.
I created a simple "Buy Now" button and specified the button name ("Product name" as PayPal calls it -- for example "Figurine"), the price and then I also added the option "Add a message box for custom requests". This option adds a textbox under the button on my website, where a buyer can write stuff in free text as a custom request for me, for example "Blue", "Red", "Large", "Small", "Without base", etc., just before he clicks on the Buy Now button.
I as a recipient of the order, should be able to get and see this text so that I know what kind of figurine was ordered. This was actually never shown inside the PayPal account under "Activity" when I looked at the transaction details (only the name of the button (product) was printed there -- "Figurine", and the price, but the free text / custom message of the buyer was never visible). However, it WAS visible in the e-mail that PayPal sent to me after the purchase was made, so I was happy with that.
Recently however, PayPal seems to have changed the system and the e-mails they send are different. Before, the e-mail subject was always:
"Notification of payment received" or sometimes
"Payment received from <e-mail of the buyer>"
(I'm guessing it depended on where the buyer was from).
But sometime this summer (June or July 2023) PayPal changed it and e-mails now have this subject:
"Item # - Notification of Payment Received from <name of the buyer> (<e-mail of the buyer>)"
But most importantly, the e-mail no longer contains the free text / buyer's custom order message that is sent when payment is made. Now I have absolutely no way to see what any buyer writes in that textfield which is horrible, as you can imagine.
Also, the buttons I created all have a "NaN EUR" or "NaN USD" written next to them, instead of actual price numbers. NaN means "Not a Number" and is a programming error meaning something is wrong. This is the same in at least two European PayPal accounts (incliding the German one). It's possible that American / US PayPal front end differs and doesn't have this NaN issue. At least I didn't see it when I use the PayPal sandbox.
But anyway, this NaN thing, although not the most reasurring one, doesn't bother me as much as the fact that I no longer have any way to read buyer's custom messages when they place their orders. Any ideas what to do?
(EDIT) Related post:
https://www.paypal-community.com/t5/PayPal-Payments-Standard/Buy-Now-Drop-Down-Button-has-stopped-in...
