Paypal Payment button no longer working from 10th August 2022

[WatchBattery]

Hi Team,

I hope I am posting the right place and someone can offer some advice. I have opened a case but there is a 3 day turnaround apparently and I could do with sorting this.

At out site watchbattery.co.uk we have a PayPal payment button which has been working for years. As off 10th August, 2022 it stopped working. When the user clicks to pay by PayPal they get the message: "Things don't appear to be working at the moment. Please try again later"

This is easily reproduced by adding something to the cart and following the steps to enable the PayPal button (T&Cs etc.)

This has been working for years (using IPN).

The hosting company says "nothing has changed" and I am not sure what could have changed to cause this issue since the error is coming from PayPal. 

The form submission is shown below. Can anyone offer any advice please?

<form method='POST' action='https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr'>
<input type='hidden' name='cmd' value='_cart'>
<input type='hidden' name='upload' value='1'><input type='hidden' name='business' value='emailaddress<at>watchbattery.co.uk'>
<input type='hidden' name='bn' value='online_store_3.94'>
<input type='hidden' name='lc' value='GB'>
<input type='hidden' name='currency_code' value='GBP'>
<input type='hidden' name='upload' value='1'>
<input type='hidden' name='no_note' value='1'>
<input type='hidden' name='no_shipping' value='2'>
<input type='hidden' name='return' value='https://www.watchbattery.co.uk/Payment_Thanks.shtml'>
<input type='hidden' name='quantity_1' value='1'>
<input type='hidden' name='on0_1' value='Shipping'>
<input type='hidden' name='os0_1' value='No Shipping - Collect Goods'>
<input type='hidden' name='item_number_1' value='TLAN-MINIBATTEST'>
<input type='hidden' name='item_name_1' value='Ansmann Mini Battery Tester'>
<input type='hidden' name='amount_1' value='8.49'>
<input type='hidden' name='custom' value='Shipping:No Shipping - Collect Goods Voucher:|Disc#1:0.0|'>
<input type='hidden' name='shipping_1' value='0.00'>
<input type='image' src='/images/Paypal_btn.gif' value='submit' onclick='' name='submit3'>
</form>

[BTech125]

We are having the same exact issue from the same date.  Likely means this is a Paypal issue.  Have opened a ticket but no response.  

What's funny is if you change the emailaddress<at>watchbattery.co.uk to an email address to one that is not in your Paypal account, it will start working.

But if you add the new email address to your Paypal account, it will stop working.

This would make you think that the Paypal account has a hold or something, but we checked and that is not the case.  Just sent a client a manual invoice thru Paypal and got paid.  Even talked to customer service and there are no holds on the account.

[WatchBattery]

I can't believe that they are taking so long to resolve this or even acknowledge there's a problem. Interesting observation about the email address. I would have never thought that would cause an issue. Seems to suggest something wrong with authenticating a legitimate email address. However another poster seemed to get this to work by removing product options. That makes me think a string length issue. Was the alternative email address which you used contain fewer characters? AJ