Upcoming Change to PayPal Subscriptions

MTS_Ciaran
Moderator
Moderator

PayPal is making changes to the way Subscriptions are created, managed, and displayed. For additional information, see our article Why am I seeing changes to how Subscriptions are reflected?

 

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S_S_S
Contributor
Contributor

@swinny Perhaps you can actually set up the max payment failures when creating new subscriptions, but I only asked tech support about the existing subscriptions because we have thousands of those that we are having this issue with.

 

(We switched to creating new PayPal subs through Braintree because those can still be upgraded, the I-type subscriptions can only be upgraded 20% which doesn't work for us, and Braintree automatically does the 2 failures thing)

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u_brain
Contributor
Contributor

So we now have a load of subscriptions that our system shows as still active when they've actually been cancelled because the payPal notifications are sending us i-xxxxxxxxx references for subscriptions that were notified as s-xxxxxxxx when they were set up.

There is no mention of the s-xxxxxxxx reference in the suspension notifications so how are we supposed to tally up which subscriptions are cancelled?

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S_S_S
Contributor
Contributor

@swinny On the Recurring Payments screen (https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_merchant-hub) you can set the filter to "Suspended" to find  those subscriptions.

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u_brain
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks for that but I know that list, hence being aware of suspended subs that our site doesn't know are suspended.

The problem is, these suspensions are still only referenced by the i-xxxxxxxxx identifier. All these subs were given an s-xxxxxxxxxx when they were set up. What genius thought it was a good idea to just randomly change a unique identifier and replace it with another, different unique identifier without any notification or transition procedure.

...or maybe there is a procedure that I just haven't heard about?

 

Yes, I can trace these users individually and manually edit the database to replace the s-xxxxxxxx refs with i-xxxxxxxxx refs but, these are about to start coming thick and fast and I just don't have the time to deal with them all manually. The whole point of putting up with payPal's high charges and lame customer service is that the api makes things work without loads of manual input. Right now, payments via my old school bank account are lower maintenance than the payPal ones.

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not_here
Moderator
Moderator

Hi @u_brain

 

I apologize for the frustration that this is causing to your daily processes. The way that I understand is that you should have received a mapping in the following manners: 

 

Q: How do I know the mapping between my old S- Subscription ID and my new I- Subscription ID?
A: You receive the mapping in the next payment notification in the form of IPN and email.
  • IPN: The new I- Subscription ID is in the field subscr_id=I-XXXXXX, and the old S- Subscription ID mapping is provided in the new field called old_subscr_id=S-XXXXXX.
  • Email: The mapping is provided by appending the old S- Subscription ID to the new I- Subscription ID for the Profile ID field. For example, the subsequent payment email includes something like Profile ID:I-XXXXXX (S-XXXXXXX).

If you did not receive this, I'd suggest you submit a ticket with our Technical Support team requesting a mapping of your subscriptions. 

 

Christina 

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u_brain
Contributor
Contributor

Hi @not_here

That sounds great and if that's what was happening, I'd have figured it out without moaning about it on here>

We've been logging all inbound traffic from payPal and here are all the fields submitted with this transaction:

 

amount=25.00
initial_payment_amount=0.00
profile_status=Suspended
payer_id=MLxxxxxxxx73J
product_type=1
ipn_track_id=320xxxxxx79f
outstanding_balance=25.00
shipping=0.00
charset=windows-1252
period_type= Regular
currency_code=GBP
verify_sign=AIkKNboJiyuxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxY2HGRB6Nvw
payment_cycle=Yearly
txn_type=recurring_payment_suspended_due_to_max_failed_payment
custom=19846
payer_status=verified
first_name=Gxxx
product_name=Gxxx Cxxxxn\'s very own annual subscription
amount_per_cycle=25.00
last_name=Cxxxxn
payer_business_name=Gxxxxxxxxxs
time_created=10:54:11 Nov 12, 2016 PST
resend=true
notify_version=3.8
recurring_payment_id=I-S97B9AN7XEW3
payer_email=userEmail @ xxxxxx.com
receiver_email=xxxxx @ mydomain.com
next_payment_date=N/A
tax=0.00
residence_country=GBThe txn_type is recurring_payment_suspended_due_to_max_failed_payment

 

So.... how are we to ascertain from this, the subscription that has been suspended when it was created by payPal with a s-xxxxxxxxxx reference?

 

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not_here
Moderator
Moderator

Hi @u_brain

 

I agree that with the information you receive below, it would be difficult to sort out that information. My suggestion would be to submit a ticket to Technical Support who can help you with your specific account. 

 

I completely agree that this change has negatively impacted day-to-day business processes and it's my goal to help bridge the customers and teams involved to improve this process going forward. I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this has caused. 

 

Christina

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u_brain
Contributor
Contributor

OK, as we've established above: the txn_type=recurring_payment_suspended_due_to_max_failed_payment does not include the old subscription ID although weirdly, the email notification does include it (in brackets) so the omission means there's no way to deal with this programatically although using the emails we are, in effect, invited to deal with it be updating the database manually -- frankly, it's all a bit naff and unprofessional.

 

Thanks for your invitation to submit a ticket: the page you linked to was one of those ones designed to avoid customer contact: it just sent me round in circles and eventually told me to ask the community so here I am, no further forward other than deepening my resolve to implement an alternative payment solution as soon as time and resources permit.

 

If it's not impolite to ask: since you're an employee of PayPal and you know that this fault exists, why don't YOU submit a ticket? I'm damned if I can get through the obfuscation process to figure out how to.

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not_here
Moderator
Moderator

Hi @u_brain

 

I apologize for the negative impact that this caused. For the first issue, I've passed this feedback onto the team to find a solution. 

 

With regards to submitting a ticket, if you go to https://www.paypal-support.com you'll find at the bottom a button that says "Contact Us". If you submit a ticket there, an MTS Engineer will be able to help you. Unfortunately, I'm unable to submit a ticket on an account that isn't mine. 

 

Screen Shot 2018-12-17 at 10.38.57 AM.png

 

Again, I can only apologize for the inconvenience this has created and I understand the situation you are in if you have to switch solutions. Hopefully we can solve your problem before you are forced to do this.


Thanks,
Christina 

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S_S_S
Contributor
Contributor

I wrote a small script that changes the "max failed payments" for each active subscription from 1 to 2, it works but please be aware that it sends an email to each customer telling them their subscription has been updated. Of course, tech support had assured me no messages would be sent if you changed the 'max failed payments' through the API. Sigh.

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