• We recently had a few events (here’s one) where we took registrations and payments through our website.

    I have this Stripe plugin to collect payments and a plugin called Events Manager to take reservations. Some visitors had complications submitting their payment, and I was curious if there were any known issues. I didn’t see the events plugin nor our template (Tempera) counterindicated in the Stripe plugin documentation

    The complicated part is that I cannot recreate any of these user-reported errors. I have, however, heard the same or similar issues from multiple parties, so I believe there is truly some sort of issue. There’s a few different issues users reported:

    1. They are not able to submit payment online due to an error that JavaScript and cookies need to be enabled for the page to work. The people telling me about these errors aren’t the most tech-savvy, so they weren’t able to provide much extra info, e.g. browser, version, etc. Some did tell me they knew JS & cookies were enabled and they still received this error. It sounded like they were predominantly using IE, but at least one customer said Chrome. I would take these peoples’ CC info by phone and checkout as if I was them; I successfully used the same checkouts on Mac (Chrome & Safari), Windows (Chrome & IE), and Mobile (Safari & Chrome). I cannot reproduce this error unless I try to check out in an Incognito window, which I know blocks cookies. Some people told me they used multiple PCs and even tried on mobile unsuccessfully. Has anyone else had these complications?

    2. They enter CC info, click submit, see a green checkmark in place of the blue submit button (do not see the secondary redirect with the green box, transaction id, etc.), and assume payment went through. I don’t think it’s unreasonable that users expect that their payment went through when they saw the green with the checkmark. In this day of overflowing inboxes, they didn’t notice that they didn’t get an email confirmation, they don’t know that they’d typically be redirected to a page to see a bunch more information, and they didn’t check their statement or notice that the amount had not been charged to their CC. Has anyone else had this reported?

    3. This last one I heard least often: They submit payment through the popup, they say they see the redirect page with the green box which presumably provided a transaction id they don’t write down; they never receive a confirmation email, and we never receive payment. I presume that the same function that calls the page redirect also generates the confirmation email for the payment, so I’m not sure how they’d see one and not have the other. Also, I presume that if a transaction id is displayed, it’d be tied to our transactions in Stripe, which makes me think they don’t see the redirect page. Like I said, the troubleshooting details available are fuzzy at best, particularly for this reported scenario.

    Even though these events are in the past, we will do them again next year, and we still have donation links and payment for other items available through our website using this plugin. I wanted to reach out and see if any others have experienced similar issues and hopefully have been able to correct them.

    Any insight is appreciated in advance. Thank you!

    https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/stripe/

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 49 total)
  • Plugin Contributor Nick Young

    (@nickyoung87)

    Hello,

    Sorry that you are running into some issues. I will do my best to see what I can do to help. The problems you have described though are not anything I have heard happening before though.

    I know you said you are using the Events Manager plugin, are you using the free version or the Pro version. I want to run some tests to see if I can replicate any of these.

    Another idea is to setup a test staging site with a default theme and no other plugins installed. Then maybe you can track down a couple of your users that were getting the issues and see if they can test it on that site. This would help with determining if maybe there actually are some conflicts happening that we need to address.

    As you said it will be really hard to debug these without a lot of information to go by, but I sure will do my best to get it all working smoothly for you and your customers.

    Thanks!

    Thread Starter bruschr

    (@bruschr)

    Thanks Nick!

    I know the troubleshooting is extra difficult without much information.

    We’re using the free version of Events Manager. The Pro version ironically accepts payments with reservations, so that’s one possible solution, but since we’re a nonprofit, I wanted to keep the expenses to a minimum. Additionally, I liked that I could set up Stripe for our other payments (e.g. online donations, program book ad sales) that aren’t event-related.

    Would the testing apply in both test mode and live mode?

    Plugin Contributor Nick Young

    (@nickyoung87)

    We’re using the free version of Events Manager. The Pro version ironically accepts payments with reservations,

    Yeah that’s why I was curious. I wasn’t sure if maybe there were 2 payment gateways trying to work at once here and causing the issue. I will go ahead and test this out with the Events Manager.

    Would the testing apply in both test mode and live mode?

    Theoretically, it shouldn’t matter if it is live or test. But I have found occasionally that there have been minor issues in Live mode that I never discovered in test mode.

    I will keep you updated on anything I might find, but I ask if you get any more details you can also let me know ??

    This might be a little bit of a process to actually find the root of the problems so I thank you in advance for your understanding and your patience while we get this figured out.

    Thanks!

    Plugin Contributor Nick Young

    (@nickyoung87)

    @bruschr,

    Are you still getting any reports of these issues happening?

    Thread Starter bruschr

    (@bruschr)

    We haven’t had any events where we’ve needed online registration since I posted the original issue. I hope it can be corrected so we can take online registrations for our New Year’s Day event, however; perhaps allowing registrations up to 2 months in advance (around Halloween).

    Has your testing yielded any insights or anything we could test? We also use the same payment gateway for taking online donations. It’s possible people could be donating online, thinking they’re helping us out, and never having their credit cards charged. Since we don’t know when those are coming, I won’t know if we don’t receive payment, though.

    Hi all,

    Chiming in on this thread: I have had problem #2, identified by bruschr, multiple times in the past couple weeks. Clients click on the payment button, fill out their info, see the green check mark, and assume payment goes through but no record is recorded in Stripe.

    In at least two cases, I have confirmation from the people involved that they are redirected back to the same page they were on rather than the payment confirmation page. One user reported this from a desktop PC, the other from an iPhone using Safari.

    Unfortunately I cannot reproduce this error myself — but it seems to be a consistent issue, and is troubling because there may be people attempting to sign up for my services who think they submit payment, and whom I never hear from again…

    Sample web page that has had this issue: baystrength.com/september-special

    Best,
    Jeremy

    Update to my above post to provide more info:

    – This issue has been happening from my very first install of Stripe.
    – I have cleared all web site caches. (I am using WP Super Cache plugin)
    – Stripe settings screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/Uvh6Q
    – Shortcode used on page referenced in above post: [stripe id=”septemberSpecial” name=”Bay Strength” amount=”9500″ payment_button_label=”September Special: Learn 4 lifts for $95″ success_redirect_url=”https://www.baystrength.com/payment-confirmation/” failure_redirect_url=”https://baystrength.com/payment-failure/”%5D%5B/stripe%5D
    – I have checked for theme & plugin conflicts with no luck

    Thread Starter bruschr

    (@bruschr)

    Thanks for chiming in, Jetemy, and especially with your additional troubleshooting info! I’m somewhat relieved to know I’m not the only one experiencing this.

    I wonder how many more might be having this issue without even knowing they’re experiencing it, as you say. Our issue is a little different where we sell X number of maximum spaces and we risk unhappy customers who think they’ve paid who might be turned away at an event. Talk about bad PR!

    Any updates on this from the developers’ end, Nick?

    Plugin Contributor Nick Young

    (@nickyoung87)

    Alright I definitely see how this can be alarming if this is happening and no one is able to tell if the payment is going through or not. Obviously a big issue that could be costing.

    I have not been able to reproduce this stuff and have only heard of this issue from the 2 of you. So we need to dig as much as we can to see if we can solve it with what information we have.

    Can you both list the theme you are using and all the plugins you have installed also?

    I think that will be a good start and I am curious to see any common denominators you might both have and start investigating there.

    Thanks!

    Thanks for your help and timely response, Nick.

    Here is the info you requested. All plugins are updated to their most recent versions.

    Theme: Divi, by Elegant Themes

    Active Plugins:

    Contact Form 7
    Google Sitemap by BestWebSoft
    iThemes Security
    Mailpoet – Contact Form 7 Integration
    Mailpoet Newsletters
    NK Google Analytics
    Theme Check
    WordPress Force HTTPS
    WP Maintenance Mode
    WP Simple Pay Pro for Stripe
    WP Simple Pay Pro for Stripe – Subscriptions Add-on
    WP Super Cache

    Inactive Plugins:

    Akismet
    Hello Dolly
    Jetpack by WordPress.com
    ML Parallax
    Parallax Scroll by Adamrob.co.uk

    Thread Starter bruschr

    (@bruschr)

    Yes, thanks Nick! I know it’s super hard to troubleshoot with the intermittency. Here are my site’s details:

    WordPress: 4.3.1
    Theme: Tempera v.1.3.3 By Cryout Creations

    Active Plugins:

    • Events Manager by Marcus Sykes (free version)
    • Exclude Pages from Navigation by Simon Wheatley
    • “Jetpack by WordPress.com” by Automattic
    • List Category Posts by Fernando Briano
    • Photo Gallery by WebDorado
    • Simple Membership Custom Messages by wp.insider
    • Simple WordPress Membership by smp7, wp.insider
    • Team Showcase by Carlos Moreira (demo version…this wasn’t installed when we had issues)
    • WebMan Amplifier by WebMan – Oliver Juhas
    • WordPress Importer by wordpressdotorg
    • WP Simple Pay Lite for Stripe by Moonstone Media
    • WP-SpamShield by Scott Allen

    Inactive Plugins:

    • Akismet by Automattic
    • MOJO Marketplace by Mike Hansen
    • Simple Membership After Login Redirection by smp7, wp.insider
    • W3 Total Cache by Frederick Townes

    Hi Nick,

    To further update you, I had a client tonight attempt to pay on my laptop. On a hunch, I had him pay on the web site while not logged into it, and saw the behavior other clients had reported to me: the green check mark appears, and then they are redirected back to the same page they are on (rather than the payment confirmation page), and no payment is registered in Stripe.com. So it seems that at least in my case, payments have no problem going through when the site user is logged into WP, but they often fail when the user is not logged in.

    At this point I think I am likely to switch to another plugin since it seems clear I have lost and am continuing to lose business from this and cannot afford to wait to make a change. If/when I do, I can leave up a test page for QA if you wish, since it seems like this is a serious issue with the plugin.

    Plugin Contributor Nick Young

    (@nickyoung87)

    @baystrength,

    Have you tried disabling other plugins and reverting to a default theme? Would like to find out if there is a conflict there.

    Plugin Contributor Nick Young

    (@nickyoung87)

    Additional question. Have either of you been able to reproduce this in test mode or does it only happen in live mode?

    Thread Starter bruschr

    (@bruschr)

    Nick, I have not been able to reproduce the error with Stripe in test mode. I didn’t think much of this since it was intermittent for my guests.

    Tagging onto Jeremy’s observation, I’m not certain, but I was very likely logged in for most if not all of the times I was taking payment by phone for users who experienced this error. I like to use Chrome, which probably kept me logged in even across devices. I did use a different iPhone with Safari at least once, but I’m not certain if I was logged in there or not.

    Potentially of note, the Events Manager plugin creates user accounts on my site when someone wants to register for an event. Anyone selecting their session first then paying second would be paying as a registered site user. Anyone paying first then selecting their session second would be paying as a site guest.

    I haven’t asked any of our visitors about this, but based on my event pages’ order (see https://carolinashowski.org/events/2015-07-learn-to-ski as an example), anyone completing their event registration steps by working their way down the page would be checking out as a guest by paying first then coming back to that same page to select their session. FWIW, this layout is dictated by the Event Manager plugin’s booking option being positioned at the bottom of an event page.

    Good insight, Jeremy! Hopefully this helps, Nick. Anyone wanting to simply donate to our nonprofit probably wouldn’t be a registered site user.

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 49 total)
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