PayPal IPN Problem

  • Seems like PayPal is having a problem with My Tickets’ default IPN address, as we keep receiving these emails from PayPal warning about this issue:

    Hello [REDACTED] ,
Please check your server that handles PayPal Instant Payment Notification (IPN) messages. Messages sent to the following URL(s) are not being received:

https://www.[REDACTED].org/?mt_paypal_ipn=true

If you do not recognize this URL, you may be using a service provider that is using IPN on your behalf. Please contact your service provider with the above information.

Once you or your service provider fix this problem, you or your service provider can resend the failed messages from the IPN History page. If this problem continues, PayPal may disable the IPN feature for your account.

    And yes, IPN and IPN Message Delivery are both enabled in our PayPal account settings.

    Unfortunately, at this time, I cannot view the IPN notification history in my PayPal account:

    Instant Payment Notification (IPN) history
    Feature Not Available

    Sorry, this feature is currently unavailable. We apologize for any inconvenience.

    After doing research in Google about similar IPN error emails from PayPal, I noticed that some other plugins use a dedicated page URL to prevent this problem (as compared to My Tickets use of a query parameter URL) — and some other plugin developers are choosing to use web hooks instead of IPN notifications.

    Would it be possible for My Ticket users to use a dedicated page for the IPN address instead of the default query parameter URL?

    What else could we do to fix this problem and stop these emails coming from PayPal? It seems the problem has to do with the query parameter (/?mt_paypal_ipn=true) in the IPN address.

    Thank you.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • Plugin Author Joe Dolson

    (@joedolson)

    Are payments sometimes being processed and sometimes not? What do you get if you visit the My Tickets PayPal IPN url directly? It should throw an http code 503 error if visited without PayPal post data.

    I don’t know any reason that a parameter query would make any difference vs a URL without that parameter.

    Thread Starter pracko

    (@pracko)

    Hi Joe,

    I do NOT get a 503 error, just a completely blank page. And there are no errors indicated in my console either.

    This has been an ongoing issue for us for the past several years. Fortunately, we sell tickets for only about 2 months out of the year, so this isn’t a persistent issue for PayPal, but I’m worried that PayPal would shut our IPN service down if we were to sell tickets more often.

    Let me know if you need anything else.

    Paul

    Plugin Author Joe Dolson

    (@joedolson)

    It would be a completely blank page; just with an HTTP code of 503.

    The error message, however, suggests that the POST requests from PayPal are not being handled – what I’d like to know is what the HTTP code your server returns to PayPal is. You’d need to get that from your IPN History, so hopefully that’s functional for you again – let me know.

    Thread Starter pracko

    (@pracko)

    Hi Joe,

    Unfortunately IPN history log is still not working for some reason:

    Instant Payment Notification (IPN) history
    Feature Not Available

    Sorry, this feature is currently unavailable. We apologize for any inconvenience.

    Please keep this thread open for now until I can get more information.

    Thanks.

    Plugin Author Joe Dolson

    (@joedolson)

    Definitely.

    Thread Starter pracko

    (@pracko)

    Hi Joe, we just got another email from PayPal about the IPN issue. I don’t know what to do.

    I still cannot view the IPN notification history in my PayPal account.

    However, I did visit https://www.[REDACTED].org/?mt_paypal_ipn=true in a separate browser (Chrome) and there was a 503 error. When I visit that URL in Firefox however, I get a blank page but no error notice in the browser.

    • This reply was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by pracko.
Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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