Paypal error with whmcs

[ebbydare]

Hello mates,

I got the following error from paypal within whmcs while a client was trying to purchase a domain from us.

 

"Things don't appear to be working at the moment. Please try again later."

What do you advise? Thanks

[WHMCS ChrisD]

@ebbydare please try enabling your error logs under Setup > General Settings > Other > Display Errors & Log Error and Display errors, try replicating the issues and also review the billing log for any further errors

[redit]

Hello one and all,

I'm now seeing the same on my version of WHMCS (7.7.1)

Double checked all the PayPal settings and I'm seeing nothing in any Error Log.

I think my last PayPal payment was 25th March (most payments are Direct Debit or Stripe) so I didn't notice that this could have been an issue for a while.

 

~Scott

 

[redit]

@WHMCS Community, @WHMCS John I'm sorry to bother you but I've had some more of the same issues today.

I've got a PayPal case open but I wanted to come here first before I got direct to the support team.

Do you have any ideas on what I can try first?

 

Thanks

Scott

Edited April 5, 2019 by redit

[redit]

OK thats sods law.

Just got a reply from PayPal (24 hours later)

It turns out that you need to disable 'Encrypted website payments' in your PayPal account settings under Settings -> My Selling Preferences -> Website preferences

I don't know what happened, when this got turned on but after turning this off everything works again.

I would like to also point out that all of my site and services are encrypted with a valid SSL Certificate (I just double checked everything) and I don't remember turning this on so I'm guessing that its been on since day dot or has been added by PayPal as a security thing that I missed.

 

[ebbydare]

Thanks Chris and All,

I sent an email to Paypal and they already responded. My problem is that fact that I'm Nigerian. Paypal does not allow some certain features to appear on their website if your system IP shows that you are in Nigeria.

The only option I have for now and which I have done is to disable Paypal from my payment gateway list and use other options that are working.

Thanks

[WHMCS Lawrence]

On 4/8/2019 at 10:48 AM, ebbydare said:

Thanks Chris and All,

I sent an email to Paypal and they already responded. My problem is that fact that I'm Nigerian. Paypal does not allow some certain features to appear on their website if your system IP shows that you are in Nigeria.

The only option I have for now and which I have done is to disable Paypal from my payment gateway list and use other options that are working.

Thanks

Have you tried the same solution of disabling encrypted payments as shown above? If not, please try that and see if it resolves your issue. Otherwise if you wish to use PayPal, it will be best to contact them to find out why they are displaying a generic error for payments to your account and get it corrected to resolve that.

[WebHostingPeople]

Hi Guys,

I am also facing the same  issue after upgrade v8.3 . In earlier version it was working fine.  

I have with the following but nothing. 

- there is no error after enable error log from whmc admin
-  already disable  'Encrypted website payments' in your PayPal account settings under Settings -> My Selling Preferences -> Website preferences . Also try after enable and then disable.

- Paypal account is active.
- checked all setting of paypal in WHMCS 

Yes ,  we are using Paypal Basic  gateway in WHMCS.

Please guide me how can we fix it.

 

 

[markc]

I just started getting this error too and I think it's because my Paypal details were incomplete. Maybe they updated their site with slightly more stringent identity requirements because when I checked my details I had to re-add some fields again and got a page that said "all good, you can now use paypal for your business".

[markc]

Nope, I still have this error after updating my Paypal business details. Is it possible that Paypal Basic is now deprecated by Paypal, or somehow changed? Should I perhaps change to just Paypal (Checkout)?

What would be the best approach to try and figure out what is actually wrong so I have some chance of fixing this Paypal problem?

[Evolve Web Hosting]

Using v8.3 with Paypal Basic and not seeing these errors (yet anyways). Wish I had more info to try to help you fix this.

[markc]

Thanks for your response. I'm using 8.3.2 and fortunately when clients go to Paypal via their invoice Paypal (basic I think) button it seems to work, according to my Gateway logs. My problem is specifically when I try to make a credit card payment on behalf of the client, which used to work up until, hmm, about Dec 31st.

[Evolve Web Hosting]

11 hours ago, markc said:

clients go to Paypal via their invoice Paypal (basic I think)

You can go to System > Settings > Payment Gateways > Manage Existing Gateways and see if you're using Paypal Basic or Paypal (which is the newer Paypal Checkout).

Can you even do that on behalf of the customer without logging into their Paypal account? If so, I'm guessing you are not using Paypal Basic.

[markc]

Thanks for your response. I just got this again now when using the invoice Paypal button from the admin section for a CC payment, which had been working fine for many years up until a few weeks ago. There is nothing in the Gateway Logs page about this failed transaction. If I use "Login as client" and then go to invoice then that works sometimes but I have also seen the attached error there as well.

Just now I removed the "Paypal" payment option leaving only Paypal Basic.

I have double checked my Paypal settings and reconfirmed my business status and found that the language encoding was not set to UTF-8.

[markc]

Argh, now I am also getting this error when I try to "Login as Owner" in an attempt to avoid the above error when making a payment for a client directly from the admin area. I got this for another client yesterday (but some misc clients I checked were okay) and the only way I could solve it was to completely delete the client's account and re-add it after jotting down their profile details. Of course, I then lose that client's payment history, but in this case I could then use "Login as Owner" without the error below.

As far as I can tell, some clients are still using PayPal successfully when they log into WHMCS themselves, otherwise I'd be out of business in a month or two if I can't make PayPal CC payments on behalf of most of my clients. Most of my income is by using PayPal as my CC merchant and taking the customer details over the phone, so now that I can't do that anymore and can't find a way to fix both of my problems, I'm kinda up the creek without a paddle.

The only changes I have made is to update to 8.3.2 whenever that update became available.

[Evolve Web Hosting]

The new Paypal module (not basic) is a bit odd because it only works for first time payments and subscriptions. Otherwise it won't show up. Because it's so confusing, we disabled it early on.

I have not seen any issues with customers being able to pay using Paypal Basic and WHMCS v8.3.2

The customers are able to pay and I've never tried to 'login as customer' and pay for them. I don't think that's allowed though because I would have to be able to login to their Paypal account to do so.

[markc]

Good point, I just disabled the other PayPal option too. Now using only the PayPal Basic. I can't remember when the 8.3.2 update arrived, but I never had any issues, for many years, up until about the 1st Jan.

About half my payments are as the admin user via their invoice link in the admin area. I often do manual CC payments for them while they are on the phone. Since this problem started, I have now tried clicking on "Login as Owner" and going to their invoice via the client area and continue with a CC payment that way. That worked a couple of times, but now even that method is throwing the same useless generic error message when I submit the PayPal cart page.

Yes, my difficulty is me (as admin) paying on behalf of a client using the "Pay with a card" option on the PayPal login screen. So if you have never done that, then you may not be bumping into the same issue.

[markc]

I still have the "We're sorry, something seems to have gone wrong" error when trying to make a CC payment on behalf of a client either via the admin area, by clicking their invoice link, or when using "Login as owner" and then going to their client invoice link using either Firefox or Chromium. The one thing I have not tried yet is to use a Private window and see if it truly is related to browser caching and/or cookies. As mentioned, I have had zero problems making CC payments on behalf of clients while they are on the phone for the last 2 or 3 years until this year.

Anyway, my second issue of "Access Denied - Forbidden" when using "Login as owner" seems to be only related to clients who have never logged in to WHMCS. It's annoying, but not yet another sign that my WHMCS installation is completely falling apart.

[Evolve Web Hosting]

One of my first questions is, why are you making the payment for the customer? A big advantage to billing software is to allow customers to login and make the payment on their own. Saving you the time and headache. Have you tried using the subscription mode with your customers so it's automatically deducted?

I've never seen the issue you're running into and I don't pay invoices using Paypal on behalf of our customers so I can't comment directly on the error you're receiving.

If your current version of WHMCS installed / updated properly? If you want, we can chat over PM and I can see if I can help you resolve it.

[markc]

All of my clients were imported from a legacy system, so none of them originally signed up with a plan. A lot of them are now over 80 years old (we've been going for nearly 25 years), so even the idea of clicking on "Forgot password" to get a new password for the billing system is all too much. Heh, it has even been a battle to get some of them to stop surface mailing us cheques and cash! Anyway, only about 20% of them actually log in and pay via their Paypal account (or CC) and offering a Subscription option has caused us more grief than it was worth when we first started using WHMCS. We only have annual plans, so it's not the end of the world to do manual CC payments and gives me a chance to be in touch with some clients.

Thank you (yet again) but I have yet to try using Private mode in either of my browsers so if that still fails I will definitely take you up on your gracious offer of help.

[WHMCS John]

11 hours ago, markc said:

I still have the "We're sorry, something seems to have gone wrong" error when trying to make a CC payment on behalf of a client either via the admin area, by clicking their invoice link, or when using "Login as owner" and then going to their client invoice link using either Firefox or Chromium. The one thing I have not tried yet is to use a Private window and see if it truly is related to browser caching and/or cookies. As mentioned, I have had zero problems making CC payments on behalf of clients while they are on the phone for the last 2 or 3 years until this year.

Anyway, my second issue of "Access Denied - Forbidden" when using "Login as owner" seems to be only related to clients who have never logged in to WHMCS. It's annoying, but not yet another sign that my WHMCS installation is completely falling apart.

Hi @markc,

You might be able to observe more error details returned from PayPal by examining the Response section in your browser's Network Analyser tool. We have information on using this here: https://help.whmcs.com/m/troubleshooting/l/1312423-an-error-occurred-while-communicating-with-the-server-please-try-again

 

How were the clients imported into WHMCS please? If no password was set upon importing, it's possible that there's nothing for the Login as Owner operation to authenticate against.

Is there an Owner listed for the affected Client Accounts under their "Users" tab?

 

[Evolve Web Hosting]

9 hours ago, WHMCS John said:

If no password was set upon importing, it's possible that there's nothing for the Login as Owner operation to authenticate against.

@markc Since none (or hardly any) of your customers login, try resetting one of their passwords on the admin side and then re try your process of logging in as owner and try processing their payment.

I still wonder how you're going to be able to do this without logging into their Paypal account but you may know something I don't about that aspect (I've never tried it).

[markc]

Yes, I started to use the reset password feature but that just sends an email to the customer which I then have to find and view (via secret sauce), then respond to that email and add misc random password, and then I can go back to the admin screen and Login as owner. Back in the early v7 days, an admin could actually set or change the clients password directly in one step. Now it involves going via the email reset method. Way too many steps for 100s of client accounts.

As for viewing invoices as admin. I used to simply go to the Invoices tab for the particular customer, click on the unpaid invoice, then on that page there is a "View as Client" button up next to the Print and Download buttons. Once looking at the actual invoice I'd click on the yellow Paypal button then when I get to the PayPal login page I'd select "Pay with a Card" and the next page is for a Credit Card payment with the customer details already filled in (except the State/Territory field because WHMCS sends the full state name whereas PayPal expects the short state name, so it can't auto present the right State value). I've been using this method for probably 3 years up until about the 1st Jan 2022.

I'm still waiting for a customer to call me for a CC payment so I can test whether using a Private window in either Firefox or Chrome will work.

[Evolve Web Hosting]

@markc I went through the process you're describing and it does seem to be working. I'm thinking you've got some sort of an issue specific to your install / config.

Here's what I did (correct me if I took a wrong step)

Gateway: Paypal Basic

1) Logged in as admin and went to a customer's invoice

2) Click on 'view as a client'

3) Made sure paypal was selected and then clicked the pay with paypal yellow button

3) I got to the screen shown attached

4) I scrolled down and clicked 'Pay with a Credit or Debit Card'

5) I got to the screen shown in my second attachment

That's how it's supposed to work, right? I was not using an incognito window. WHMCS v8.3.2

[markc]

12 hours ago, WHMCS John said:

How were the clients imported into WHMCS please?

It's so long ago I've forgotten exactly how I imported them, but there were nearly 1000 customers previously managed in Excel (for nearly 2 decades), so I guess I massaged the fields and exported them as CSV to fill most of the client fields in WHMCS. I've never noticed the "Access Denied - Forbidden" error before when using "Login as Owner" up until recently.

The other, more generic "something went wrong, try again" error when trying to submit a CC payment at PayPal is a PayPal error. I'll keep an eye on the Network tab in my browser and see if I can find some indication of why I am getting that error.