SCA compliance vs 7.8 Bugs

[SVCode]

Hi there,

We've been following this community for a few weeks and whilst I appreciate that SCA compliance is coming this weekend, to me it seems there are too many problems to risk upgrading - especially as we use Stripe, heavily.  I know even Stripe themselves are emailing to say 'hey, WHMCS have released an update, you need to upgrade before 14/09'... but I think we're going to see more headaches if we upgrade now?  Keen to know how others are managing the risk?  I think we'd prefer to have a few declined transactions and perhaps push customers towards PayPal in the meantime, over having headaches of over charging, not charging, wrong statement IDs, etc.

I believe SCA compliance has been pushed back and there are potentially only a handful of banks that are going to enforce it from the 14th?

Cheers,

[malfunction]

On 9/11/2019 at 6:12 AM, SVCode said:

I believe SCA compliance has been pushed back and there are potentially only a handful of banks that are going to enforce it from the 14th?

We heard the same and, given that for us the majority of transactions are non-European, we found it easy to make the decision to defer the update and just deal with a few declines as and when they occur.  Given the number of apparently quite severe bugs in 7.8.0  7.8.1 7.82 the risk to our business is far less that way.  The ability to reliably charge our customers is the most important function of WHMCS and anything that inhibits. that is seriously bad news.  We use Stripe with PayPal as a backup.

 

Can't say it was unexpected, this is exactly what you get when you leave the new version until the last minute and don't alpha/beta test properly.   Which is the normal routine round here of course 🤬

[Bertie]

We haven't updated either and we also use Stripe so need to be ready for SCA as well. They still seem to mention the 14th - We are based in the UK so it's going to be a must for us to make sure we are compliant unless it has been pushed back. Quite concerned about the number of bugs the latest update seems to have. 

I do feel like because of what was part of this important update, being ready for SCA and Stripe etc it should have been given more time in testing to iron out these bugs. 

Edited September 13, 2019 by Bertie

[Tom Catchesides]

37 minutes ago, Bertie said:

I do feel like because of what was part of this important update, being ready for SCA and Stripe etc it should have been given more time in testing to iron out these bugs. 

I totally agree: I feel like my company has been forced into doing this update way before it's ready, and we're suffering from a couple of Stripe-related bugs that are hurting our customer relationships.

[SVCode]

I'm not looking to bash WHMCS on this, but to say I'm disappointed is an understatement. 

I appreciate the support staff are doing their best to deal with problems, but these from our point of view are problems that should have been dealt with months ago.  I feel this was the perfect opportunity for WHMCS to dispel the doubts and general pessimistic attitude towards their releases, but sadly this only compounds such feelings further.

If migrating to another platform wouldn't be a massive headache, this would be the catalyst for us.  But sadly, I think WHMCS know they've 'got us' and we just must deal with issues such as this.  It is most frustrating, when they could have been prevented. 

I find it hard to accept that they tested this release with live bank accounts, live credit cards, live stripe accounts and checking what happens, statement lines, cron runs, etc.

 

 

[donostiarra]

Is there any news or response from WHMCS to finish fixing the errors with Stripe? We need to update tomorrow day 14, but we would like it to have no errors ...

Edited September 13, 2019 by donostiarra

[SVCode]

1 hour ago, donostiarra said:

Is there any news or response from WHMCS to finish fixing the errors with Stripe? We need to update tomorrow day 14, but we would like it to have no errors ...

Our cut off for attempting this was Wednesday, personally I don't think it wise to upgrade when there are potential issues and I'm assuming no (or at least skeletel) support from WHMCS over the weekend.

We've only upgraded our OAT environment once and see no reason at this time to attempt again, until there is some confidence that the various Stripe issues are fixed - and that there are community reports that they're fixed.

Edited September 13, 2019 by SVCode

[DennisHermannsen]

We upgraded WHMCS to 7.8 a few minutes after it became available. At first, we had a few issues, but since 7.8.2 we haven't had any concerning issues. The only issue is that the invoice number doesn't appear on the Stripe transaction, but that's just a visual thing (which is being worked on fixing).

We run version 7.8.2 and have a lot of transactions each day.

At this point, you're not really risking anything by upgrading.

[SVCode]

More details about the SCA delay/state by country. 

 

https://support.stripe.com/questions/strong-customer-authentication-sca-enforcement-date

[DennisHermannsen]

23 minutes ago, SVCode said:

More details about the SCA delay/state by country. 

 

https://support.stripe.com/questions/strong-customer-authentication-sca-enforcement-date

I understand why many countries has decided to postpone it. What I don't understand is why it was done days before it was supposed to be enforced - especially because I think I remember hearing about this years ago.

In Denmark, most payment processors first had a solution ready for SCA around 2 months ago.

[WHMCS John]

Hi all,

We are planning a 7.8.3 maintenance update by the end of the month. Included, amongst the usual maintenance fixes, will be the few outstanding issues with the new Stripe Elements module and Pay Methods feature.

We are potentially also looking to include module updates for gateway(s) who have published 3DSecureV2 implementation docs in the past few days.

[Mechanic]

While an upcoming maintenance release is good news, the way the past few updates were handled, questions in relying on further frequent development. These 7.8.x updates have increased concerns in reliability.

What we don't need is errors in WHMCS.

WHMCS is a billing platform at its core and not a game that it would need updates and eye candy features every other day. Instead of focusing on developing marketplace products, they should keep their focus on the core.

And it should seriously reconsider their update flights and limit them to once per year.

[brian!]

15 minutes ago, Mechanic said:

And it should seriously reconsider their update flights and limit them to once per year.

I doubt that would help - there was a 6 month update gap between v7.71 & v7.8.... and what happens if a 3rd party gateway creates a deadline that falls within that 12 month period ??

[Mechanic]

On 9/20/2019 at 9:59 PM, brian! said:

I doubt that would help - there was a 6 month update gap between v7.71 & v7.8.... and what happens if a 3rd party gateway creates a deadline that falls within that 12 month period ??

Exceptions like a gateway throwing a deadline doesn't happen overnight or every other day. Exceptions can be handled with exceptions.

Considering the past few years of development, it seems WHMCS does not have any clear development path or plan, version upgrades are their reactions to something, not parts of any plan.

Edited September 23, 2019 by Mechanic

[brian!]

2 hours ago, Mechanic said:

Considering the past few years of development, it seems WHMCS does not have any clear development path or plan, version upgrades are their reactions to something, not parts of any plan.

hence my hope that there is a plan for v8 - though i'm not optimistic that anything is going to change.

[wsa]

7.8.3 is out https://docs.whmcs.com/Changelog:WHMCS_V7.8

[Bertie]

Anyone made the jump to 7.8.3 yet to report back anything major?

[Mechanic]

1 hour ago, Bertie said:

Anyone made the jump to 7.8.3 yet to report back anything major?

I already did. Creating a custom cart template based on the standard cart and then editing viewcart.tpl does not work at all:

 

[DennisHermannsen]

4 minutes ago, Mechanic said:

I already did. Creating a custom cart template based on the standard cart and then editing viewcart.tpl does not work at all:

 

That is expected behaviour from the way you explain in your post.

If you edit the standard_cart viewcart.tpl, you should see the changes.

[Mechanic]

14 minutes ago, DennisMidjord said:

That is expected behaviour from the way you explain in your post.

Nope, I have defined a different template in the Product Group. For further discussion regarding this, let's reply in the thread.

[hkhost]

The main issue is why WHMCS didn't send a warning or notification about a possible bug with their Stripe module? And under "System Health" everything looked fine! We can understand a few bugs like the Password Reset link, etc. But anything related to PAYMENTS is vital for a business! We didn't know something was wrong with the Stripe module until a few clients reported the same issue, generating who knows on lost income.

With each WHMC upgrade they move two steps forward, one step back...