Ticket Stock Not Reducing

[tim]

Hello i’m experiencing an issue with the tickets for my events not reducing in quantity when a ticket is purchased via the standard Paypal gateway. If I make/use a coupon to make the cost $0 (Bypassing the need for payment it decreases the stock)

Also if I add/enable a Paypal express option, when payment goes through the stock decreases – however for some reason this causes duplicate orders/times out. So not ideal either.

Obviously this must have something to do Paypal communicating with the checkout/ticketing system in some way. However Paypal appears to be set up correctly (even added the API details) So cant quite figure out why this is happening.

I read somewhere Yoast SEO can cause issues so I deactivated it.

[George]

Hey Tim,

I noticed that your site’s version of Event Tickets Plus is 4.2.6; the most current version is 4.3.1.

Before any other steps can be taken here, please update Event Tickets Plus to 4.3.1. (You can get fresh files any time from here: https://theeventscalendar.com/my-account/downloads/)

Once you do this, do some test purchases with PayPal standard—does anything improve with these issues?

Thanks!
George

[tim]

Hello George, Thank you for the reply. I have updated to 4.3.1 and tested with Paypal Standard and still getting the same issue. I’ve attached screenshots. And also a screenshot of the order on the orders page (to show its completing ok, they are set to complete automatically)

[tim]

I have also tried deactivating all plugins and reverting to the default theme, which doesn’t help.

[George]

Thanks for this, Tim!

You say, “I have also tried deactivating all plugins and reverting to the default theme, which doesn’t help.” To be clear, what I would recommend for this process is to first put your site in this state:

• All plugins are deactivated except for only The Events Calendar, Event Tickets, Event Tickets Plus, and WooCommerce.

• A default theme is active.

☝️ Once your site is in this state, then make a test event with some test tickets.

Buy these test tickets: for real, I mean, so that i.e. you’re not using the 100%-off coupon code trick.

In this state, with this event and ticket that are created after putting your site in this “troubleshooting mode”, does anything improve with your issues?

Thank you!
George

[tim]

Hello George, no nothing improves when the website is in the “troubleshooting mode” See attached images.

[tim]

As you can see on the following screenshot the order completed ok.

[tim]

…

[George]

Hi Tim,

I admit I am a bit baffled by this behavior, and cannot reproduce it myself. I am going to escalate this thread to our development team for some insight. I will post news to this thread as soon as I have it — stay tuned!

Thank you for your patience here!
George

[tim]

Thank you!

[George]

Hey Tim,

I wanted to let you know that I have just confirmed the behavior you describe on my own testing site, and thus we have confirmed this is a bug.

This is a significant bug so hopefully we can publish a fix promptly. I do not have a specific ETA for the arrival of a fix, but will keep this thread updated with news of updates!

Sorry for the trouble here, Tim — stay tuned to this thread for news about the bug fix.

And please let me know if there are any other issues or questions I can try to help with in the meantime.

Sincerely,
George

[George]

Hey Tim,

Apologies for another updated here, but I actually want to bear the news that we have not confirmed this as a bug. I was testing locally on my own local site and found your problems, but that is actually by design and PayPal does not communicate with local sites like that! So the order won’t complete and stock won’t reduce.

There are a few different things that could be affecting the stock issues you describe: all of them related to the setup of PayPal on your site.

To be certain that things are set up correctly, I urge you read this piece of documentation from WooCommerce about setting up PayPal Standard correctly:

https://docs.woocommerce.com/document/paypal-standard/#section-9

Check out the section starting with “Debugging IPN issues” specifically, and then check each section from that to the bottom of the article. What you are facing is almost certainly an IPN issue, so do all of the things the article walks through after the “Debugging IPN issues” header: check if you’re on a local site, if fsockopen is enabled, if your paypal email address are correct, enable logging, etc.

Please do let us know if any of the steps in that article help with your issues.

Thank you!
George

[tim]

Hello George – Thank you for the responses, i appreciate you looking into this and pointing in in the right direction.

I’m not testing Locally, fsockopen is enabled. I have added Paypal API. My hosting doesn’t have a firewall option. I’e enabled logging. I’ve added the Paypal notification URL.

It just frustrating, as the order does complete and the payment comes through (which would imply some level of communication between Paypal and the website). Its almost as if its just missing a step.

The only step I am unable to do/try on the list you linked to is set up a Payment Data Transfer (PDT) and get the identity token. As to do this you need to set up “auto return” and as the Paypal address used also takes payments from another website. So obviously cant return these orders to an incorrect website.

I cant think how to progress this further and am tempted to look into the other payment gateways your plugin supports to see if I have any better results.

Thanks again.

[George]

Hey Tim,

In your reply above you say, “I have added Paypal API.”

1. Can you clarify specifically what you mean by this?

Next, you say you’ve enabled logging:

2. Can you do another test purchase and, if the stock does not update, can you share the PayPal logs? You may be able to find these from PayPal but WooCommerce itself also provides debugging — it will show you where the files for the logs can be found.

3. Can you also share a screenshot of the “Order notes” of the WooCommerce order itself? It’s the same as you did above with this screenshot that you previously shared.

Thanks for your patience here, Tim.

Sincerely,
George

[tim]

Thanks again for getting in touch. I’ve set up woocommerce on a different server I have access to, with the same paypal settings and it works. So im now thinking it is the host/server settings. I’m going to get in touch with the host and see what they say. Thanks again for all of your help, I will keep you updated incase this happens to someone else.

[Author]

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