PayPal 'Return to Merchant' Issue

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Tagged: paypal, Return to Merchant

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February 7, 2017 at 8:20 am #356243

Cheryl Johns
Expired Member

Post count: 156

I have posted re this before and thought was resolved but another user today has said this:

“Unfortunately every time I check out and proceed to PayPal the following error occurs:

Return to Merchant
Error Message
Data does not match input character set or default encoding. For more information, please contact the merchant.

Return to Merchant”

Website is http://www.liverylist.co.uk

Last time i posted the issue on here all of the code was checked and okay. Don’t know if it resolved the issue for that user thought as they never came back and we were unable to replicate it.

I think it may be something to do with PayPal accounts being located in France maybe although i have had the same error this week with a payment on my other site which is UK customers only and uses the same linked PayPal account. I have done numerous trial runs without issue on both sites straight through to payment and have had successful payments from other users but it seems to do this on spontaneous payments for no reason.

It doesn’t show a code on Settings > Reading so presume it is UTF-8 as standard. Have checked PayPal account and this is on same setting of UTF-8 so no reason for the issue to occur?

Any way to resolve this because its losing custom on the site- the only people i know about who have this error are the ones who take time to tell me!?

February 7, 2017 at 5:39 pm #356432

Kor
Moderator

Post count: 16516

Hi Cheryl,

Please share WP temp admin access to your site so we can take a better look. You can post the details here using the private reply option below.

Thanks!

February 9, 2017 at 1:23 pm #358094

Cheryl Johns
Expired Member

Post count: 156

This reply has been marked as private.

February 10, 2017 at 12:25 pm #359412

Stiofan O’Connor
Site Admin

Post count: 22956

Hi Cheryl,

A lot of your addon are out of date which we do not support, however in this case there was a one line fix which i have added to your site so you can test, but please keep your plugin up to date.

Thanks,

Stiofan

February 10, 2017 at 1:58 pm #359526

Cheryl Johns
Expired Member

Post count: 156

Ok thank you- will do. However the site was completely updated a few weeks ago- all plugins etc- at the request of moderators on here to the most update it could be when this error occurred the first time to see if we could resolve it. I am unable to retest the issue as cannot recreate it (it works fine when i test it) so will go back to the client and check the outcome. Thanks

February 20, 2017 at 6:20 pm #362716

Alicia
Full Member

Post count: 29

Hello,

I am getting this same error on my test site when I try to select a price plan with a free trial period. It works fine when I select a price plan without a free trial period. This would suggest an issue with the interface with PayPal relating to free trial offers.

I am in the process of testing free trial offering before using on our live sites. It seems to work fine with Stripe but not with PayPal.

Not sure if you can replicate this issue on your test site but I hope it can be resolved soon.

Thanks.

February 20, 2017 at 9:52 pm #362742

Alicia
Full Member

Post count: 29

Just switched the PayPal settings to my Live account and it seems to get past the error. So I guess the PayPal Sandbox is set up differently.

February 20, 2017 at 10:05 pm #362744

Paolo
Site Admin

Post count: 31211

Hi,

Paypal sandbox is indeed quite buggy and not at all identical to live mode.

Thanks
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