Vital processor issues?

[ILoveHostasaurus]

Anyone using Vital as their processor with whichever payment gateway you've chosen? We've had a customer experience a lot of connection failures this weekend from their Payflow Pro gateway to Vital, all back-end stuff on the PayPal side, but I'm wondering if it's something with their account or Vital in general.

[ILoveHostasaurus]

Re: Vital processor issues?

Ended up being a Vital issue:

EVENT DETAILS
--------------------
Service: Payflow Gateway Live

During the time listed below you may have experienced the following:
Errors 102 (Processor not available) and 109 (Timeout waiting for processor).

Start Time: Feb 01, 10:20 AM PST (Feb 01, 6:20 PM GMT)

End Time: Feb 01, 8:22 PM PST (Feb 02, 4:22 AM GMT)


UPDATE HISTORY
--------------------
[5] Update: We are still working with Vital and the ISP to resolve the issue. Next update will be sent by 10:00 PM PST.
(Sent Feb 01, 8:10 PM PST by DN)

--------------------
[4] Update: Currently, the issue is only affecting transactions that are processed on the Vital platform (processor). We are working together with our ISP and Vital on a resolution.
(Sent Feb 01, 5:59 PM PST by DN)

--------------------
[3] Update: The transaction processing errors are due to a circuit issue on the Internet backbone. The Internet Service Provider (ISP) serving one of our data centers is still working on restoring the service on their end.
(Sent Feb 01, 3:54 PM PST by DN)

--------------------
[2] Update: We are still working on the issue. The next update will be sent by 4:00 PM PST.
(Sent Feb 01, 1:50 PM PST by DN)

--------------------
[1] Notification: This notification is to inform you of the following issue with Payflow Gateway.
(Sent Feb 01, 11:53 AM PST by DN)

[d_host]

Re: Vital processor issues?

It may just be Paypal back-end. We've had couple clients with similar issue, but with Elavon. Paypal support is *still* working on this issue, now 4 days into it. Apparently they are having issues at one of the datacenters and their bandwidth uplink (timeouts, packet loss, disconnects, etc). They are back to about 90-95% stability, but as of 9am PST today they were telling us that the issue is still being worked on.

[Barrett]

Re: Vital processor issues?

This incident further supports a manual fallback system being engineered to capture the payment data in the background and allow the order to complete normally as far as the shopper is concerned.

[Pamela Hazelton]

Re: Vital processor issues?

This incident further supports a manual fallback system being engineered to capture the payment data in the background and allow the order to complete normally as far as the shopper is concerned.

Someone had developed such a module for version 4, I believe. Can't even remember who (possibly Darren?).

[Pamela Hazelton]

Re: Vital processor issues?

BTW, this shouldn't be that difficult to do. We've already done something similar as custom script for "pre-order" items. I.e. if an item in the order is pre-order, use Simple Validation, otherwise use the Gateway.

[Barrett]

Re: Vital processor issues?

IMO this should be a core functionality not reliant on 3rd party modification due to it's importance and globally useful nature.
Afaik from previous discussion with a Miva staff member; it is supposed to be on the list or I could be confusing it with a daydream...

[ILoveHostasaurus]

Re: Vital processor issues?

How do you decide when the gateway is down and to fall back? The error is the same as a decline from merchant's perspective since the gateway itself is up and running.

[Barrett]

Re: Vital processor issues?

How do you decide when the gateway is down and to fall back? The error is the same as a decline from merchant's perspective since the gateway itself is up and running.

Hmm well between you, and guys like Ivo, Mike Brock, and the rest of the prop heads; I'd expect a solution in time for a beer.

Maybe somehow it will have to be a manual payment data capture running in parallel with some idiot proof method of comparing the two events and flagging ones that don't meet a certain profile in comparison.
Sounds like a fun adventure for the software engineers.

[d_host]

Re: Vital processor issues?

How do you decide when the gateway is down and to fall back? The error is the same as a decline from merchant's perspective since the gateway itself is up and running.

The same way as other systems have developed for fall-back payment processing... and yes, there are a few of those out there.

Submit a transaction to the gateway and wait let's say 15 seconds for response. If it doesn't come back, mark it as failed in the system and submit it to the fall-back gateway or to simple CC validation. If the first transaction eventually does come back with a response from the gateway (let's say Authorize.net took 50 seconds to respond, not uncommon occurrence) then intercept the response but then immediately send a VOID type transaction to the gateway since you already have the fall-back info processed and/or saved, so the cardholder's card doesn't get charged twice. If you do this immediately (same day) the transaction won't even get processed or show up on the cardholder's statement, since in virtually all cases payment gateways submit data to merchant banks once a day in a batch process.

[ILoveHostasaurus]

Re: Vital processor issues?

What are these other systems that currently do that?

[d_host]

Re: Vital processor issues?

This is a Miva Merchant forum so (I feel) it would be inappropriate for me to discuss these other options here. Email me off the forums if you want the info.

[kayakbabe]

Re: Vital processor issues?

I was one of the merchants that really got burned by the Vital internet backbone issue.

I've done some investigating and I really think that Miva's payflow pro payment module needs updating. Payflow Pro does indeed deliver a response code to notify the web store that payflow pro can not connect to the merchant's processor.

Payflow Pro returns response code 102 and also a response message that says in plain text "Processor not available"

Becuase of this, it should be easy enought to add a feature to the payment module which would email the store owner in the event of certain response codes like the 102 being returned to the store.

At least an email would be nice, becuase then we store owners could go in and turn on simple credit card validation until the problem was resolved.

Maybe just a configurable choice of which response codes we want or do not want to get an email about, then the email could include the response message from payflow pro.

Things like the below codes, are ones I want to know about (might determine if I should change processor or not)
102 Processor not available is a big important one.
103 error reading response from host
104 Timeout waiting for processor response. Try your transaction again.
106 Host not available
107 Duplicate suppression time-out
108 User authentication failed
115 System busy, try again later

there are also a lot of codes that could help us close the sale, but right now payflow pro payment module just gives us a quick and dirty answer for if the card worked or not.

I would like to see the ability for certain response code, the ability to reask the customer for certain information, say for a 50 or 51, i want to be able to ask the customer to use a differetn cc card, becuase there isn't enough available credit on their card, or to ask them for a diff cc card or to change their order, becuase their card won't allow them to purchase that much in one transaction.

All these codes are available and can greatly improve the user experience... AND my own peace of mind as the store owner.

[d_host]

Re: Vital processor issues?

I've done some investigating and I really think that Miva's payflow pro payment module needs updating.

You'll be happy to hear they just did. Rick sent us a module last Friday and we've been testing it since then. So far all responses are coming back very positive - no issues or transactions with "103" or other response codes. The new module uses PayPal API v4, the latest version they have and recommend using. Contact your host, or Miva support directly, for a copy of this module if you want to install that on your domain.

[Barrett]

Re: Vital processor issues?

You'll be happy to hear they just did. Rick sent us a module last Friday and we've been testing it since then. So far all responses are coming back very positive - no issues or transactions with "103" or other response codes. The new module uses PayPal API v4, the latest version they have and recommend using. Contact your host, or Miva support directly, for a copy of this module if you want to install that on your domain.

Is this giving us the invisible fall back routine so the order goes through or just a more meaningful error code displayed that if we are lucky the customer will tell us.....?