Buy Now Drop Down Button has stopped including item description in email or purchase details

[TraceyMmm]

I have had the same Buy Now drop down button on my web site since 2015. It has the option to purchase one of 10 different services - the client chooses from the drop down menu, and completes the transaction. It's always worked as intended, and I receive an email that tells me which of the 10 services the client purchased. It also shows this on the payment information in Paypal.

Over the last week this has stopped working correctly. Now when a client chooses an item from the drop down list, it doesn't tell me WHICH item it is. The name of the button is put as the description next to the price, rather than the actual item description. This is an issue as I have several services which are the same price, so I don't know which service the customer has purchased without messaging to ask them - which is very unprofessional.

I have changed nothing at all on my web site or within PayPal. My assumption is that this may be a Paypal issue connected with how the button interface/back end has changed recently.

Can anyone assist or confirm that they've had a similar problem? Because I've searched and not found anything at all thus far. Thank you!

[Wingflyer]

Swiwer,

Same with me - the ones with details have a subject starting with "Payment received from".   The real pain is that I have four different pieces of information that are collected for each purchase, so I have not choice but to login into PayPal, look up the transaction and get the details there.   NONE of the information that the purchaser enters in my purchase is being sent to my email.

[John-GGD2]

I put in help ticket # 12600137 to ask PayPal to fix this problem, showing screenshots where the description is no longer there but was there previously.  PayPal Merchant Technical Support responded that this is due to "a recent enhancement on our system and the item description is no longer included in the email."  See full response below.  With over 300 items in my "store", I cannot use the  "Item No" solution without a lot of work.  The IPN solution he recommends sounds good, but it requires more programming than I think I am capable of.

John

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PayPal response

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Subject:Date:From:To:

Buy Now Drop Down Button has stopped email description [ Case # 12600137]

Thu, 3 Au[Removed. Phone #s not permitted]+0000 (GMT)

Merchant Technical Support

john@xxxx

Hi John xxxx,
 Thank you for contacting PayPal Merchant Technical Support. I am Sanchit from PayPal MTS. I am happy to assist with your question.

We appreciate your time and efforts in explaining the issue you have been facing with the Buy Now Drop Down Button, not including the item description in the email or purchase details.

We understand the importance of having complete order information, especially when it comes to shipping the correct product to the buyer. We would like to inform you that there has been a recent enhancement on our system and the item description is no longer included in the email. However, you can still access the item description by logging into your PayPal account and checking the transaction details.

I would suggest that you let your helpers know that they need to log into your PayPal account to find the item description for each transaction.

Alternatively, we recommend using PayPal's Instant Payment Notification (IPN) service, which will provide the item description to you through an automated process. With IPN, you can receive notifications on your website or even to your email address.

Furthermore, we would like to advise you to update your website's message to the seller box for each item. You can add a unique identifier for each product and include it in the message to the seller box so that you can easily identify which item the buyer has purchased.

I hope that I have provided you with useful information. If you need any additional assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us. Thank you for your patience and cooperation.

Best regards,
Sanchit Aggarwal
Merchant Technical Support
PayPal

[Swiwer]

This is actually pretty horrible. I am based in Europe and for me the order description is not visible either in notification e-mails nor in transaction details on PayPal website. I would actually be content if I could see it in transaction details on the website but I can't.

I have also written to PayPal support where they advised me to write to Merchant Technical Support, where they sent me back to regular customer support, where they are still not sure what it is all about since they are replying with completely unrelated instructions on how to create a PayPal button. I guess I shouldn't expect any kind of a solution from them.

Why even have this drop down / message box option on Buy Now buttons, if this feature doesn't actually work?

Very disappointing.

[John-GGD3]

If anyone else is having this issue, I suggest you create a support ticket with PayPal's Merchant Technical Support.  The steps are given below.

I would have no objection if you added my name as person who also has the problem (there is a box for that in the ticket form).

John-GGD3  (John [removed])

1. Go to www.paypal-support.com​
2. Click Contact us at the bottom of the page.
3. Click the Log In with PayPal button, Create an Account, or use your Merchant Technical Support Portal Login.  [This is separate from your PayPal account although you need to have a PayPal account in order to create a community account]
4. Fill out the information requested in all required fields.

• Provide a subject, description including the webpage URL, error messages with timestamps, steps on how to reproduce, and the percentage of transactions being impacted. 
• Environment -  Production is the PayPal live site -  if your website has been active for a while, or it relates to any issues on paypal.com. PayPal Sandbox/Pilot/Test - if you are in a testing environment. 
• We recommend you upload any screenshots of the issue you're experiencing and the source code of the respective page, as this will help the technical department resolve it faster.

     5. Click Submit to complete your ticket.

[Coutts3]

Depending on your volume of traffic an how you run your site this may or may not help.

I am located in the UK so there is no custom info available in the details of my incoming payment transaction.

However you can download an activity report by date choosing "classic view". This contains the custom fields.

When my notification email comes in I can down load the activity report for that day or a custom date range (csv file - request submitted, created off line,  then downloadable - usually take a couple of minutes) open the csv and see the "lost" fields.

This is time consuming and irritating but I have a low volume of sales - why I use buttons - and it is worth it for me.

I am hoping PayPal will realise that this issue is an error - what's the point of customer option fields if no-one can see them?

[Swiwer]

Coutts3 , you're a lifesaver!

I wasn't able to get anywhere with PayPal, which is what I was expecting, since this company's services are literally falling apart. It's getting worse and worse. I logged into my account, clicked "Activity" on top of the page, then on the right side of the search field I clicked on the download symbol which then took me to the statements page ( https://www.paypal.com/myaccount/activities/statements ). There I clicked on the only available link which was "Custom" which took me to the Reports page ( https://www.paypal.com/reports/ ). There I clicked on the switch to "Switch to classic view" and then on "Activity download" in the menu on the left. Then I was able to set the date range to "Today" and format to "CSV" and clicked the "Create Report" button. After a few seconds the report appeared in the list below and I could download it by clicking the "Download" link next to it.

I was actually there before, about 14 days ago when I was trying to get to the custom messages, but I only created a PDF report which doesn't include those. I never thought to try CSV. I also have a low volume of sales so this will be an acceptable workaround for the time being.

I just got an order today and received a notification e-mail from PayPal, and you know how I was addressed in this e-mail? As "Hello, null" ! I swear this is getting worse and worse as time goes by!

[Flighty]

Thanks for the "workaround" solution....it's messy but it works.

My customers  use the message facility for details of any order and so if this is  missing , I have been contacting the customers thinking that they had not filled in any message.

The last one became slightly annoyed when he told me that he had definitely supplied the information...hence my Google search today that resulted in  finding this temporary solution

As the message information is already logged inside the background of my account ( and can be found in a cell in the downloaded requested spreadsheet report ) why can't PayPal just reprogram their system to  reinstate it easily ?

[Flighty]

January 2024....This same problem has returned for me...There are no details of any message written by the buyer in either the PayPal email or in  my PayPal account summary list.

It was fixed previously and has been working OK for me for many months .......until a week or two ago.

I now have to use the "workaround" method again  to create and download a report to find the relevant customer entered message details that already exist within PayPal ....in a cell in the downloaded spreadsheet CSV  report.

As the original  message information is already logged inside the PayPal system ( and can be found in a cell in the downloaded requested spreadsheet report ) why can't PayPal just reprogram their system to reinstate it so that the customer message appears in the PayPal email AND also appears the the actual transaction details in the Account Holders' PayPal Summary of transactions.

Finger crossed ....and here's hoping PayPal  will fix it soon

[Flighty]

UPDATE : The above messy "workaround " solution worked OK for UK PayPal...but I was unable to download any Activity spreadsheet ( with the message in a single cell ) for a USA payment

[Swiwer]

I just got an order today and the notification e-mail from PayPal came in, and it contains the order custom description again. Perhaps they finally fixed it.