We're sorry, things don't appear to be working at the moment. Please try again later.

[Eric-Le]

Hello,

I'm running a site that offers subscriptions (recurring payments) for users. I integrated it via WooCommerce. I have been running without any problems for years. However, starting 15 hours ago, the subscriptions function suddenly stop working while the non-recurrent payment function works normally.

The error that my customers are getting is:

We're sorry, things don't appear to be working at the moment. Please try again later.

I know that this is a very broad error. To narrow it down, I start by checking my PayPal account:

1. I checked the Encrypted website Payment: Turned OFF.

2. I called PayPal support (2 times) with 2 different PayPal staff, they confirmed that my PayPal account is NORMAL (No restriction).

3. At the end of each error URL, there is always this code: genericError?code=UkVUUlk%3D

Can someone please help me? Thank you so much!

[gkav]

I am experiencing the same issue atm.
The generic error is not helping a lot and the code given is not even a debug code but seems to be an action as the

UkVUUlk%3D

seems to be a base64 encoded for "retry"

Sandbox though is working fine which is a strong indicator that the settings on the account are may correct. And this is potentially a production error?

[Eric-Le]

Hi,

Thanks for sharing. Do you at what time this error started to happen?

For me, it was around 7 hours ago.

The sandbox works properly. I tried plugging in different PayPal accounts but still getting exactly the same error.

Are you also using Woocommerce?

[Eric-Le]

Additionally, I called PayPal support to make sure my PayPal account is good.

They confirmed that there is nothing wrong with my PayPal account.

[gkav]

I think it started around 22:00 last night (UK time). No use of Woocommerce. I am using both smart checkout and an older integration (PHP based generating checkout links)

I am trying to figure out any solution. I'll post it here if I manage to find any.

[Eric-Le]

@gkav yep, let share here what we can find.

My devs are also working hard on this. We have banging our heads for hours without any clue.

Looking at our log, we clearly seen that the product (subscription) was created properly. Just for some reason it did not go through PayPal as normally it does. Most of the guidelines that you may find on the internet point to exactly the same thing, which is the Encrypted website Payment option. For sure, I turned it off but it should not be the problem since my site has been in production for years.

This error is heavily affecting my business.

[pixits]

We're also experiencing this issue and called PayPal support. They didn't know about it and couldn't see any problem with my account of their services. I said there are many people reporting this, including this thread. She was logging it as a bug but I will do it myself as well. I think it's important that we make them see many have this problem. This is affecting us heavily with a Pay Per View service where we have our first big event this weekend.
We're using a PHP backend but the Javascript check-out integration on the front end. Has been working great until yesterday. This is a subscription product, haven't tested on regular checkout for a one time payment. Anyone know if that's the same issue?

[Eric-Le]

I guess at least till now PayPal tech team should be aware of this issue and trying to fix it. It started happening around 16-17 hours ago till now. I did everything I could to fix it (as I thought at the beginning it was my fault). Then I called PayPal support, they are very supportive. However, you are right about the fact that PayPal support were not aware of this issue.

My work depends heavily on subscription and this is really affecting my work.

[gkav]

@Eric-LeWe had an update.
We contact Customer Service and opened a ticket with them as I was pretty sure that the issue was on PayPal's side. And the informed us that the issue was reported with other accounts as well and their devs were working on a fix.

Few moments later, the issue was resolved. I have no intel to give you for which actions to take if your issue is still there (which I hope is not) but seems that it was not based on our settings in our case.

I hope you have this one resolved soon. Strongly suggest to open a ticket if you still experience the issue

[Eric-Le]

@gkav thank you for the information. It started working normally on my site.