PayPal hardly ever successful

[Michelle McClean]

My website uses Joomla 1.5.11 and VM 1.13. When the site went live about 4 months ago everything worked fine with PayPal, however now most customers are unable to pay using this method as they are not transferred there. This means that I am receiving many order notifications but hardly any payments. I have tested the site myself from a few different computers and have been able to place orders and pay for them successfully using PayPal so I am very confused as to why most customers are unable to do so. Can anyone shed any light on this for me? The site is losing a huge amount of business due to this problem so |I need to get it sorted asap. Thanks.

[Scar]

How do you know they are unable to pay? I think it's quite common with customers placing orders and not finishing them. If you see an increasing amount of customers you'll also see an increasing amount of these that interrupt their orders.
If you have tested your site with all different browsers and made sure it works there is nothing more to do on that field. Try send them an email and ask them why they didn't finish their orders. There is a lot of things you can do to improve your conversion rate. Just google around and you'll find more tips than you can handle.

[Michelle McClean]

I know that they have been unable to pay because they then usually ring/email to tell me that they've encountered a problem. Everything is ok until a customer has to 'confirm' the payment - usually they would then be transferred to PayPal but this is not happening in the majority of cases (though it is for some?)
I have another website which uses VM 1.1.2 and everything is fine, but the VM 1.1.3 site just doesn't seem to like it at all!

[Scar]

Ok, but what do they tell you about the problem? What browsers do they use? Is it connected to a specific shipping option? Error messages? If you have talked to them you have some more info than "not transferred there", right?

There is also a technical support at Paypal that are very willing to help, talk to them too.