Order confirmation email sent before PayPal payment processed

[cinos]

bumping this.

This needs to be addressed as a very important topic.

Any solutions yet?

[Frederik]

I have talked to several people who have chosen another shopping cart solution because of this issue. I am afraid that I am about to do the same thing. It is a shame as I think VM is a really great solution.

Can we expect this issue to be solved in a future update?

[MikeUK]

Can we expect this issue to be solved in a future update?

This needs to be addressed as a very important topic.
Any solutions yet?

I think at this stage it's down to us. This isn't a 'fix it' issue. As yet there hasn't been much discussion on how this might be better done. just a few ideas with no real response. Do either of you have on thoughts on a better way to do it?

[cinos]

Well the best way, I would have thought, would be to allow us to set at what stage an email is sent.

With paypal payments, thanks to notify.php the status of an order is updated automatically to 'Confirmed' once payment has been issued. So instead of having the email sent out when an order has a pending status, there might be an option for us to send the email out on Confirmed status instead.

This could be a simple drop box selection, where we could just pick the status suitable for us.

That way everyone is happy.

[kiper]

I second this. It would be a great solution if there was a possibility to select at which stage to send the order confirmation mail and that this isn't locked to the payment modules but rather integrated with VM.
I have clients using different payment modules and they all want to send one confirmation mail AFTER payment has been confirmed.
Would be one of the best additions to VM.

[MikeUK]

Well the best way, I would have thought, would be to allow us to set at what stage an email is sent.

With paypal payments, thanks to notify.php the status of an order is updated automatically to 'Confirmed' once payment has been issued. So instead of having the email sent out when an order has a pending status, there might be an option for us to send the email out on Confirmed status instead.

This could be a simple drop box selection, where we could just pick the status suitable for us.

That way everyone is happy.

In my personal opinion, this would be overkill. It's not a bad idea, but I think that might be something for later versions, and depends if someone has the time to do that. Initially, it seems there are more immediate concerns. The few so far that have expressed a preference are suggesting it would be better with the email being sent after confirmation, without the pending email.

Obviously, this may create other problems depending on what payment methods are used.

My previous post was also to point out that this is not a feature request thread, so putting these ideas into action, as well as the ideas themselves, is done to us.

[Frederik]

Maybe it is an overkill with the option to choose when to send out the mail, but it would work very nicely for me.

In the perfect world I would also like to have the cart emptied only when the status changes to confirmed (at the same time as the confirmed mail goes out). That way the customer can go back and keep adding products up till the moment when the payment is actually completed. And if something goes wrong in the payment the cart still remains. I realize it is possible to re-enter the order from the pending mail, but it would be easier just to have the cart unchanged. That would be absolutely perfect 

Thanks a lot for the replies...

Frederik

[cinos]

If you can work out a way to simply send the email after the payment has been confirmed then that will make me very happy.

As it is the email is just a bit too...'pushy', when sent on status pending. Especially if the person decided not to pay for good reasons.

It's a bit too much: "Could you pay us please!"
Rather than: "Thanks for the order, payment was recieved with thanks"

[MikeUK]

Yes, I agree about the pending email. I also think it is too soon between emails which could cause confusion. When a Paypal order, for example is successful, then the customer gets possibly three emails. One for pending, one for status change, and one from paypal. I've no doubt there could be a better system than this. However, this only relates to payment processors, I'm not sure it applies to everyone.

I also think Frederik's idea re. the cart is a good one.

But, more importantly, I don't think this thread will get anywhere if everyone is just expecting everyone else to do it. I'm happy to help because I think this would be useful.

[opwdecks]

The pending email(s) should just be removed altogether for PayPal IMO. It just adds confusion to my staff and customers.

[Frederik]

Mike - I wouldn't mind helping as well but I am afraid my programming skills lacks the quality needed :-)

[mpoweringu]

OK, I have to admit that I haven't read EVERY post in this particular topic, but I read enough to know that many of you are having the same issue that I am in trying to prevent a "Pending" order email from going to the customer.

Well, I THINK I've got it somewhat figured out for VM 1.1.2 (and ONLY this version) but I've got to head out for a bit.  I'll try and get back on here tonight to post what I did. It basically requires two changes to the ps_checkout.php file.

It is currently hardcoded, however, I think I should easily be able to turn it into a configurable option on the backend... maybe in the template configuration controls?

[MikeUK]

Mike - I wouldn't mind helping as well but I am afraid my programming skills lacks the quality needed :-)

I guess there are not so many that could honestly say they have all the skills necessary for high quality programming. I think that not everyone realises that a number of the VM core team are not developers. But you can see there input all over the forum in different forms (whether coding or other).

Not for me to say if you should help or not. But from experience with threads such as this, the ones that tend to achieve something are those that have a high degree of input and cooperation. The ones that don't tend to get forgotten. At the moment, this thread is nowhere near popular enough or ideas-filled enough to get somewhere.

I'm only going on about this because I do think it is an important aspect of VM, but I also understand that the important thing is that many others feel the same way. So far it doesn't look like that is the case, considering how many VM systems must be using Paypal or similar.

[cinos]

It might also be because alot of people are unaware that the emails are going out like this.

I myself didn't realise until I cancelled an order (paypal_sandbox) and discovered that the confirmation email had still been sent out.

It's a stealthy process.

[MikeUK]

Maybe, but I really hope that this is a very very small number. Who wouldn't test a shop from the admin and user side before going live? Especially where money is involved. Such people probably wouldn't be smart enough to find this forum anyway.

As you say yourself, you were using the sandbox, so you were testing. I can't think of any major project  I've worked on, especially where large open-source software was involved,where the first version was 100% as I'd expected.

Out of interest ( a question for anyone here), what is your paypal config relating to pending, confirmed, etc options?