[This post is by David, the developer and owner of DPW, not Carol! I forgot to switch my login to my account before posting!]
I am sincerely sorry about the frustration with this. It is working perfectly when both Sophie and I try to purchase your art, on a computer and on a smartphone, and no one else has reported any issues with PayPal, so rest assured the issue is not systemic.
DPW extensively logs information regarding all aspects of the checkout process and the PayPal transaction, with the first log entry being written long before DPW even takes the buyer to PayPal. The thing is, is I cannot see any recent payment attempts that weren’t successful for your paintings. The most recent unsuccessful attempt was on April 7th, however it was quickly followed by a successful transaction by the same buyer. Often the unsuccessful attempts are simply a buyer clicking the PayPal link or button in DPW, going to the PayPal site and then choosing to not complete the sale for whatever reason.
As far as being directed back to the DPW site from PayPal, that is the way it should work.
Here are the steps involved:
- The buyer clicks the PayPal link or Buy It Now button.
- They are taken to their PayPal account where they sign in or pay by credit card and then click the “Continue” button.
- They are then returned to DPW where they are presented with a window summarizing the purchase and asking them to either confirm or cancel the sale.
- The sale is completed only if they click the “Confirm” button.
All of this is extensively logged by DPW.
If there are any issues with the transaction, such as they do not have sufficient funds in their PayPal account, they will be presented with the error with instructions to call PayPal to resolve the issue. And, again, DPW logs the error and I am contacted by text.
Again, I am not seeing any recent non successful payment attempts, which I should see if a buyer has even clicked the PayPal link or Buy It Now button, no matter where the attempt failed.
At this point, I need to find out from the buyers what, specifically, they were running into. Bob, I’ll contact you outside of ArtTalk for their names and email addresses.
As an aside, browsers can exhibit very strange behavior. A year back, I remember not being able to bring up PayPal.com at all. I just got a cryptic, all text error. Finally, I cleared my browser’s cookies and bingo it worked fine! Unfortunately, there is a lot happening in the buyer’s browser, computer, internet connection, and with PayPal that is outside of DPW’s control, which is why I am logging every step in the process.