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Authorize.net - General Error (Unable to Send Notification)


AllThingsTrendy

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I hope someone is able to help. In the last three days, I have had 6 credit card purchases complete. Yet, I never receive payment confirmation from Authorize.net. I check my merchant account and the transaction is authorized but with the following error: "General Error (Unable to Send Notification)".

 

I call Authorize.net and they replied with the following. Unfortunately, since I don't have the customer's credit card number, I can not send these purchases through with the authorization number.

 

I've had this module for a year and never had this problem. Note that this problem is not occurring with all credit card transactions. Most are processing fine.

 

Greetings from Authorize.Net!

 

When Authorize.net is responding back to a script on your server, our system waits 10 seconds for a response. If we do not get a response in 10 seconds, our server will time out and display an error page. The first thing that you will need to look for is the order that your script executes. It is very important that something is printed to the screen before any other process is started. If your script prints to the screen first, we will recognize that you are receiving the information. The most effective method would be to PRINT the headers, and a line of text such as "Processing, please wait."

 

To resolve this issue:

 

-Check that your script permissions are correct and that it can accept an HTTPS POST.

-Check that the script is not completing other functions before writing to the screen, such as writing to a database or sending emails.

- Please check to see if there are different processes that are used in your script for approvals, declines, or errors. Check each process to be sure that they will write to the screen before any other functions.

- Check if your script is using redirects immediately upon receipt of the response from our servers. Redirects are discouraged because they can potentially interfere with the process.

 

***On occasion, timeouts will occur that are outside of the control of your script or our servers. Typical reasons for these timeouts are Internet traffic, your server is overloaded or malfunctioning, or Internet routing issues. Depending upon your server location and what route is used to send data, it is possible that you may occasionally receive the message you are seeing.

Anthony David

AllThingsTrendy.com

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  • 1 month later...

Anyone else experience the "general error" like this and if so, what did you do to resolve this issue? For the past few weeks, I'm getting more and more "general errors" but unlike AllThingsTrendy, my customers are not getting to complete the checkout process. I'm losing allot of business.

 

One guy called and told me so I ran his information through their virtual terminal and everything went through fine. The funny thing is he had just bought something 2 DAYS before with the same account. What gives?

 

Still waiting for Authorize.net to officially respond, but talking with them in live chat, they said that my script was sending wrong characters. Hopefully I'll know more in just a bit, but if any of you have experienced this, any help would be appreciated. I'm using Authorize.net consolidated v1.7 (which seems to have been removed for some reason)

 

Thanks,

 

Mike

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Mike, I hope someone can help with this. It appears to be a sporatic thing. In my case, the purchases were approved by A-net. Yet, because they were unable to "notify me", there was an error and therfore the transaction did not process. I could have claimed the sale if I had the customers card number. But, since OSC does not store this information, I had to contact the customer. Nine of ten time, the customers bailed due to fears of fraud (can't blame them).

 

I've lost about 8 sales due to this... it's really adding up.

 

AllThingsTrendy

Anthony David

AllThingsTrendy.com

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Mike, I hope someone can help with this. It appears to be a sporatic thing. In my case, the purchases were approved by A-net. Yet, because they were unable to "notify me", there was an error and therfore the transaction did not process. I could have claimed the sale if I had the customers card number. But, since OSC does not store this information, I had to contact the customer. Nine of ten time, the customers bailed due to fears of fraud (can't blame them).

 

I've lost about 8 sales due to this... it's really adding up.

 

AllThingsTrendy

 

Just heard back from Authorize.net and this is what they said,

 

"Greetings from Authorize.Net!

 

My engineers got back to me and say you are sending invalid characters in the CustomerIP field and that you should stick to Alpha-numeric data for customer fields."

 

Can't we just remove the Customer IP anyway? It's not required for transaction, but it may help with fraud if you ever have problems I guess. Any thoughts on this?

 

Through a PM, I had a suggestion to check my log file to see what response Authorize.net was sending back after the error and I'll do that tonight and post back.

 

Thanks,

 

Mike

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After a bit of weeding through the log file, I can't see any response from Authorize.net

 

This was in my log though:

 

var cc_number = document.checkout_payment.authorizenet_cc_number.value;
var cc_cvv = document.checkout_payment.cvv.value;
if (cc_owner == "" || cc_owner.length < 3) {
error_message = error_message + "* The owner's name of the credit card must be at least 3 characters.\n";
error = 1;
}
if (cc_number == "" || cc_number.length < 10) {
error_message = error_message + "* The credit card number must be at least 10 characters.\n";
error = 1;
}
if (cc_cvv != "" && cc_cvv.length < "3") {
error_message = error_message + "* You must enter a CVV number to proceed.\n";
error = 1;
}
}

if (payment_value == null && submitter != 1) {
error_message = error_message + "* Please select a payment method for your order.\n";
error = 1;
}

if (error == 1 && submitter != 1) {
alert(error_message);
return false;
} else {
return true;
}
}
//--></script>
</head>
<body marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" topmargin="0" bottommargin="0" leftmargin="0" rightmargin="0">
<!-- header //-->
<table width="100%"  border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tr bgcolor="9AA8D8">
"<td width=""25%"" bgcolor=""000000""><div align=""left""><a href=""http://	 - - [01/May/2006:21:27:46 +0000] ""GET /catalog/checkout_payment.php?error_message=There+was+an+error+processing+your+credit+card.++Please+check+to+s
ee+that+all+of+your+bi"

 

This is from the authorize.net php file in my store. Why would this be showing (like this) in my log?

 

Thanks,

 

Mike

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<!-- header //-->
<table width="100%"  border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tr bgcolor="9AA8D8">
"<td width=""25%"" bgcolor=""000000""><div align=""left""><a href=""http://	 - - [01/May/2006:21:27:46 +0000] ""GET /catalog/checkout_payment.php?error_message=There+was+an+error+processing+your+credit+card.++Please+check+to+s
ee+that+all+of+your+bi"

 

This is from the authorize.net php file in my store. Why would this be showing (like this) in my log?

 

Thanks,

 

Mike

that is really strange ... note the quotes around the last part of what you displayed and the link within the http:// -- ............. part

 

you said that authorize said you were getting alpha chars in your ip error 32 at some point I think ...

I think you were getting checkout_payment in your data stream to them...

that is just way bizarre....

you need to diff the original aim file with the one you are running .. because you have something that is just not right ...

 

I don't know very much but I would think that is just way odd from my small perspective

(my knowledge is so small you would think that an ant was a genius in comparison)

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Do you think it is the aim file or one of the checkout files? I'm going crazy right now. i will backup to the original files I had. I added the CCGV contribution so I want to be careful not to mess with that.

 

Here's another wierd thing I just found. Whenever I log in to my store and then also look at whos online in admin, the ip address shows CE_AuthorizeNet or vm/authnet.so or mf_config and other parts of code when depending on which page I'm on.

 

Any idea where this would be coming from.

 

Thanks for all of your help

 

Mike

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A little more info:

 

In all of the secure pages, the ip address either disappears or shows crazy symbols like 1 or parts of authorize.net code. I think I have multiple problems although everything seemed to be running smoothly until this past week?

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  • 1 year later...
  • 4 months later...

Hello -

 

Has anyone ever found a resolution to this problem? I have been using osC 2.2-MS2 with authorize.net for 3 years with no problems. Up until a few weeks ago, the "General Error (Unable to Send Notification)" error had occurred a total 3 times sporadically throughout the last year. However, in the last two weeks alone, it has occurred 4 times. Authorize.net authorizes the transaction and osC processes as if it is complete, however no payment is received. Similar to others who have posted, this problem does not occur with every transaction.

 

Authorize.net has given the same possible reason for the problem as what they gave to AllThingsTrendy.

 

Has anyone figured out if this is osCommerce bug (the code for my shopping cart has not been touched in the last 2+ years). If so, what needs to be changed? If not, could it be a host server problem (we are using iPowerweb)? an Authorize.net server problem? Any advice from those of you who have had this issue and found some resolution would be appreciated.

 

Thanks...

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  • 4 weeks later...

We're having the same problem and it's been affecting business severely. We're receiving the same canned responses from Authorize.net and can't find anything to change on our end since code has been the same for 2+ years. At a total loss, but need to resolve ASAP.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

Thank you.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I have received this a few times. I would actually like to see if Authorize.net could increase the time out time to 15 or 20 seconds. My take on this issue is that this occurs when there is heavy traffic on your server or at your store. If your server is slow from load it may take a while for your successful checkout page to show up. If it doesn't show up in 10 seconds then you get the error. Maybe the reason these occur after many months or years is that you are finally getting enough business to cause this? Or whatever server you are hosting on is getting used more heavily.

 

It's tough to recreate it yourself, but I've been wondering if the customer actually sees the Successful Order page or not. Maybe they see it at 11 seconds. By that time its too late for Authorize.net.

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