Multiple charges generated for single payment in SF

[Roy]

Beginning in mid-May, 2015, we have had a dramatic upsurge in the incidence of multiple C&P charges being posted for a single payment made in our SF application. This is particularly strange because this is the slowest part of the year for online sales. Our developers have not made any change to the payment interface in a long time. Can you think of anything that could account for this?
Recent examples would be Melissa, June 20 -- 3 C&P transactions for 1 payment; Harriet on June 22 -- 2 C&P transactions for 1 payment.

[CnP.Support]

Good day!

I am not sure knowing the transactions will help.

Where is your form?

Our forms block double posts by simply blocking the submit button until a transaction completes. Is your form a custom form developed by your developer with our API?

We see this a lot where custom forms do not block double clicks. Take a look at the time stamp of each transaction and see if they are processed back-to-back. In our API we cannot possibly block back-to-back posts as we have 3rd party developers and applications that post many transactions back to back from their forms to different accounts using the same donor information.

Please send us the link to your form so I can review the form.

[Roy]

It is a custom form using the API and PaaS library.
I don't think these are double click situations. In 2 recent cases, the first had 2 C&P payments spaced 50 seconds apart. The TLI was created in our system after the 2nd payment.
The other had 3 C&P payments spaced 5 and 6 minutes apart. The time on our TLI corresponds to the last of the 3.

[CnP.Support]

Good day Roy,

Have you checked the Order Numbers? Are they the same?

Are these transactions only posted to Salesforce twice (same order number) or are they different Order #'s?

[Roy]

The Order Numbers are always unique. We retain one, but have to issue credits for any extras associated with a single purchase.

[CnP.Support]

Good day!

Please post 2 order numbers so we can review the posted data from your form.

[Roy]

Here are 3 for the same payment. The last one is what posted to our system:

CNP:1506201701458984891

CNP:1506201706386014891

CNP:1506201712256324891

[CnP.Support]

Good day @Roy,

We reviewed the log files and here is what we see:

Order #: 1506201701458984891 / Date-Time: 2015-06-20 17:01:45

84-740 KILI DR APT 625

Order #: 1506201706386014891 / Date-Time: 2015-06-20 17:06:38

84-303 MAKAU ST.

Order #: 1506201712256324891 / Date-Time: 2015-06-20 17:12:25

84-303 MAKAU ST

These are almost 5 minutes apart so they can't be a double click.

The address used in each post is different. the 2 that have Makau Street using a period in one and no period in the other one.

These are clearly, without a doubt, 3 separate transactions entered by an individual using 3 separate incidents of the form load. In each transaction the address has been entered separately. Hope that is clear.

I hope you see the issue. I am not sure what any of us can do given the patron has done this as is evident.

Have you contacted the patron asking why they have made the payment 3 separate times? Could it be that they have not received the receipt thinking the payment has not gone through?

Any thoughts?

[CnP.Support]

One more point to add this thread.

Something about our Order numbers that you may want to know for future:

Order Number: 1506201701458984891

The order number includes valuable information:

- 150620 = 2015 - 06 - 20 (June 20, 2015)
- 170145898: Hour = 17, Minute = 01, Seconds = 45, Thousands of second - 898
- 4891 = Last 4 digits of the card

Just looking at the order number tells you when the transaction was done. These are not the same transaction since their orders numbers are different.

Hope that adds another layer of understanding of how our system works.

[Roy]

The issue is that our system apparently did not get a recognizable return code from the first 2 transactions. If we had, we would have created a TLI and completed the payment process. The user would not have been able to make a second payment. What return code do you see that was generated from the first 2 payments?

[CnP.Support]

Good day!

We show that all transactions were authorized and response was Success.

All response codes are listed here: http://manual.clickandpledge.com/Response.html

Nothing in the FaaS platform has changed and responses have not been changed since the start of time (a bit after the big bang!).

Are you using the base API (SOAP service) or the FaaS forms? I am not sure how to proceed from here. Our log file shows all is in order.

[Roy]

We are using the PaaS library. We have not changed anything in our payment process or UI. But in January, we processed 39k payments with only 6 of these extra C&P transactions. Likewise in February, we had 35k payments with only 6 extras. But in May, with only 4k payments, we had 18 extra C&P payments. June has 3k payments, but 11 extras. Something must be different that increases our rate of missed return codes so much. We cannot sustain this rate going into our upcoming high volume season. It has been suggested that the culprit is in the communication layer. Any ideas on your side?

[CnP.Support]

Good day!

I understand your concern but please note that Click & Pledge process millions of Dollars and a lot more transactions in real time than what your site is doing. We process for organizations that do a couple of millions a day without a glitch. Our servers can handle traffic far far more than your forms. Last month one organization had over 100K transactions in a day with over $16M raised in a single day - and that was in addition to our daily traffic. Our API platform handles a lot more than what you are stating. Your volume is not even a blip in our system.

We have full log files of what we have sent to you and responses are sent in real time. I am not passing the blame but we are sure our system is not at fault. We perform load and stress testing of our platform regularly. During a GiveBig day our average response time to a post is less than 0.4 seconds. We know these stats and monitor our network continuously. Needless to say our network is monitored by third party sites and if slowness is detected we get alerted in real time.

We love to work with you so you can resolve your issue but I would do stress testing of your network to see if you are having issues. For example this is one site we have used in the past: https://loadimpact.com/ - we have also tested http://loader.io/ but they are a simpler platform that won't give you much flexibility in design. LoadImpact.com is more elaborate and we use them on a regular basis.

Please let us know if we can be of any assistance.