Why do our forms keep giving errors and then charging people twice?

Basic details you should know:

• We use multiple JotForms for our Special Events, Online Membership & Animal Adoptions online for our zoo.

• We use the Pay Pal Pro payment integration.

• We have auto responding emails set up for all of the forms.

• We also have the "Thank You" page set up for all of them.

• We do not use the unique submission (cookies & IP) check, due to the fact that some people prefer to order over the phone, and the same few select staff will order online for them. So if we have that in place Tracy, Kathy, Linda and Theresa cannot order online more than once.

 

Good morning! We have been having some issues with people having error messages come back when they hit the submit button. I'm unsure as to what the error messages say, as people call and tell us but they don't remember exactly what it's saying. They just see that it's an error message.

Since they are receiving this error message when they submitted, they fear that their order has not been placed, and they end up doing another form and hitting submit and the problem is that they are getting charged multiple times - sometimes twice sometimes three times, depending on how many times they try and submit.

My co-workers are also telling me that some people are not receiving their auto response emails.

To try and minimize the damage, we have included a note at the top of every form we have that states, if they are having issues or error messages, or are not receiving an auto-respond email within 30 minutes, to give us a call  and we would input the form for them.

 

Has any one else been having these same issues? Is there a glitch? What can we do to prevent these errors? Do you have any idea what is causing it? Is it because they are ordering on their cell phones?

We have old reports about form errors after submissions, but they aren't the same so it is important for us to know the exact error message for troubleshooting purposes. I would suggest asking the users about it, a screenshot would be helpful.

I suspect it is related to the Paypal Pro integration in the form. Is your Paypal Pro still active? Well, if you received a payment despite the error, then that means the Paypal Pro works in the form. Please confirm if you receive the payments.

If you have also embedded the form, I would suggest using our iframe method instead of the default which is the script. 

https://www.jotform.com/help/148-Getting-the-Form-iFrame-Code 

There are cases of a script conflict in pages, the iframe will fix it. 

As for the notification emails, I think that is a different problem. Please ask your form users to check their spam folder. If the emails are filtered as spam, they should mark it as not spam to whitelist our domain/sender email. 

 

Has anyone else been having these same issues? Is there a glitch?

Our Paypal Pro is used by many. We'll surely get a number of reports in the forum if there's a glitch. I checked it, seems nothing today.

 

What can we do to prevent these errors?

Please try my suggestions above of re-embedding the form. 

 

Do you have any idea what is causing it?

I am not sure what's causing the problem. There are factors to consider such as how the form is embedded. You have to check your API keys in the form. You have to check if your Paypal Pro subscription is still active. A user error, maybe, like card issues. 

 

Is it because they are ordering on their cell phones?

I don't think so. The process is the same. But if users cannot replicate it using desktop/laptop, then there's something wrong on the device that's causing the problem.

Thanks for responding Welvin.
Yes, our PayPal Pro is still active and is being used. We do get many successful transactions daily, but then we also have those few that are submitting multiple times because they do not know that after their error message that they were being charged already.
I’ll try and embed using the iframe, because as of now we’re just using the ...