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Is anyone else having the hair-tearing out frustration that I am having with Paypal's Sandbox system?

Last year I developed part of a site for a client who wanted to use PayPal, it was dead easy, this was around version 65.0 of their API using Express Checkout.

He wants some changes to the site's workflow so I need to put the paypal side into test mode and use the sandbox.

After 2 weeks of utter frustration PayPal's (very obviously outsourced) Merchant Technical Services team fix the issue of importing old sandbox accounts and creating credentials for classic API's.

I can now get the website to get a Success response from SetExpressCheckout command and the continue button now properly forwards to https://api-3t.sandbox.paypal.com, at which point it asks me to log on as a sandbox user which I do then I get the head-banging screen that says:

"You must first log in to use Paypal Sandbox features"

And then dead-ends.

I am already logged in as my correct user ID on the http://developer.paypal.com site, I am running my website in another tab in the same browser.

I am using Safari on Mac OSX Mountain Lion 10.8 and have also tried Chrome on 10.8 and on PC with no change.

I spoke with PayPal's phone support who can't help you with the sandbox so they direct you to the MTS page (http://www.paypal.com/mts) where you can log an issue. I logged the issue and got no reply ever and a cheeky survey asking me to comment on how well they did.

When you go to log in to the MTS support area you are denied, if you try to recover your username or password the email never arrives.

If you try to sign up a new account, the form finds an issue with your input and then when you correct it it tells you that account already exists.

Is anyone else having the same trouble? Has anyone managed to correctly log in as a sandbox test buyer account since they made the changes.

Last but related question, what's the current latest API version number? Having trouble finding that bit of info.

JamesB
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  • Current version of their API is 95.0 – Olaf Apr 01 '13 at 14:54
  • Have you looked at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7826441/please-login-to-use-the-paypal-sandbox-features-while-using-paypal-sandbox ? – Olaf Apr 01 '13 at 15:17
  • Took me awhile to find latest release info too - here it is: https://developer.paypal.com/webapps/developer/docs/classic/release-notes/ Hope it helps and good luck! –  May 01 '13 at 14:50

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After quite a lengthy wait from paypal's outsource tech support team there is a solution to this - it's definitely not pretty but here it is. We'll assume you've already been into the developer area and created a business account and a buyer account and that you've copied the sandbox api credentials into your application.

MOST IMPORTANT: CLEAR YOUR BROWSER'S CACHE

1) Log into your developer account area via: http://developer.paypal.com

Log on as your primary developer account - this now means your actual paypal account

2) You can then open another tab and log onto the sandbox site at: https://paypalmanager.sandbox.paypal.com/apiAccess.do?subaction=api

Log on as your business account

3) Open "another" tab (groan) and run your website and go through the payflow process and you'll then get to the logon screen where you can then use a buyer account to log in and buy things as.

Here's what's wrong with this:

You have to log on as the primary developer account first into developer.paypal.com, this, after they merged everything together is probably your main live buying account for a lot of people.

This means that you can't give test credentials out to clients very easily like you used to be able to, you could create a business and buyer account and give those details to the client to test their site, now it means you're forced to do a join.me or other shared screen session to show them it working.

I've raised this issue with PayPal MTS 2 weeks ago and had no response and it's marked as unresolved still.

I think if enough people lodge this as a complaint they'll tackle it. You can't log onto the sandbox without being logged in as the primary developer and the business accounts are linked to the primary developer account.

JamesB
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  • This doesn't work either: log in to dev account with "live" account (opens sandbox environment)»log in to sandbox business account. Get log in error. Try to change password just to be sure. Not possible. All of this used to work now it's a complete mess. – matt Apr 26 '13 at 21:03
  • Paypal has got to be the shittiest company that ever existed. I'm beyond frustrated. Can't get support because the form says it cannot submit and I have to call a US number which is incredibly expensive since I'm outside the US but the merchant is based there. Sandbox works flawlessly and production doesn't process. – andromeda May 08 '19 at 06:09
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Have you tried deleting/clearing your cookies/cache? This worked for me.

Paolo
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  • Yes, i've now got a solution, see answer below. – JamesB Apr 16 '13 at 11:38
  • Definitely clear your cache, I found that Safari on Mac doesn't work well with PayPal's new environment but Chrome on Mac does. Same thing with IE on PC - use Chrome or Firefox, seems to be fine in those. As an additional note, if you re-implement with their new REST API - surprises it all works just fine, it seems to be against legacy development and testing. – JamesB May 08 '13 at 18:16
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Yes, lots of people seem to be having the same issues. PayPal rolled-out a new developer site and it seems they've inadvertently affected the Sandbox environment too. [Or maybe the developer site and the Sandbox environment aren't really separate.]

Unfortunately, I don't have much in the way of helpful suggestions. I'm currently testing whether a brand new developer account with new Sandbox accounts – not imported accounts – suffers the same problems as you've described.

Kenny Evitt
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