Payment Express charges

Hi Chris,

We are currently researching a scenario related to this, but slightly different than what you presented. Our specific case involves an AVS mismatch. (We worked with Payment Express on only blocking AVS codes of N, which is what we were doing on Vantiv before transitioning over.) 

In short, a patron tried to buy tickets on our website and was declined twice. The reason was an AVS mismatch. Payment Express shows a declined transaction then a separate void transaction. No order was placed, because Payment Express communicated to Tessitura that it was declined. However, we received a chargeback and it appears the patron was actually charged. The only record of this in Tessitura is t_cc_server_log.

I'm fairly certain this isn't the first time this has happened. We are about to open a ticket on this with Payment Express to explore it further. I'll let you know what we find out.

Thanks,
David

We're on Vantiv, but have experienced issues similar to those you described after upgrading to Tessitura v14 -- a significant increase in the number of discrepancies where transactions would be processed through Vantiv, but have no corresponding Tessitura record and vice-versa (along with some duplicate refunds and charges).  What version of Tessitura are you on, Chris?  The latest Service Pack (14.0.8) appears to have resolved many of these issues for us, though we're still monitoring.

DGomez

We are on 14.0.3. Going to schedule our upgrade to V14.1 tomorrow with RAMP. Hopefully that clears stuff up.

Chris

If someone processes a credit card in Tessitura on an order and then selects the Cancel button rather than the Done button the payment will be deleted in Tessitura but still go through to the credit card processor.  This could be the cause of charges not showing in Tessitura but showing up in Payment Express?    Tessitura pops up  a warning message when a staff person attempts to click cancel on  a payment transaction order but some staff will click through the messages without reading them.   This has happened to us several times. 

Hi there,

We have been on Payment Express since 2016 with 12.5. During our time on 12.5 we have had many of these issues and additional issues with the card readers and Tessitura communicating back and forth with each other. A few things we have done is disabled pins for European cards; this was found to have been a previous cause of freezing issues and a suspected reason as to why orders were not saving in Tessitura but their payment was processed. We also have to reach out to Payment Express to check our firmware as it does not automatically updated. When we do we also have to ensure they do not turn our pin transactions back on, which happens.

Now that we are on 14.1.2 one of our biggest hurdles was Tessitura switching the placement of the "Yes" and "No" buttons to accept signatures from the card reader. Declining the signature will put multiple charges on an account and leave a pending transaction on the guests account but it does not post. We check  V_Payment_Gateway_Activity to see if staff actually declined the signature and/ or cancelled the transaction by not clicking "Finish" from Quicksale and to confirm how many times Tessitura thinks it charged the card.

We have requested Payment Express disable our "Accept Signature" process as our readers do not even have a signature pad and this is the most common error received. All of our guests that have called in with double charge complaints were mostly card reader errors or Signature Declined mistakes that left multiple pending charges. We have had one true double charge on an order. They have not yet agreed to do it for us but we are hopeful they will soon to allow us to continue our troubleshooting.

Thanks!

Boston Ballet has been experiencing similar issues to those which are being discussed here by Christopher & Daniel (we are currently v12.5.1/Vantiv). We've reported the issue to Tessitura and they are assessing the problem. (ISSUE=118598)

Unknown said:

We're on Vantiv, but have experienced issues similar to those you described

We are also on Vantiv and can also confirm that this issue occurs from time to time, before and after the v14 upgrade. Once the auth has been requested on the Tess side, cancelling or otherwise interrupting the charge process (sometimes? always?) removes all visible trace of the payment in the client, but the (possibly duplicate) charge remains at Vantiv.

I can usually see traces of these incidents in the T_PAYMENT_GATEWAY_ACTIVITY table, and it would be helpful if more of that data was somehow visible in the client so that operators are at least more aware of the lingering auth(s) before they re-try that charge.

David,

Did you get this resolved?  We are finding something similar after upgrading to V14.1.5  We have credit cards declined in Payment Express but they are going through First Data and being charged to the bank. 

Hi Terry - yes, in this particular case, there was a defect on the Payment Express side where a card was intermittently charged when an AVS failure occurred even though their API communicated to Tessitura that it was declined. They were able to fix the issue.

I don't think we are experiencing any major issues right now with Tessitura v14.1.5 and Payment Express (unless there is a new issue that isn't on our radar yet). I would suggest opening a ticket with Payment Express on the problem you are seeing. I hope it can be resolved quickly!

Thanks so much David, for the response.  We have opened a ticket with Payment Express, but will also remind them of your problem, although I'm not sure its the same issue.  I believe both Payment Express and Tessitura were showing declined but it still went through to the Bank.  We're not really sure if this is a processor issue, which is First Data, or a Bank issue or something else.  At this point I also don't know if its happening with all declines or just some of them.  It has happened to "a handful" according to our Ticket Office Director and all, so far, have been since our upgrade to V14.5.1 last Thursday.  We also have a ticket into Tessitura.   

Good to know. We have a call with Tessitura, Payment Express and our bank tomorrow to resolve this very issue. It's been a frustrating one. We are on 12.5.1.

Hi Amy,

Did you get it resolved?   We have a call with three parties, Payment Express, First Data and Tessitura this coming Monday 9/17, unfortunately it was the earliest all parties could get together.  I'm curious about your situation because you are on V12.5.1 and we thought this started with us when we upgraded to V14.5.1.  Did you by any chance recently ask Payment Express to turn on AVS on their end?  That is the other possibility we are looking at.  Shortly before going to V14.5.1 our bank recommended we contact Payment Express and have them turn on AVS.  So were not sure if the problem started then or with the upgrade to 14.  If you problem is resolved I would love to hear what they found was the cause.  

Have you found any resolution to this? When a patrons card was charged, but there is no order/transaction reflected in Tessitura. 

It depends.  Normally we just then refund the charge from within Payline (the Windcave web app).  If we have all of the order details we need, however, we can also rebuild the order and charge it to a special Payment Method created for these disconnects, which I've called "Payment Gateway Error".

More typically we use "Payment Gateway Error" when a refund has gone through successfully at Windcave, but has not been recorded in Tessitura.