Ensuring E-junkie is sent UTF-8 Customer Data from Paypal

When I received an email announcing that “?? ???” had purchased Convoy, I had discovered a broken link in my order processing chain. I checked my E-junkie transaction log, the name was mangled there as well.

I sent an email off to E-junkie support. They were exceedingly helpful, telling me the reason that this name came through incorrectly, and how to fix it:

Although E-junkie handles all data as UTF-8 PayPal sends order data in their IPN (Instant Payment Notification) using the Windows-1252 character set by default.

They provided an excellent description of how to change PayPal’s settings to fix the issue:

1. Log in to PayPal
2. Click on “Profile” in the bar at top
3. Click on “My Selling Tools” on the left
4. Click on “PayPal button language encoding” at the bottom
5. Click on “more options”
6. Set the top dropdown to “UTF-8″ and the bottom to “Yes”

Next time “?? ???” wants to purchase from my store, It’ll be ready.

Have you had a similar issue with E-junkie/PayPal?

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