ciao si certo l'account è di prova... 
solo che ho provato mettendo una scrittura a un file per debuggare ma in nessuno dei casi scrive qualcosa su file
niente di niente....
adesso ho trovato uno script che usa cUrl e sembra che almeno scriva errore :
Codice PHP:
$req = 'cmd=_notify-validate';
// Run through the posted array
foreach ($_POST as $key => $value)
{
// If magic quotes is enabled strip slashes
if (get_magic_quotes_gpc())
{
$_POST[$key] = stripslashes($value);
$value = stripslashes($value);
}
$value = urlencode($value);
// Add the value to the request parameter
$req .= "&$key=$value";
}
$url = "http://www.sandbox.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr";
$ch = curl_init(); // Starts the curl handler
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,$url); // Sets the paypal address for curl
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FAILONERROR, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1); // Returns result to a variable instead of echoing
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 3); // Sets a time limit for curl in seconds (do not set too low)
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1); // Set curl to send data using post
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $req); // Add the request parameters to the post
$result = curl_exec($ch); // run the curl process (and return the result to $result
curl_close($ch);
if (strcmp ($result, "VERIFIED") == 0) // It may seem strange but this function returns 0 if the result matches the string So you MUST check it is 0 and not just do strcmp ($result, "VERIFIED") (the if will fail as it will equate the result as false)
{
// Do some checks to ensure that the payment has been sent to the correct person
// Check and ensure currency and amount are correct
// Check that the transaction has not been processed before
// Ensure the payment is complete
$myFile ='../paypall.txt';
$fh = fopen($myFile, 'w') or die("can't open file");
$stringData = "VERIFIED";
fwrite($fh, $stringData);
fclose($fh);
}
else
{
// Log an invalid request to look into
$myFile ='../paypall.txt';
$fh = fopen($myFile, 'w') or die("can't open file");
$stringData = "ERROR =>".$req."";
fwrite($fh, $stringData);
fclose($fh);
}
con questo codice quanto meno scrive al file.... e mi scriver esattamente "ERROR" come scritto nel codice dell'ultimo else{}

non riesco a capire perchè tanto tribolare.... le api di paypall fanno schifo o sono io che mi perdo in un bicchiere d'acqua?