I've had the same problem.
Apparently the date format the IPN simulator sends is different from the one the django-paypal
package accepts.
Head over to paypal.standard.forms.py
and add the 'new format date' PayPal sends.
PAYPAL_DATE_FORMAT = ("%H:%M:%S %b. %d, %Y PST",
"%H:%M:%S %b. %d, %Y PDT",
"%H:%M:%S %d %b %Y PST", # note this
"%H:%M:%S %d %b %Y PDT", # and that
"%H:%M:%S %b %d, %Y PST",
"%H:%M:%S %b %d, %Y PDT",)
I don't like this solution, because what if PayPal changes the date string format in the future?
This is actually a caveat of Python's datetime
object that does not know how to easily convert strings to actual time objects easily.
But that works for now.