Apple Receipt Validation, IAP

Folks, I am using https://github.com/pcrawfor/iap_verifier verifyAutoRenewReceipt method to check a receipt the phone sends me in Sandbox.

The response I get back, is a JSON object, with status=0 constantly. I cant seem to get the receipts to expire and get the 21006 back.

So what I think needs to be done, is parsing the apple_receipt_info array, and matching up the current date with expires date.. Super tedious task. Am I on the right track?

here is the purchase_date ahead of the expires_date ???

{
  "quantity" : "1",
  "product_id" : "Individual",
  "transaction_id" : "1000000125781694",
  "original_transaction_id" : "1000000125781334",
  "purchase_date" : "2014-10-01 19:31:49 Etc/GMT",
  "purchase_date_ms" : "1412191909545",
  "purchase_date_pst" : "2014-10-01 12:31:49 America/Los_Angeles",
  "original_purchase_date" : "2014-09-30 23:45:39 Etc/GMT",
  "original_purchase_date_ms" : "1412120739000",
  "original_purchase_date_pst" : "2014-09-30 16:45:39 America/Los_Angeles",
  "expires_date" : "2014-09-30 23:51:21 Etc/GMT",
  "expires_date_ms" : "1412121081000",
  "expires_date_pst" : "2014-09-30 16:51:21 America/Los_Angeles",
  "web_order_line_item_id" : "1000000028661959",
  "is_trial_period" : "false"
}

I couldnt get the verifyReceipt method to work, as I kept getting malformed data errors back from Apple. Not sure what that function does...