[Steven Zahm]

@ Joshua

I believe the issue is the method that is being used to manually insert the connections_entry_id user meta in the DB (your code, I assume). I would examine how you are adding the entry ID value to the user meta.

In regards to where self::$entryID is being set, it is in the setEntryID() method. It is imply using get_user_meta( get_current_user_id(), 'connections_entry_id', TRUE ); to get the meta value. The value must already have had the added characters added.