It tells the person to go and unscribe from payapl - why one subscription does this and not the other.
Apparently 1 subscription is NOT recurring as you're suspecting (or wasn't paid via PayPal). This only happens when a recurring subscription is made through a PayPal purchase, which has to be cancelled on PayPals end.
Also when the user has unscribed from payapl it puts an entry on the notifications screen however its doesnt automatically remove the users subscription to anything else
User remains subscribed until their subscription expires. If they paid for a year, they remain having a year. They can go to profile and re-cancel and that'll remove the subscription entirely if they like. The reason it does this is a user may not want to auto-renew and can cancel from PayPals end without losing their actual subscription.