I have been having a problem with getting my store pulling live rates from USPS and UPS. The CS-Cart version 2.2.4 is slow as dirt when pulling live rates from the USPS and UPS servers. Previous CS-Cart 2.1.x versions where (and still are) very fast at pulling the live rates.
I have been getting very slow reponses from CS support and NONE have helped … yet I have already been charged 20 credits for nothing! The very first response from the CS Support thought that there was nothing wrong with the delay, and that if a customer clicks the 'Get Rates' link in the shopping cart and sits there staring at a screen doing nothing for 10-15 seconds is perfectly fine! Really…are you kidding me???
Another CS-Cart customer running 2.2.4 and pulling live rates from the same USPS and UPS servers has the same exact problem!
I have switched hosts from shared to a VPS and continue to try to provide as much samples and details as possible but I am getting nowhere.
For instance I moved to the new host becuase they assumed it was the shared hosting I was on causing it. The latest the CS Cart support said that 'curl_multi_init function' was not enabled when in fact curl support is enabled and the 'curl_multi_init' statement works perfectly.
I am just extremely annoyed just seeing that all this lack luster support is has cost 20 credits and they did not even fix a darn thing other than 'take a look' and make suggestions!
And I am not sure but it looks like once a CS-Cart support person initially helps then I am stuck with that support person until the ticket is resolved!?!?
Last year I have two tickets opened up, and both problems were quickly and accurately troubleshot and fixed! This support experience is the complete opposite! I can see taking 10 credits while starting the ticket and trying to help…but taking another 10 credits and I am the one doing most of the work/troubleshooting of the problem.
I know blasting the CS Support is not going to help the problem at all but after seeing support credits disappearing and the problem is not getting addressed I feel is VERY wrong.
Mail them this mail and see what happens. Hopefully they will help you and give you back your points.
Dear Tim,
My name is Pavel Zyukin, I am the head of the technical support department at CS-Cart. First of all, please let me apologize for the inconvenience caused by this situation.
I have read your communication with our technical support specialist very carefully and checked your problem thoroughly as well. I found out that the problem that was resolved for you was not caused by your server settings, but it is was caused by the debugging code left by our engineers. They are notified of this bug and it will be fixed in one of our next CS-Cart releases. So we have returned the deducted support credits back to your account. It was difficult for us to find the cause of this problem, even after further examinations we could not determine it, so that is why we asked you to contact your server administrator. I am sorry to hear that you had to change your hosting plan because of slow requests in real-time shipping methods. I regret any inconvenience caused.
Our technical support specialist deducted support credits from your account for resolving this problem by mistake, because he considered that this problem had been caused by some server settings. Please accept our apologies for this situation once again. I want to assure you that it is not our policy to deduct support credits for nothing and leave the problem unresolved. The purpose of our technical support service is to help our clients and make them happy as a result. And certainly it is not our rule to take support credits if the problem occurred because of a bug in a standard CS-Cart installation or because of some glitch in the source code.
Also I want to note regarding your words that only one person communicates with you in a ticket generally, it is our common practice that we assign one client to one or two our technical support specialist as long as it will be easy to communicate with this client in the future and provide better support. Imagine that you contact with a client for a long time and as a result you can understand him/her at a glance, also you assist in setting up his/her CS-Cart store all this time and you become more familiar with operation of his/her website. Considering these facts you will provide faster and more effective support for this client. We always care about our clients and that is why we use this practice.
I want to thank you for bringing your attention to this situation. We will take measures to prevent such mistakes and I hope that your opinion on our technical support service will change in the future. Please contact us again if you need some help and we will be happy to assist you.
Thank you.
When will this UPDATE be released?? because my CS-CART in extremely slow too for the same reasons…thnx
Sorry it is late but I wanted to get around to posting a thank you to Pavel. After contacting CS-Cart about the issue I stated above in my rant, Pavel [font=“arial, verdana, tahoma, sans-serif”][color=“#282828”]promptly wrote back with an excellent letter and also refunded the 20 support credits. [/color][/font][color=#282828][font=arial, verdana, tahoma, sans-serif] [/font][/color][font=“arial, verdana, tahoma, sans-serif”][color=“#282828”] 
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Thank you again Pavel and CS-Cart too!
-Tim
Excellent support as always CS team. Keep up the great work. 