Painfully peeving paypal payment processing (and CC)

I have the sandbox setup and working just fine currently.



I have 3 payment methods setup, Paypal Express Checkout, CC with PayPal Pro, and Google Checkout.



When going to checkout if you click checkout, you completely miss the Paypal and Google check out buttons. The Paypal option shows up later, but Google is never seen again. Many of our customers only purchase a single item as we have some expensive products. So many will simply click checkout when that ‘added to cart’ window pops up.

Scenarios:

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So suppose you miss the button on the view cart page. You go through the normal process, you do guest or signup. Then you get to the end and select your payment type. Good, here’s Paypal, click, PlaceOrder. Login to paypal, review funding and shipping. Click next to review order, click. Order info page, my order number?! It said I would review my order on the next page!!! I didn’t click pay. Pissed off customer.



Suppose I didn’t miss the button. I click Paypal, sign in, then it takes me to the normal checkout page.

If I was logged in: Wait, I didn’t get to select my shipping method, it defaulted it? I guess I can click edit if I notice, but it never even asked!!

Now I need to select payment, again? Didn’t I already click paypal? I’ll select paypal again, and Place order, YAY, it worked.

If not logged in: It asks for contact info, doesn’t give a chance to login or select an account. Now it wants the billing address, what does that mean, I’m using paypal, fine, it filled in my shipping address from my paypal account. I can change that and ship to any unpaypal verified address, but that’s fine. I click Place Order, yay, it worked.



Now, what if I made a mistake, or there was an error.

I miss the button, type in my address, make a typo on the city. Click paypal, Place Order. It doesn’t even ask for the paypal login. I get an order screen that says status:fail? WTF is this? Oh, if I scroll down I can pick a payment at the bottom at least. Same error because I couldn’t edit and fix my address, what was that error again, I was to busy looking in my wallet to confirm something and the error box faded away! Screw this site, bye.



Ok, I’m a customer and I’m going to use a CC. Clickity click, enter credit card info, Place Order. Order info, yay, it must be done, wait there was a red box that showed up, but I see the Order invoice looking page here. Oh, wait, status:fail? What do I need to fix? Why didn’t the checkout page give me an error?



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Why even bother putting an order through if there’s an error, and now you can’t even edit the address or anything in the cart?! So you can’t fix anything? So what, I have to click reorder this order and do it all over again? Why doesn’t it list the error on the checkout page and let you fix it? And having that Paypal button in both locations with the very easy possibility of missing it, that makes it not even functional. If there are any process errors at all, it puts the order through with status error? How is that even useful. Do we need to now hire an entire staff to call these customers and sort that out? Why doesn’t it just tell the customer the error and log it.



Suppose you’re on the “Order info” page and you try to make a payment. You try CC, fail, then PP, fail. Now someone else purchased the item and it’s out. You try PP again, and it seems to go through even though it still had an error, can’t attempt to pay anymore. Now it says status:backordered? HUH? But the payment failed. And now in the admin section, it says method of payment paypal, but it also lists all the CC info. And why was it backordered? Which product was it? There are 10 items on this order, I need to check every one? I have inventory tracking on and people shouldn’t even be able to purchase an item not in stock. Oh, but once it’s on the ‘Order info’ screen it’s fixed and doesn’t undergo any checks.



I got these errors in the course of testing:

“Transaction refused because of an invalid argument. See additional error messages for details.”

“Shipping Address Invalid City State Postal Code”

“Your order has been declined by the payment processor. Please review your information and contact store administration.”



I’m livid and nearly want to cry. What am I supposed to do, having customized this cart for weeks, spending over 100+ hours, and now the checkout on a $300 cart isn’t even functional? We already have unicahome.com which is a really large site, but very complicated. This site is suppose to remedy the complication and automate everything. This is the most ESSENTIAL part of a cart. This is it’s sole purpose of existence; to collect PAYMENT. How can anyone even use this?





edit:

oh, and payment images don’t actually show up on the checkout page either.

Some of your issues are being addressed with the order placement improvements - what happens after the “Place order” button is clicked and the order either succeeds or fails. You can check out the proposed improvements in the following thread:

[url]http://forum.cs-cart.com/showthread.php?t=16180[/url]



They are also planning to rework the checkout page to simplify and streamline it - these will be the issues before you hit the “Place order” button. Unfortunately, they have not yet opened a new thread in the Roadmap section to solicit input for this redesign (probably because, in spite of all the griping here, people have not voted to make this a top priority). You can leave your comments (and vote) on the UserVoice idea:

[url]http://cscart.uservoice.com/forums/40782-general/suggestions/539155-simplify-and-improve-checkout?ref=title[/url]



When they open the thread addressing checkout issues in the Roadmap section of the forum, make sure your ideas/issues get posted there as well.



Bob

Phazei,



In the meantime, consider changing each link or button url from “checkout.checkout” TO “checkout.cart”. There is most likely about 3 places you will need to do this.



You will find that it makes far more logical sense in the process to direct your customers to the shopping cart first… This greatly helps to alleviate checkout confusion without much effort!

[quote name=‘Struck’]Phazei,



In the meantime, consider changing each link or button url from “checkout.checkout” TO “checkout.cart”. There is most likely about 3 places you will need to do this.



You will find that it makes far more logical sense in the process to direct your customers to the shopping cart first… This greatly helps to alleviate checkout confusion without much effort![/quote]



I agree.



I found the correct templates (cart_status.tpl, product_notification.tpl) to edit.

[quote name=‘Struck’]Phazei,



In the meantime, consider changing each link or button url from “checkout.checkout” TO “checkout.cart”.



[/QUOTE]



This is what I ended up doing. Seems they will have an option to do this automatically in the next version.