People can't checkout - cart empty - firewall issues?

I get this kind of report almost daily:


[quote]

I am trying to make an order for two books. The cart shows 92.00 then when I try to correct the cart it shows empty…and on …and on. Help! can you clear this up so I can order a couple of books?

[/quote]



It is usually cause they are trying to shop while at work and their firewall or something is blocking the ajax or something…



Happens when people try to register or add things to their cart and then try to chceckout…



Has anyone found a work around or a way to make the software more friendly to work computers?



This is costing me a lot of business.



James

http://www.RPGShop.com

I´ve never been heared about the issue before. And i´ve test you shop too, i havent this problems and i add two books and go to checkout.

To answer a few question. A firewall can not block Ajax (as it has nothing to do with the user’s security settings), however, the issue might reside within the user’s browser and the disabled Javascript. (Firefox has an option to disable Javascript from executing.)

Well as I said, this is at least the 3rd person to say this same thing. The one time I was able to track it down the person said their office firewal was at fault… donno if that’s true as you mentioned above. But in all the cases people CAN add things to their cart, it’s just when they try to checkout the cart ends up empty. I’ve manually walked some people through before on my computer and it works fine with their accounts.



So yes, it’s some settings/security/firewall, something on the customers end. But that’s not an excuse. All that means is the CS CART is locking some customers who WANT TO GIVE ME MONEY out of my store. And this is NOT an isolated situation.



We get some 100+ surfers a day and probably 20+ orders a day and usually only 1% of people ever report a problem - so maybe others have the same issue and customers just leave and say forget it…



So, what can be done?



James

http://www.RPGShop.com

Just visited your site and added two games went to checkout ok!

[quote name=‘BarryH’]Just visited your site and added two games went to checkout ok![/QUOTE]



Yeah, it works for 99% of the people… it’s the 1% that can’t use the site that want to give me money that I’m worried about. But thanks for testing.



James

[quote name=‘gamegoblin’]Yeah, it works for 99% of the people… it’s the 1% that can’t use the site that want to give me money that I’m worried about. But thanks for testing.



James[/QUOTE]



Hopefully more people on here will test for you and you can resolve. Good luck!



PS Nice site

I highly suggest you checkout this thread beginning to end as it may be helpful in solving your issue:



[url]http://forum.cs-cart.com/showthread.php?t=13487&highlight=empty+cart[/url]

I tried from a work computer that does have a firewall and IE settings that I can’t change. Did not have any problem adding to cart, creating an account, or changing the quantity.

There could be companies that block shopping sites. I had customers that could not purchase from work. This is for a non cs-cart cart. I think all cookies were blocked. They had to go home to order.

Actually, many people order from work, but probably should not.

Bob

This was a definite bug in CS-Cart a release or two back which was supposedly fixed. (There is a bug report as well.)



We also experienced this same behavior and rcvd approx. 6 customer complaints of “I added products to the cart, tried to checkout & the cart was empty”. The link I provided in my above post clearly relates to this issue.



I am pretty certain that the changes to fix this issue were included in the version 2.0.10 config.php file.



We have not heard any similar complaints for several weeks now, so I am pretty certain the issue was resolved.

[quote name=‘Struck’]I am pretty certain that the changes to fix this issue were included in the version 2.0.10 config.php file.



We have not heard any similar complaints for several weeks now, so I am pretty certain the issue was resolved.[/QUOTE]





I’m running .10 and have for a while… the complaint I recently got came just this week. So no, it’s not totally fixed. But the question is can it even BE fixed? I mean it’s usually do to someone at work trying to purchase which does happen a lot.



James

The majority of our customers are B2B, thus they are placing orders from “work computers”, so I highly doubt this problem has anything to do with corporate firewall settings.



I think it is/was a user session or browser specific issue.

[quote name=‘Struck’]I think it is/was a user session or browser specific issue.[/QUOTE]



And so if I told you to tell 10 or so of your customers that, would you? Would you be fine with them just going somewhere else to shop?



Point being, I’d like to know what to tell them to help get around the problem. I’d also like the problem to not exist if it’s possible they can loosen some coding in this system.



Lastly since you haven’t been told doesn’t mean it isn’t happening to your customers and it also doesn’t mean it isn’t a bug.



James

[QUOTE]And so if I told you to tell 10 or so of your customers that, would you? Would you be fine with them just going somewhere else to shop?[/QUOTE]

Actually, I would not tell any of our customers that, nor did I tell you to tell your customers that! :wink:



A very high percentage of our customers are long term B2B repeat customers using our products in their mfg process, so, it is typical that if they have a problem placing an order online, then they either call us explaining the problem, or sent it to us via fax explaining there was a problem placing it online. All I know for certain is that it does not typically take very long for us to hear of a problem like this on our site, and, we have not had any mention of this problem for several weeks now.

Will this problem occur for us in the future, possibly, we’ll see.



If you are still seeing the problem on your end, and cannot find a reliable fix in the forums, then it makes sense to send a support ticket to CS-Cart.

Still a problem… sent on 02 Jan 2010 17:59:35 from Matthew Duprel


[quote]

Hey, guys. Just a moment ago I had logged in and added some items to my cart. However, every time I attempt to check out, it keeps telling me that my cart is empty and won’t let me check out. When I click back to the home page, however, all the items in my cart magically reappear.



Y’all mind looking at this? :slight_smile:

[/quote]



and I refuse to pay for support for them fixing bugs in this software… I’ll lodge another complaint though.



James

Ok, I got a fix for this bug that came from CS-CART support people…



In the “class.session.php” file, located in the “core” directory replace the following part of code:



$data[‘ip’] = $ip[‘host’];



with this one:



if (!empty($ip[‘proxy’])) {

$data[‘ip’] = $ip[‘proxy’];

} else {

$data[‘ip’] = $ip[‘host’];

}





I did this and asked a guy who was having problems to check it out again and he said:


[QUOTE]

In reference to your question, I believe it was the program called PeerBlock. I say “believe” because I’m fairly certain I had it running at the time I attempted to check out, and it was the only difference in operation I had going at the time.



Nevertheless, it appears to all be fixed, as I attempted a checkout even with PeerBlock up. No problems! :slight_smile:

[/QUOTE]





So I guess it WAS a bug and I guess it is to be fixed in the next patch unless you do the above to your own code base.



Good luck,

James

http://www.RPGShop.com

What my question is, what have “PeerBlock” to do with checout on cs-cart. That i cant understand, ot why should “PeerBlock” block cs-cart. That make no sense!



Please can you explain me more about this?

[quote name=‘Triplex’]What my question is, what have “PeerBlock” to do with checout on cs-cart. That i cant understand, ot why should “PeerBlock” block cs-cart. That make no sense!



Please can you explain me more about this?[/QUOTE]





No I cannot… that’s just the response the customer gave - which we all know could be complete garbage. So I wouldn’t put much weight into that. Point is that the fix I got worked to get around whatever it was.



james

i am also having same problem…! please reply me.

I am running cs-cart 2.2.4 professional, and have had many customer reports of the cart emptying during checkout, and often when simply trying to add a second item to the cart. Anyway, this seems to be a cookie related issue, since the problem can be replicated by turning up the security settings in your browser to block cookies.



Having said that, I know that some customers have been unable to checkout and have then gone to buy with a competitor, whose website also uses cookies. So it can't be their security and privacy settings…it appears to be a problem with the way cs-cart handles cookies.

It seems to be more prevalent in IE, however some customers have had the same problem with Chrome.

Anybody got any ideas here?