Expired carts again

[TraceyHand]

Hi,
I've done a search back but there doesn't seem to have been a satisfactory solution to this problem.
Quite a number of our customers are reaching the "Your shopping cart has expired" error page after processing their payments.
I've tried changing the expiry period and it makes no difference what the period is.
The customer places an order pays (successfully) online and then gets thsi error page which mistakenly informs them that their order hasn't been processed so they do it all again and I have to void the second payment/order etc.

It's happening a lot at the minute and it's getting increasingly annoying.
I've changed this text to say the following but customers still aren't entirely sure what's happened with their payment.

Your shopping cart has expired, orders must be completed within %d hours. <br><font color=red size="+1"><b> If you have reached this page after processing your payment through our secure server, please ignore this warning. <br>If you have any queries about the success of your order, please do feel free to email us.<br> We apologise for any confusion this may cause.</b></font>

What causes this error message to appear (when it's clearly NOT an expired cart)?
And, more importantly, how can I fix it because I'm wasting time refunding/cancelling duplicate orders and payments!
(V7.0.5 catalog AND business, btw, it's doing it on both sites)

[Mike Hughes]

I've no direct experience of this one, but here's what I assume is happening.

1. The customer completes payment and returns to your site to view the receipt.

2. For some reason actinic can no longer see the cookie that links to the session file and therefor throws up the 'cart expired' error.

As this seems to be common problem but with no repeatable cause, I would check the following:

a) Is your checkout on SSL and is the customer receipt page on SSL as well ?

(the browser might not like offering up the cookie to a different URL/protocol)

b) Do both the checkout and receipt pages use www. in the url.

(I'd check this as the homepage of jesterbikes is on www. but the rest of the site isn't).

c) Try placing some test orders with different security settings in your browser and see if there's a repeatable problem with one setting. That could help identify the problem.

Mike


(same reason as above)

[TraceyHand]

Thanks Mike. A few of those I can answer.
Firstly, we use Protx (both sites) to process the payments so the customer goes from checkout (not SSL) to Protx and then (where the error is, intermittently, occurring) back to the store again.
IIRC, none of the pages display www in the URL... just http://budget-bumps etc

As for testing it out... I'll have to figure out how to change the security settings on my browser (recent move to Firefox..lol) and have a play.... some time when the kids are in bed!
Was hoping someone would have experience of a definitive fix..lol... ever the wishful thinker, I am!
Cheers for your input
Tracey

[Mike Hughes]

I just tried a test order to see if anything was obviously wrong, but couldn't see anything.

Mike

[wjcampbe]

Tracey,

If both sites are using the same PROTX account - could PROTX be returning you to the thank you page on the wrong site, so that the cookies don't match?

[TraceyHand]

Thanks Mike.
It's not happening every time, I'm fairly sure of that.. but it does seem more frequent than it used to be (had 2 on Jesters yesterday and one on BB only this morning)
It's rather frustrating but I wonder if it's user specific. As customers seem to be getting the error after placing their duplicate order too.
If it's down to their browser settings then isn't i something that should be addressed by Actinic (anyone from Actinic care to comment on this?) as we can hardly expect all our customers to follow "adjust your privacy/security settings" instructions before checking out, can we?!

edited to say... I get a lot of spoof orders come through with "test" fields filled in... I better not tell you the comment I put when I "cancelled" the orderline before I knew who had placed them Sorry!

[TraceyHand]

Tracey,

If both sites are using the same PROTX account - could PROTX be returning you to the thank you page on the wrong site, so that the cookies don't match?

They each have their own Protx account (unfortunately!)
Thanks though.

[Mike Hughes]

I can see the errors in your error log and yes there are quite a few of them. I checked my own log and don't have a single occurence of this so it's either a V7 thing or something to do with your setup.

I do have a lot of these errors in my log though though:

The site configuration has been updated by the shop operator while you are checking out. Please navigate back to the product pages by pressing the Browser Back button and try again or contact the site owner.

I'll have to take a look at this.

Mike

Hmm. It looks like my error may be due to still having "!" (%21) after the START action when going to checkout. The knowledge base implies this is only on Zeus servers which I'm pretty sure 1and1 don't use, but I've made the changes to my primary templates and will see if that makes any difference.

[skinnybloke]

Interesting - I have started to get this problem on several of my client sites and on my test sites which are hosted on different servers.

Some use PSP, some do not and I also have tried several browsers.

The only thing that has happened recently is that they have all been upgraded from 7.04 to 7.05 (as Actinic does not allow you to upgrade individual sites).

I have not had the chance yet to do any thorough investigation but here is a taster.

On one site my checkout link is hard coded on the front page as

http://www.enjoy.co.uk/cgi-bin/os000...CTION=Start%21

On clicking it it now gives a blank page with the error message:

A General Script Error Occurred
Error: Your shopping cart has expired, orders must be completed within 24 hours or they will be automatically cancelled.Press the Browser back button and try again or contact the site owner

I then add something to the basket, go back to the home page and the link works. I remove the item, back to the frontpage and I get the correct message that my cart is empty.

Try it.

[Mike Hughes]

ha, the same link on my site gives the 'site updated' error. It looks as though it's the same error but actinic have changed the wording.

I'm still getting lots of these errors in my log despite making the changes. Something else must be happening here that needs fixing.

Mike

[dave_finlayson]

Think it might be something to do with the exclamation mark. I cleared all the cookies from my browser, fired up my cart and sure enough got the error. Then cleared cookies again, typed the URL in WITHOUT the exclamation mark and bingo, has worked every time now!

Give it a try and see if it works for you.

Dave

[Mike Hughes]

It's strange that the script error occurs when the link has %21 after START and there's no cookie, but once you have a cookie it will happily accept the link even with the %21 and give you the correct empty cart message.

Is there any reason why actinic doesn't trap 'bad' calls to the os script anyway such as "start%21" and null inputs etc and replace them with a default input such as 'action=start'. At least this way there'd be lots fewer error messages.

The problem I have is that all the checkout links with %21 after them have gone but I'm still seeing lots of the error messages. I wonder if it's the search engines trying to see the page having indexed the links when they had %21 in them. If that's the case I'm not sure it's good to be showing them an error page each time. I'd rather they saw a proper page.

Perhaps actinic developers could get me a workaround for V6 that uses 'action=start' as a default when it doesn't like the input it's been given.

Mike

[dave_finlayson]

Mike,

Look to me like you might still have one in the 'Order' button you have on your brochure or hand coded pages. It disappears when you get into the product pages.

Dave

[Mike Hughes]

The thing is that I went through all my templates and removed all the "!" from the os script calls. I even checked with a 'find' on my editor to make sure I didn't miss any.

Still I'll check again.

Mike

[dave_finlayson]

Mike,

Think it's coded as "%21" instead of "!".

Dave