New version leaves loads of Pending Payment orders

Hi @galapogos01,

Thanks for your message.

Instead of deleting unpaid orders on behalf of the merchant, the Afterpay plugin follows the WooCommerce recommendation and leaves it to the merchant to follow up with the customer to reduce abandoned orders.

WooCommerce does offer a built-in setting for holding unpaid orders for X minutes before auto canceling them. Documentation for this feature can be found here: https://docs.woocommerce.com/document/configuring-woocommerce-settings/#products-inventory-options

Thank you.

You have misinterpreted the recommendation.

No other plugin creates dummy orders if a payment cannot be completed.

Lastly that setting relates to inventory management and has nothing to do with creating dummy orders.

Please fix the plugin, you are making life difficult for millions of shop owners around the world.

Jason

Hi @galapogos01,

Thanks again for your response.

Version 3 of the plugin follows the WooCommerce standard flow for payment gateways. Outlined below are the steps involved in that flow:

1. The customer visits the checkout
2. The customer selects their preferred external payment provider and clicks “Place Order”
3. WooCommerce creates an order and redirects the customer to the external payment provider to complete their payment
4. The customer fills in their details and selects relevant options
5. The customer confirms their payment(s) and is redirected back to the store site. It is at this point the order generated in step 2 has its status updated appropriately (processing or complete if successful, failed if declined)

If the customer places their order but doesn’t pay for it, then the order will remain in the Pending Payment status. This can occur for a number of reasons such as the Afterpay token expiring (time based expiry) or the customer getting part way through the checkout process and then closing the browser tab / window.

Again this is the flow recommended by WooCommerce for payment gateways as per documentation under managing orders: https://docs.woocommerce.com/document/managing-orders/#understanding-order-statuses-in-relation-to-payment-gateways. This gives the customer the opportunity to attempt payment for the order again, even with another payment method as many times as needed or until the order is cancelled by the store owner (or automatically by the previously mentioned unpaid order setting).

If this is not the behaviour that you are seeing, the team would be happy to assist with an investigation. To facilitate this, please submit a support request using the following web form:
https://help.afterpay.com/hc/requests/new?ticket_form_id=193406

A member of the team will then reach out to you within 1 business day.

Thank you.

It’s almost like you’re not reading my posts.

I am seeing 5+ orders a week with the Afterpay method that have failed and are sitting there pending payment. No other payment method is doing this.

I am using Zip Money, it’s fine.
I am using Braintree, it’s fine.

Your plugin started doing this recently. Only your plugin.

You need to cancel the order if the customer aborts the payment.

Jason

Hi @galapogos01,

Thank you for your reply.

Just to reiterate, WooCommerce natively supports the automatic cancellation of pending orders after a set time limit (documentation). Please see the section “Hold Stock (minutes)” which states, “When limit is reached, the pending order is canceled”. The intention, as observed, is to hold the stock for the customer while they pay for their order.

It would not be appropriate for the Afterpay plugin to presume that a customer will not choose a different method to pay for their order if they take too long to return from Afterpay, or return without committing to the payment schedule. It’s also important to consider that some customers take longer than others to complete their payment.

If a customer’s payment is declined by Afterpay, however, their order will not remain in “Pending Payment” status. It will be marked as “Failed” in accordance with WooCommerce recommendations. The Afterpay Order ID will be recorded in the “notes” section of the order view in the WordPress admin.

If there is reason to believe that the Afterpay plugin is not behaving as intended, please do create a dedicated support ticket so that the team can assist with a comprehensive investigation.

Thank you.

I do not need to use this setting (which has other side effects) to clean up Failed orders with any payment gateway other than Afterpay. This includes the official plugin for Braintree, the plugin for Zip Money (who appear to actually listen to their merchants) and the out of the box BACS plugin.

I also did not need to use this setting before the latest version.

I don’t care what you think the recommendations are (or why you decided to follow them this month and not the last few years), but the side effect of you releasing this new version of the plugin is a headache for your customers — you know, the merchants that fund you through the exorbitant merchant rates you charge.

This ticket is unresolved.

@afterpayit Just to clarify, when there’s not enough money in the customer’s balance to pay for the order (the situation described by @galapogos01), is this a failure or a temporary situation that may resolve itself later?

If it’s a failure, order status should change to “Failed” after a timeout, as you’ve suggested, although it’s better if they fail immediately.

If it’s temporary, how do orders change to “Processing” or “Failed” later on?

Hi @galbaras,

Thanks for your message.

If the customer has reached their limit for outstanding payments, their order will not be marked as “Failed”; they will be returned to the “pay for order” page to continue from there. The customer may choose to make payments for other existing Afterpay orders, via the app or Consumer Portal, then try again to pay for their new order with Afterpay. Alternatively, they may choose from the other available payment methods. An order will be marked as “Failed” only if the customer confirms the payment schedule and is declined by Afterpay. Otherwise, they would not yet have attempted to make a payment for the order that they have just placed, thus the Afterpay plugin would not update the order status.

In version 3.0.0, the Afterpay plugin did cancel orders (i.e. marking them as “Canceled”) when the customer closed the Afterpay window. Many merchants reported challenges relating to a high volume of cancelled duplicate orders, due to customers initiating multiple payment attempts from the same checkout. The decision was then made to only update the order status once the payment outcome is finalised (an Approved or Declined response is received).

Merchants may choose to follow up on any pending orders, or as suggested, use the WooCommerce built-in setting to cancel pending orders automatically after a given number of minutes.

Thank you.