[Plugin: WP e-Commerce] Problems

  • Problems that MUST be addressed before this plugin can be taken seriously

    I originally posted this message on the Instinct forums, but the moderators deleted it. Apparently they don’t take too kindly to constructive criticism.

    Here’s the message, in more-or-less its original form:

    —–

    Dear WP e-Commerce plugin developers,

    While I applaud you for the tremendous amount of work you’ve put into this plugin, there are several issues that must be addressed before this plugin can be taken seriously:

    1) Google Checkout is broken. Seriously. As evidenced by many posts on your forum, many people (myself included) have tried and failed to get Google Checkout to work, with the only result being the dreaded “Oops! We are unable to process your request” error message. And before you ask, YES, we have set shipping countries on the Google Checkout gateway configuration page. It still doesn’t work. It’s astounding to me that anyone has ever gotten this feature to work.

    Until integration with Google Checkout works, and works well, it should be marked as “Experimental” (or removed altogether). It’s disingenuous to advertise features that do not work.

    2) PayPal Express is broken. Period. Just like with Google Checkout, integration with PayPal Express doesn’t work. There exists multiple threads in your forum about this topic. Months ago, a post by Dan claimed that the “latest Gold Files resolve this. My humble apologies!!!”

    That’s all well and good, but many of us have not (yet) upgraded to the Gold version of the plugin, so PayPal Express remains broken. If this is to be a “Gold only” feature, then please advertise it that way. As of now, it’s supposed to work in the free version of the plugin, but does not. Any chance of releasing that updated code to the free version?

    3) Tax settings are broken. I can only speak from the perspective of a US-based store owner, but the tax settings do not work properly at all. If you set a tax percentage for one state, that same percentage is charged to customers from all states (even if the remaining states are set to 0% in the plugin). Let’s say that I need to charge sales tax in California. The way it works now, customers in Kansas, Georgia, and all other states will also be charged that same sales tax! Unacceptable. I had this problem in both 3.6.12 and version 3.7 RC2.

    Of course, one could solve this problem by just NOT charging any sales tax, but that’s not a viable solution for most US-based store owners.

    4) Customers with WordPress logins can see your store sales data! This is a showstopping bug. If any customers register for accounts on your WordPress site, they can see all your sensitive sales data in the WordPress Dashboard! Wow! There’s a pretty easy fix for this using WordPress user Roles, but I can’t believe this problem hasn’t been fixed globally yet.

    Naturally, one solution is to disable user registration within WordPress, but that feature is handy for repeat customers.

    I say all of this not to be critical, but because I want the plugin to IMPROVE. There are a number of things that the plugin DOES do well, but some of these bugs are spectacular.

    An e-Commerce plugin should be solid. Store owners should not have to lie awake at night, tossing and turning, wondering if something is about to break on their site. Right now, the plugin feels sloppy, and I have a hard time recommending it to anyone with needs beyond the most basic production uses. I’d love to change my mind about that.

    Developers, please keep these issues in mind for any upcoming release(s).

    —–

    It’s too bad that they felt the need to delete my post. I’m authoring an upcoming book from Packt Publishing about this plugin, but I have a hard time documenting broken features. Believe me, I’d love to see this plugin work well!

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 49 total)

  • Like I said in my email to you half of these are not issues are not issues.

    1) google works for us and on a range of test sites and live sites – for instance this month my google report shows that about 50 new sites are up and running and generating revnue using WP e-Commerce

    2) paypal works on a number of test sites and live sites – we’re trying to work out why its not working for some people we suspect it has something to do with location and available services for you wherever you live, for instance in NZ we can’t even use paypal pro ??

    3) Tax is covered in many of our blog posts. You can read how we handle tax here: https://www.instinct.co.nz/wp-e-commerce-3-7-beta-3/

    If that is wrong we’re open to suggestion – that said we’ve got a lot of happy customers who are using tax…

    4) dashboard This is not happening in WordPress e-Commerce 3.7 release. I already told you its resolved…. and thanks to you ??

    I got google check out to work fine. Took me a few tries to mess with the settings. Try only having the Google Checkout checked.

    so, the user seeing your sensitive data is resolved? what users can see the information? only the site admin? how about editors and authors?

    Thread Starter brian-b

    (@brian-b)

    mufasa – Thanks for your feedback. Google Checkout integration doesn’t work at all for me, even if it’s the only active payment gateway (thanks for the suggestion, blackonblack). I’m using version 3.7 of the plugin with WordPress 2.8.1.

    Just to be clear, PayPal Standard works great, but PayPal Express doesn’t work for me, either.

    I’ll take a look at your post on tax settings, thanks.

    I just created a new user with the role of Subscriber, and I can still see all the sensitive sales information in the WordPress Dashboard with that new user. It all shows up as part of the E-Commerce Dashboard widget. Is there a nightly build, or some other version beyond 3.7, that I could try?

    I appreciate your help.

    Thread Starter brian-b

    (@brian-b)

    blackonblack – Since you got Google Checkout to work, can you give us any hints? Is your shop based in the USA?

    Thread Starter brian-b

    (@brian-b)

    Another update: with the release of 3.7, PayPal Express seems to work fine, at least for me. Good work!

    Thread Starter brian-b

    (@brian-b)

    Okay, I can now confirm that issue #4 (Dashboard) is fixed now. I just had to re-install the e-Commerce plugin version 3.7.

    I guess the download that I installed yesterday didn’t yet have Dan’s Dashboard fix in it. ??

    @brian-b: that worked for me, re-installing the plugin fixed the #4 issue for subscribers, Ill test all the other roles

    Edit: Authors have the Products tab on the sidebar, that links to: wp-admin/wpsc-sales-logs (that of course is a 404 because Authors do not have product permissions) Editors however have full access to the Products tab, but cannot use the Dashboard plugin, that does not make much sense either.

    Ill re-post over at the plugin’s official forum

    I still can’t figure out the tax settings and have spent alot of time running through the appropriate settings.

    I am located in Ontario and have input tax rates for all the Canadian provinces. Everything works fine when the buyer is from Ontario as well, but if they are from any other province, the tax rate defaults to 0% and doesn’t charge them anything.

    Am I missing something simple? This is the only element that I am missing and then my site will be 100%

    Thoughts?

    The site is here: https://www.ribbonscents.com

    Cheers!
    dale

    We’ve been having the same problem.

    Here are our stats:
    1) WordPress v. 2.8.1
    2) WP e-Commerce v. 3.7
    3) Google Checkout Selected as ONLY & We do have USA set as our only shipping option.
    4) We just set up our Google Seller account.

    And are still getting the dreaded “Oops! We were unable to process your request.”

    1) As far as WordPress is concerned, one thing I tried was when I thought maybe this wasn’t working as of the version being beyond the version recommended. So I created a cloned site with 2.7. I got the same problem.

    2) When it wasn’t working, I tried using an older version (3.6.12) and got the same thing on both sites (I’ve got two now remember? and on different servers..) Then I removed all the files, and reinstalled them. I deleted the installed one and even re-installed it using the direct link from this site rather than WordPress’ plugin directory. Still no go. By now I figured it must be something in my settings.

    3) I went through and removed options (google checkout, shipping, etc.) and reset them. At one point the shipping would only turn up a blank page. I de-activated and re-activated the plugin and then the shipping returned.

    4) Our google seller account is pretty new. We haven’t verified our bank deposit yet. I’m not sure if this is anything important.

    Here is the link to help: https://nydemocracyproject.org/page/?page_id=13

    Let me know if anyone has any suggestions.

    I confirm: WordPress 2.8.1 latest version of WP e-Commerce v. 3.7 and I get the same error with Google integration:

    Oops!
    Taurus Entertainment Company has sent Google a shopping cart with errors in it. We'll contact them to ask that they fix this problem. As this could be a temporary issue, you can go back in your browser to try checking out again.

    I have rechecked all of the settings and they are fine. I believe it is a compatibility issue.

    Anyone taking care of this bug? It looks for me that 50% of users they can do this integration and the rest don’t.

    I have tried to implement the solution to set at least one shipping country on payment options, but it shows up the same error.

    my issue is that when using usps or ups the customer can choose to ignore the shipping costs and just go ahead pay for the items through paypal. how does one make it manditory that the customer selects a shipping option?

    Has anyone got the google checkout to work? And if so how? I keep getting the cart with errors message “…has sent Google a shopping cart with errors in it. We'll contact them to ask that they fix this problem…” error when I click on google checkout. I have the merchant id and key entered correctly, have chosen google as the only checkout option, and have set the shipping country to USA.

    After digging through the forums on the plug-in home page, I am able to get Google Checkout to function. There is a link in settings – payment options after you have selected Google Checkout – it says Select Shipping Countries. You must have Server type set to production and click on that link to select the countries you ship to.

    Unfortunately, while I am able to receive orders, the shipping that is being calculated for UPS is inaccurate. It is off anywhere from $1 for 1 lb local to $5 1 lb cross country.

    This value further shows up in Google Checkout as “flat rate”. Is there a way to simply have Google Checkout calculate the shipping based on approved shipping options?

    And yes UPS is the ONLY shipping option turned on via the plug-in and the only shipping we use.

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 49 total)
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