International order zip code box in cart

[mbw]

I'm having trouble receiving international orders. The cart asks for a zip/postal code for international orders (not meaningful in many countries). If the customer attempts to checkout anyway, they're given the error: "Please select the Country, enter a valid ZIP/Postal Code, and press the UPDATE CART button." even though they've selected a country and pressed update cart. Not sure why the cart asks for zip code or how to turn it off for non-US locations.



I'm using flat rate shipping varied by the total of the purchase and have set up rules for US, Canada, and International. Only US appears to work.



Thanks for any suggestions.

[E-junkie_Guru]

Our cart should only require a postal code if the buyer has selected a shipping country that actually uses postal codes. If the cart is requiring a postal code for some country that does not use them, please tell us what country is having that problem.

[mbw]

The cart is requiring a postal code for ALL countries.



www.warmglass.org

[E-junkie_Guru]

I have been unable to reproduce that problem -- e.g., I know that Ireland does not use postal codes, and selecting Ireland in your cart allowed me to proceed to checkout without entering a postal code in any browser I tried. What browser software are you using when the problem occurs?



Try clearing your browser cookies (or at least any cookies for 'warmglass.org') and see if that resolves the problem for you. Note that our cart must be tested in a real Web browser, on a live Web page, with a domain name in the URL. It will not work in the "preview" mode of most Web design software, nor in a local copy of the page stored on your own hard drive, nor on a live page with just a numeric IP address instead of a domain name in the URL.



If you could provide a specific example we can test -- what exact page on your site to test from, with what exact item(s) in the cart, and what country to select, using what Web browser -- we can try to reproduce the problem with that particular test case.

[mbw]

Odd that it doesn't reproduce for you. I have seen the problem on several computers, using both Firefox and Internet Explorer. Clearing cookies makes no difference.



And I have been contacted by three international customers saying they can't check out because the cart won't let them. So it's definitely happening in a production environment, using a real browser. I have no idea of how many other international customers have been unable to place orders and just didn't bother to contact me.



The problem started when I deleted and then re-entered a Canadian shipping rule to change the shipping price. I tried deleting all Canadian rules and re-entering them all, but that didn't fix the problem either. I can't think of anything else to do but delete all dozen or so of my shipping rules for all countries and then re-entering them to see if that fixes the problem.



Sure hope your next version of the software allows us to edit existing rules. It's very cumbersome to work with shipping rules in the current version.

[E-junkie_Guru]

If the buyer's cart order does not qualify for any shipping rules you have set up, the cart would show "-error-" for the Shipping amount, and when they try to proceed to checkout, this message would appear: "Please select the Country, enter a valid ZIP/Postal Code, and press the UPDATE CART button." If that is what you were seeing, then the problem was something to do with how you'd set up your shipping rules.



Looking at your current rules, it appears your rules for Canada have some gaps in the price ranges: all of the Max. Item Total figures end in .95, rather than .99 as with your other rules, and since the Min. Item Totals are even dollar amounts, any cart totals in those .96-.99 gaps being shipped to Canada would fail to match a Canadian rule, so they would only qualify for the All Countries rule that covers that price range (e.g., a cart total of 49.97 being shipped to Canada would be charged 23.95 for shipping, rather than 19.95).



We do plan to make shipping rules editable in the new Admin, but I'm not sure if this enhancement will be included in the new Admin as soon as it launches. I gather some new back-end programming is required to make this possible, so if that can't be completed by the time the new Admin is otherwise ready to launch, we may just add that feature a bit later on.

[mbw]

Thanks for the suggestions.



I have deleted all shipping rules and reentered them, taking care to take care of any price range gaps. The problem remains.



I also received another phone call from an international customer today reporting that they were having trouble using the cart.



Do you have any other suggestions? Is there another way to make sure the rules are deleted or to wipe them all out for sure so I can reenter?



To reiterate, I do not see the "error" message in the shipping amount field; instead I see the zip code field for international, which I don't believe should be there. If I click "update" I get the "Please select the Country, enter a valid ZIP/Postal Code, and press the UPDATE CART button." message you referenced in your post. This is for International orders only, US orders work fine.

[E-junkie_Guru]

I was finally able to reproduce the problem by completely disabling JavaScript in my browser. If this is the source of the problem, the only buyers affected would be the few who disable JavaScript or use a script-blocking browser extension such as NoScript.



In this case, the cart displays in a separate window/tab (rather than displaying our standard card overlay "inside" your own page), and after clicking the checkout button in the cart, if the ZIP/postal code field was left blank, a new page appears with the message, "Cart Error: Missing Tax or Shipping. Please go back, select Country, enter ZIP/Postal Code, and press the UPDATE CART button before Checkout." (rather than displaying an alert box in front of the overlay-style cart with the shorter message, "Please select the Country, enter a valid ZIP/Postal Code, and press the UPDATE CART button.").



I will refer this to Development to see if we can improve the behavior of the cart in this scenario whenever JavaScript is disabled. Meanwhile, affected buyers can simply enter anything in the ZIP/Postal Code field, which should then allow shipping charges to be applied before they take their order to checkout.

[mbw]

Thanks for taking the time to research this. I do appreciate the effort.



Unfortunately, I don't believe that this is the issue. I've double checked, using both Firefox and Chrome, and javascript is enabled. Moreover, when I use any country other than the US and Canada, the zip code field comes up with the word "none" already entered and the cart works fine. However, it won't work for Canada (I have specific shipping rules for Canada), even when I enter a dummy zip code. I just get the same error mentioned above, regardless of browser. The US still works fine.



The "none" entry for other international countries was not happening yesterday, and I have changed nothing since then, so I assume it's something that you folks have done at e-junkie.



I'm not sure what else to try. Perhaps I need to delete all of the rules at one time and then reenter (rather than delete and reenter one at a time). Do you think that might be more successful?



Thanks again for your time.

[mbw]

The cart auto-enters 'none' as the postal code whenever a country is selected that does not use postal codes. For countries that do use postal codes, the buyer must enter a valid ZIP/postal code for that country; entering bogus/dummy codes will not work.



There doesn't appear to be anything amiss with your current shipping rules' settings, so there would be no point in deleting them and readding them. Shipping rules would only be involved in the error you described if the buyer's cart order does not qualify for any rules you have set up, and since you have rules for Country:All Countries that cover every possible price range, any given order should at least qualify for one of those rules if none of your country-specific rules apply to the order.



Again, we would need specific details to try reproducing the problem ourselves: what page on your site, with what items in the cart, what country selected, and entering what postal code (if any). If we can reproduce the problem in that exact, same scenario where you were seeing it, then we would be able to track down the cause of that problem.

[E-junkie_Guru]

The cart auto-enters 'none' as the postal code whenever a country is selected that does not use postal codes. For countries that do use postal codes, the buyer must enter a valid ZIP/postal code for that country; entering bogus/dummy codes will not work.



There doesn't appear to be anything amiss with your current shipping rules' settings, so there would be no point in deleting them and readding them. Shipping rules would only be involved in the error you described if the buyer's cart order does not qualify for any rules you have set up, and since you have rules for Country:All Countries that cover every possible price range, any given order should at least qualify for one of those rules if none of your country-specific rules apply to the order.



Again, we would need specific details to try reproducing the problem ourselves: what page on your site, with what items in the cart, what country selected, and entering what postal code (if any). If we can reproduce the problem in that exact, same scenario where you were seeing it, then we would be able to track down the cause of that problem.