Abandonded Checkout Is Broken and Checkout has bugs

Payments + Shipping & Fulfilment
1

Hi

There is a major problem affecting checkout at the moment.

I have logged multiple queries with Shopify support on the live chat, via call and via twitter. This is going on for 96 hours, and longer for other merchants,

At first, support said that everything is working fine. However, they have now acknowledged the problem but it has not been fixed while we are losing sales at a crucial time - month end. It is so bad that I had to pause my ad spend since Friday evening.

  1. Some customers are unable to proceed from the information page to the shipping page (Continue To Shipping Button), or from the shipping page to the payment page (Continue To Payment Button, or from the payment page to the third party payment provider page (Pay Now Button). When customers click on the blue buttons, it continues to load with the rotating circle or is unresponsive, leading to customers abandoning their cart. This may only be happening for certain customers who have not updated their browsers, but I cannot confirm this as it is happening to many customers.

  2. Okay, if they abandon their carts I can still follow up via WhatsApp or call to check what the problem is and ask them to try again after updating their browsers… But oh no, another major problem. Abandoned checkouts are also not working properly. Some customers manage to enter their shipping details (address and phone number) and then proceed to the shipping page or payment page and then abandon the checkout. Why? Some messaged me through our online chat contact method to say that they are having problems with checkout, but most just abandon their checkouts and don’t come back to us. So I should be able to follow up with them since they entered their mobile numbers, right? Wrong. The second major problem is that Abandoned Checkouts are only showing email addresses instead of full shipping details which includes mobile numbers which I use to follow up on customers who have not completed their purchase. Now, I cannot even ask customers what the problem is except by sending them emails which is definitely not as effective as a direct message or call. I have tried to attached Saturday’s abandoned carts (not working) and also those from Thursday before I encountered any problems but seems like png files are not supported by this forum.

  3. There are a number of merchants who have complained about the exact same issue, but the Shopify status page has no known issues under Checkout, this is well after Shopify have finally acknowledged that there is an issue on twitter and via chat support. What is there to hide?

  4. Apparently, there is a new version of checkout called Checkout One that is being A/B tested and some of us merchants are being used as guinea pigs while not being compensated for it. I don’t know how true this is, but whatever the case we are paying for a service that is not being provided.

  5. I have requested, via chat support, that my Checkout be reverted from Checkout One back to Classic Checkout but support has denied that the new checkout is causing my problems so they have not reverted my checkout version.

  6. Support have also refused to compensate merchants for downtime, because we have accepted their fine print terms and conditions of no compensation for downtime.

Shopify is so good in theory, but what’s the point when we have to pay for something that doesn’t actually work? What happens if we go down on Black Friday and support takes more than 4 days to fix the problem?

Communication is key - Even if there is a problem you need to keep us updated on the status page on what the problem is and when to expect a fix.

If the service cannot be provided, we should not be charged app and plan subscription fees for that period. If we are being used as guinea pigs, we should be paid for that. And lastly, please fix the problem!

6 Likes
2

There are currently many separate single posts on this, your the first I think to mention a new checkout process ab-test.

https://community.shopify.com/c/forums/searchpage/tab/message?filter=location&q=abandoned%20checkout&location=category:en&page=2&sort_by=-topicPostDate&collapse_discussion=true

If the issues persists and support is being blase because no one is empowered to address verifiable bugs then if your on twitter and want to try and go up the ladder start [email removed] @tobi , @harleyf or other team heads.

Platforms like Shopify are tools treat them as such, not as a service business.

With issues like this when talking to ANY platforms tier0 support it’s a complete dice roll if they have any idea what is going on and to report issues your playing a game of telephone-chain.

Information loss - If there is a reproducible issue generally tier0 is just playing middleman and maybe the team for a feature sees what the support person relays based on how they interpret your problem report, then if that team responds teir0 then interprets that back to you.

If getting no where with a platforms initial support roll the dice and disconnect and try to get someone else that may be more knowledgeable, or try different channels to climb the responsibility chain to get to someone with answers AND power; linkedin can be useful for figuring out whos who and where they may be online like on twitter.

  1. Apparently, there is a new version of checkout called Checkout One that is being A/B tested and some of us merchants are being used as guinea pigs while not being compensated for it. I don’t know how true this is, but whatever the case we are paying for a service that is not being provided.

How the sausage is made - Merchants would not be “compensated” for something they will benefit from in the long run that comes from a process they are also already benefiting from; this is how the checkout process is already so well optimized you just happened to not have had to deal|notice any major bugs when it’s happened before.

If a platforms billing is negotiable at all , instead of “compensate” focus on that it’s bugged and unusable in seeking things like a prorated monthly payment.

Shopify is so good in theory, but what’s the point when we have to pay for something that doesn’t actually work? What happens if we go down on Black Friday and support takes more than 4 days to fix the problem? Communication is key - Even if there is a problem you need to keep us updated on the status page on what the problem is and when to expect a fix. If the service cannot be provided, we should not be charged app and plan subscription fees for that period. If we are being used as guinea pigs, we should be paid for that. And lastly, please fix the problem!

It’s no theory, it’s a working system being iterated, there is no such thing as a perfect system things will break.

So what if you were running your own ecom stack built by some outsourced dev, what happens on black friday or any other time when a self built store completely goes down and no dev is available because you got outbid by larger businesses for dedicated development support.

Same thing as shopify having outages during a major sale time; you lose all that possible revenue and will realize the business risk management at a fundamental level has not been addressed with any redundancy completely relying on false expectations of “cloud” resiliency with no enforceable contracts to back up an inevitability. The next realization is how many other millions of online stores are doing this same exact thing with zero nets.

There is NO Service level agreement on the shopify platform merchants are paying to play in someone else’s sandbox in order to get access to things that can facilitate a businesses digital needs.

The alternative is total ownership and control with 10x-100..x costs developing an entire global ecom stack with 1% of the features you get through a 43.80 billion dollar tool like shopify.

Regardless of those realities, yes the guinea-pig thing without merchant consent to opt-in or opt-out is all types of silly for checkout related tests as the platform pivots around that area for every channel, unlike say the content_for_header in themes causing javascript issues but able to be disable in a themes code. Especially since bugged ab tests create bad data making the test results misleading.

Good Hunting.

3

@Kia

Thank you for reporting. I’ve reported this as a bug with the checkout team. We’re currently rolling out changes and upgrades to our checkout platform and its infrastructure and may see some issues during this time.

We cannot provide an estimated time for resolution, but do encourage merchants and partners to contact Shopify Support if they are experiencing issues with their checkout so the situation can be assessed and the proper solution provided.

I will provide updates as they become available.

4

Thanks.

Can my checkout not be reverted to the previous version while these issues are resolved? I’m not happy about being used as a guinea pig while these versions are still rolling out.

1 Like
5

@Kia

I can’t comment on individual cases as I do not have access to specific stores/accounts. I know you’ve contacted Support already. They are they best step to take to ensure your case is reviewed.

6

I am experiencing the exact same thing - since Thursday of last week. I have chatted with Shopify and they are “looking into it.”

My frustration lies in the fact that I have to send my potential customers an email asking them (stupidly, I might add) for their shipping address so I can see if I can help them with a better shipping quote, or whatever.

Then, if they say yes, I try to convert that customer from their abandoned cart profile (with just an email address) to an actual customer and I have to do like 4 or 5 extra steps in order to get their name and contact info to save in their profile.

Absolutely horrible and takes precious time away from selling.

7

I have a support ticket open for my issue too - should I also suggest they revert to the classic until the bugs are worked out?

8

Yeah same things happening to me. a lot of abandonned checkout more than the usual rate. also i can’t recover these sales because people can’t fill their email or phone number. so shopify kinda making me lose money which i don’t appreciate. hope this will be fixed soon or i will need to switch. i have paid shopify $17k this year of plan fee and transactions fees. so i just hope this will be fixed. been a shopify clients since 2018.

9

Hi, as an update : Now my abandoned carts are not even coming through. Roughly 10% of abandoned carts are pulling through, while the others there is no sign of (previously, about 10% were coming through properly and the balance were showing as emails only. Now, those email only abandoned carts are not showing at all). From bad to worse.

@Trevor any updates?

10

We’re experiencing the same thing. It appears to be the variant of checkout which has a difference in the discount code entry box for the orders that are making it to the final step but not being able to progress. I’ve also had some reports of users not being able to move past the first step of checkout. It’s quite difficult to actually establish what’s happening, and support have been fairly difficult in terms of wanting me to show them a case of it not working (when it appears to be an issue that’s occurring somewhere around 1-10% of checkouts, not all of them). Frustrating that there seems to be a massive number of reports of issues, and no real acknowledgment that it’s a problem

1 Like
11

Our store has been receiving the same issues for days now, we’ve pretty much moved all sales to other apps and platforms with out issue however Shopify is unusable at this point.

12

This happened to me two months ago, and after contacting the shopify staff, it couldn’t be resolved.

13

Hi Trevor, any updates? We are very unhappy that our stores are not working optimally going into the busy season.

14

The issue impacting abandon checkouts has been resolved. I suspect that you’ve been provided this update via our ticket system if your ticket was escalated to our Technical Support team.

If your issue isn’t resolved, or if you’re experiencing a new issue, then please contact Shopify Support directly so they can investigate it further.

Thank you!