Yes, I am getting the same and Shopify help told me others are getting it too but so far they haven’t taken care of it.
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Just experienced our first “James James” in our abandoned checkout early this morning. There were only 2 and I saw the address was San Antonio, CA which I thought was odd so I googled the address which led me to this thread. I deleted the customer and I do already have the Locksmith app so I locked the checkout page to that email hoping it will work. I do have a few $0 products because I have a third part app that does my pricing. We don’t keep inventory, as all our items are made to order. We also don’t have any free shipping options, so hopefully those things sent the bot on its merry way. But how disappointing of Shopify to not dig into this and figure out what they are trying to accomplish and how to prevent it.
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That bot has been clogging up my abandoned shopping cart for weeks. Shopify told me “it’s harmless” but has done nothing to stop it. I was told to archive them but there is no way to make them stop appearing in my cart log, it’s awful. Then again, they just changed the dashboard again on their app which removed the last feature I actually used and they told me Too bad so sad, so why would we expect any better from Shopify? They are not what they used to be. Shopify “help” is useless.
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The thing is, I am seeing they all have the same @rtremail.com in common. You’d think Shopify could at least block that until they get a complete solution. Is everyone seeing these same emails?
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and then there is James James with a different address
Mine all have a gmail address.
Again, after we removed all 0.00 items - our friend has not been back.
Unfortunately, this won’t work for us as we require free items
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And it’s not entirely harmless as it ends up entering your email lists and automated checkout abandonment flows.
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Hello, got hit last night and early this morning 32 orders @ $0.00 + over 400 abandon carts all @ $0.00. I do have many “items” on the site that are not for sale eg the press section or garden/food photos etc - How do they add items to the cart that do not have an “add to cart” button? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Most James James for the abandon carts - sfj9usfhuios@gmail.com - James James - 321232 Klays san antonio California 94105 United States 2016570312
but the 32 orders @ $0.00 are mostly different people.
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I use Klaivyo and Digital Downloads. This has been going on for months and it’s difficult to find actual abandoned carts. I’ll deactivate Klaivyo and see what happens.
Same here Ben. I offer free digital downloads and it is an incentive for people to invest in our store.
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There are multiple threads on this with 100s of customers affected. Imagine the number who haven’t reported it! @Shopify_77 you need to step up and protect your customers. This is not harmless as it is wasting our time and energy.
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Hello, yes I agree w/ you 100%. How do they add items to the cart that do not have an “add to cart” button?
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How do they add items to the cart that do not have an “add to cart” button?
Yes, we have an average of 10 abandoned carts away from James James in San Antonio, California.
Great point, it IS wasting our time and causing unease among all of use not referring to James James as a “NEW FRIEND,” who as come to visit. As Shopify worded it…unbelievable.
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Hi I am adding to my comment above with an unfortunate update. We haven’t heard from James James since Feb 11th and thought that our block tag had worked (we blocked his account from accessing our store and specific $0 items using wholesale block app) but yesterday he came back and now we have a few dozen abandon carts with each of our $0 items coming in batches every couple hours. We cannot get rid of our $0 items, we are a non-profit and our primary function is to provide free supplies to other nonprofits. Anyway, back to square one which is “there’s nothing we can do” from @Shopify_77
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So your real customers are paying one cents now?
Just to help others out here.
@Jamie_Grove @MJComputerGeek @elizaRAFTP @sassybadge @capecalikim
I too was hit with hundreds of abandoned carts almost overnight from “James James”
After investigations and reaching out to visitors who have been taking advantage of this I have intelligence to suggest this is what’s happening:
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There’re “FREE PRODUCT” discords set up, which use bots to scan Shopify stores en-mass for free products denoted by any product with $0.00.
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Test orders attempts then placed by the bot which has the default James James and associated address details stored within it.
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From the order attempts confirming free products are available they are then categorised and listed within the Discord servers/chats as links to the free products whereby members of said discord community can browse the various industry ‘categories’ to find “free” products they’re interested in.
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Whilst some of these discord members are just interested in legitimately free products I suspect the bots and service users are also trying to capitalize on $0.00 product listing errors by site admins in the hope to grab a valuable “free” product.
I’ve coded some additional bits to prevent this on my own site but I won’t detail here to avoid giving info anywhere for bots to update. + My setup case will be different to other stores.
But I thought I’d post the above here so people have more of an understanding about why this is happening.
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Thanks for looking into this. Our “free” products are locked to the public and only approved customers with logins can access them. James James never actually reaches checkout, only abandoned orders. If the bot is posting links to our free products on Discord, people should still not be able to get access to them unless they are also somehow bypassing our store like the bot. The bot is not “visiting the store” like a normal customer they are somehow getting into the back end and adding products to a cart directly, there is no way they could have access to otherwise. Nothing we have tried to block this bot from doing this has worked so far.
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