Hi everyone,
We’re experiencing a strange issue on our Shopify store (www.montalac.com)
Only a few users are affected: when they visit our website, all products appear as “Sold Out”, even though everything is in stock. Most customers don’t have this issue.
We’ve asked the affected users to try private/incognito mode, but they still experience the same problem.
Has anyone experienced this before or knows what could be causing it?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you!
Hi @Paul_D1 This is an interesting one — since it only affects specific users and persists in incognito, it’s likely one of these causes:
1. Geolocation / Market issue
If you have Shopify Markets set up, certain regions may have inventory not assigned to their market. Check Settings → Markets and make sure your inventory is available for all active markets.
2. Customer account / pricing group
If affected users are logged in to a specific customer account tagged with a wholesale or B2B group, and that group has no inventory allocated — products show as sold out for them only.
3. App conflict (inventory sync app)
If you’re using a third-party inventory or ERP sync app, it may be incorrectly setting inventory to 0 for specific location/warehouse combinations that certain users are being served from.
4. Multi-location inventory
Go to Products → check a specific product → scroll to inventory — make sure stock is assigned across all locations, not just one.
Quick check: Ask one of the affected users what country they’re in and whether they have an account on your store — this will narrow it down fast. And also if this will work then don’t forget to like and mark as solution on it
Thanks for your suggestions! We only sell in France, and the affected users are in France as well. They are not logged into customer accounts. We don’t use any third-party inventory sync app, so we’ll definitely check our multi-location inventory settings. Thanks!
Since the affected visitors are also in France and not logged in, I’d narrow this to the exact availability path Shopify is using for those visitors, not the stock count in general.
Pick one affected person and one unaffected person and have both open the same product URL, same variant, and same language/currency. Ask them to try adding that exact variant to cart and send screenshots of the product page plus cart. If the product page already says sold out, I’d look at market/catalog publication, variant availability, and any theme logic that reads availability. If the product page looks in stock but the cart blocks it, I’d focus on which inventory location can fulfill online orders, the shipping profile, and the delivery zone or postcode.
Also check whether affected users are entering through an old Google, email, or ad URL with a stale variant selected. That can make one variant look unavailable while the main product page looks fine.
Until you isolate it, I’d pause traffic to those product links and test the full French buyer path after every inventory/location change: product page, add to cart, and checkout step when accessible.
Just to let you know – I am in Australia and I am able to add to cart and even reach checkout.
So, probably not a geolocation or market issue.
How long since you’ve opened the store and how long since this problem was reported?
Thanks for your suggestions! We asked one of the affected users to access our website directly (not through Google, ads, or social media) in an incognito window, and the issue still occurs. They see all products as “Sold Out”, not just one variant.
We’ll compare the exact same product page between an affected and an unaffected user, and we’ll also review our Markets, inventory locations, and theme availability logic. Thanks for your help
Thanks for your help, we have opened the store 2 months ago and this issue has been reported by 2 or 3 users only, so we have issues to understand what is happening…
We don’t want to lose sales so hopefully we will find a way to fix it
Need to understand what sets those apart from the rest of your visitors – browser, device, internet provider.
Sometimes app can do that, but you seem to have unsuspicious ones as far as I can see…
This can be tedious unless one of them is really ready to share data.
I tried from USA via Proxy - I can add products to cart and view it. It works.
I tried from India - it works as well.
Those users seem to be suspicious. Check their history. If there is only tiny fraction of complaints, there is no need to worry.
Ask the users this:
open DevTools (F12) > Network tab, reload the product page while it is showing sold out. Look for a request to something like /products/.js or a variants call. Ask them to send the screenshot.
as @ReviewMyEcom.com mentioned, if the users are coming to site via a bookmarked or shared link with a ?variant= parameter. If that parameter points at a variant ID that no longer exists or is disabled, the page can preselect it and show unavailable
and also ask them to disable adblockers/privacy plugins etc/workplace VPN.
If they are willing, it would be much better to ask them to download HAR file and send it to you/upload to g-drive:
HAR file includes complete trace of page load, including contents of all files and javascript calls.
This would contain significantly more information than just screenshot.
One can upload it into browser dev tools and inspect entire page load process.
One thing I’d check that isn’t obvious: compare the exact variant ID the affected users are landing on, not just the product page. If an old shared link has a ?variant= value for a disabled/removed variant, some themes will mark the whole product as sold out even though other variants are fine.
I’d also add a temporary debug line in a duplicate theme that prints the selected variant ID + available status on the page. Then ask one affected user for a screenshot. That will tell you fast whether this is theme availability logic, stale variant links, or an actual inventory/market issue.
