Not shipping to a region? - Problem for a downloadable product

I have had my shop running for a couple weeks with no trouble at all. I sell 100% digital products and I use Paypal Express.

For some reason, I have had two customers notify me this evening that they cannot process their order, they receive an error that says I'm not shipping to their region at this time, 'please try again later'.

Does anyone know what might be causing this? I have received orders from several countries so far, and I haven't seen this before.

Please help, I don't want to leave my customers hanging!

Where are you located?

Where where these two customers located?

What shipping module(s) are you using?

Have you a link to your site that we could perhaps peek at?

http://meljensdesigns.com

I only have the free shipping module activated, I believe, since I only sell digital products. So, technically no shipping at all. And all of my products are considered virtual of course, and I use Paypal Express as I mentioned above.

I also found out that the gal having trouble is the ONLY one having trouble, and she lives in Texas. I live in Washington state. I'm starting to think it might be user error. She didn't give me ANY details of what she was doing when she received the error. I also have not heard back from her yet.

Thanks for the response.

Sounds like user error ... I created an account with both an Ohio and Texas address and no issues ...

I created an Order and made a Purchase and no issues all the way through ...

See if you have any others who say that there are problems ...

While this is not exactly the same as the symptoms you describe, it's worth a try:
http://www.zen-cart.com/showthread.php?197182-Known-Bugs-%28and-fixes%29-with-v1-5-0&p=1139882#post1139882

Hello again Dr. Byte! The funny thing is you helped me with that virtual product fix before, and it's what got my shop working.

This is the ONLY gal who has had this problem so far, and I've made more than 200 orders already in just about 2 weeks, and they're from all over the world.

I really dislike it when a customer comes to me with a problem like this. I asked her for more details, and she finally wrote back today with nothing more than 'I tried again and I get the same error'. .... sigh

I would suggest you turn on debug-logging so that you can audit what's going on when she tries it again: http://www.zen-cart.com/showthread.php?61199-Debug-Logging-PayPal

Thanks Dr. Byte. I will read that in detail when our family returns from dinner tonight.

I wrote her again and asked for more details, that might help too.

Okay... so I don't know if this helps or not, but she wrote back.

Apparently the problem happens in the shop before she can even access Paypal, on the 'Step 1 of 3 - Delivery Information' page. She showed me that she entered her information. She sees: 'Your order will be shipped to the address at the left or you may change the shipping address by clicking the Change Address button.'

She also sees this:

Not Available At This Time
Sorry, we are not shipping to your region at this time.
Please contact us for alternate arrangements.

I just plain don't understand why she is seeing this. Is she even supposed to access that page? I thought that with Paypal Express / virtual products, it bypasses the delivery info / shipping page? Or do I have that confused with something else? I'm wondering if she bookmarked a page that she wasn't supposed to bookmark before I changed settings in my shop.

Of course, I could be 100% wrong.

Any continued advice would be greatly appreciated.

Sigh.

PayPal Express Checkout has 2 modes:

a) The big orange PayPal button on the shopping cart page

• click that button
• you're redirected to PayPal, to login and choose how you will pay later after the total is determined
• returned to the store to select shipping, taxes, coupons, etc
• confirm final purchase amount

b) Click the normal non-PayPal "Checkout" button

• login to the store, creating an account if needed, supplying address information
• select shipping
• select a payment method (ie: PayPal or any other choice the storeowner has enabled) and enter any coupons, see tax amounts
• confirm final purchase amount

Clearly she's using "b" if she's saying it happens before she even sees PayPal.

And the message you quoted is coming from your shipping modules ... so that means the address she's entered doesn't match up with any modules you've enabled. So, either you've got your enabled modules configured to only work in certain zones (instead of setting the Shipping Zone in each enabled module to --None--), or whatever she's buying has shipping rules that don't work with any enabled modules, or the products she's buying are marked as physical items and thus the shipping cannot be bypassed (as opposed to being automatically bypassed when all the items in the cart are downloads or marked as virtual).

Just an odd thought ...

If you only do digital downloads ... how is she even seeing the shipping page?

Could you check to see what products are in her customer basket and see if those products have downloads setup on the attributes?

To do this, get her customers_id and in phpMyAdmin search for her customers_id in the table:
customers_basket

and you will find the products_id of the Product(s) in her basket ...

In your Zen Cart Admin, go to the Product and edit it to ensure that there is no weight on the Product ...

Now, go to your Attributes Controller and see if her Products are setup correctly for the downloads she has selected ...

Thanks for the reply. I'm sorry if I come across as a complete dummy regarding how things work, but I have barely started 'officially' using zen cart, and I admit I have a lot to learn. I wouldn't have come here if I knew what the problem was.

Anyway I double-checked my admin settings. The only shipping module I have installed is 'freeshipper' and that has shipping zones set to 'none'. My gift certificates are set as 'virtual - yes, skip shipping address' and all of my other products are digital downloads but set as 'no, shipping address required' as per every guide I've read for setting that up. I used the duplication method to set up all of my products so that I could keep consistent product settings.

I am so incredibly frustrated with this. I've made sales to people everywhere, including Texas. I don't want to just wave her off, but I'm at the point where I have NO idea what's going on with her ordering. I have not had this problem with anyone else, and I've had more than 200 orders in just a couple weeks.

I'm going to email her again and ask what she tried to order. All I can think of is I might have a product in there that has its settings messed up. If not, then I am completely lost as to what to do.

edit Ajeh, I'm sorry, I didn't see your reply until now. I was replying to Dr. Byte. I will check that out. That's a good idea. I swear I went through and double checked every single product to make sure the download attributes were attached, but it's possible I missed one. That's the ONLY thing I think could be causing this.

That is why I ask as if there is a Product with a Download Attribute without a download filename on it then it is a "regular" product and "regular" products need a shipping method ...

So ... I believe she has tried to order one of these products ...

That is why I suggested peeking in phpMyAdmin and searching the table:
customers_basket

for this customer's customers_id as you can see what Products are in her cart and narrow things down on what product(s) to check for her then you can check all your Products later to see what other ones are gobbered up ...

Thanks Ajeh. :-) Like I noted above, I didn't see your reply until I made my long-winded one. I'll be checking on that issue. I'm pretty sure you're right, that's the only thing that makes sense at this point!

Apologies, I didn't mean to come across as impatient. I just tire of having to explain PayPal's products repeatedly. I didn't mean to take that out on you.

Definitely a bizarre situation you've got there.

Hopefully Ajeh's ideas are helpful in narrowing things down for you!

No need to apologize Dr. Byte, I know you answer a LOT of posts in these forums. So I don't blame you. :-)

I will update you all here to let you know if Ajeh's solution was the problem. I have a feeling it is.

Is there a way for me to do a check to see if any products are missing their attributes? I want to be able to check all of my products so this doesn't happen again.

Ajeh, you're going to hate me, but I looked through phpMyAdmin and I am not quite sure where to find that table.

I do not have a simple method to check this via phpMyAdmin ...

I would probably have to write check file to test this to help narrow things down ...

Your whole site is downloads except for Gift Certificate, correct?

If I get time, I will see if there is something that can be worked up ..

Anyone with a bright idea feel free to jump in here ... :cool:

While it's the opposite "view" to what you're asking for, looking at the Admin->Catalog->Downloads will show you the products that do have downloads connected to them. That might be one way to look at it.

Another way could be to look at your Admin->Catalog->Categories/Products page, click on a category and you'll see all the products in that category. The products WITH attributes (whether downloads or not) will have a different-colored Attributes icon in the button bar to the right compared with the products WITHOUT attributes.
That's a way to look for whether there might be a product which doesn't yet have attributes set up for it when you know it should just by looking at that list.

Thanks for continuing to check in, you two.

I did end up going through my entire catalog in the admin to check for 'blacked out' attributes. I did not find any, but I'm assuming it's possible for a product to look like it has an attribute if I select the attribute settings without adding a file name, right?

Anyway Ajeh, yes, I have all downloaded minus the virtual gift certificates. Dr. Byte, I'll check out your other idea. Thanks as always!