Customer registered without completing company filed

Hi,

Can some one help me understand how the following has happened?

I have used the Zen Cart Admin to make Company Name compulsory for registering with the site. I have tested this and it works for me as it should.

Yet a customer has managed to register with the site and the Company Name filed is empty. (No purchase made)

How can this be?
What/where do I look to see what has gone wrong?
Is it a sign of a problem elsewhere?

virgin install of version 1.5.0, not an upgraded site. No debug files, No server error logs.
following Add-Ons: Category Dressing, Ezpages Footer Columns, lightbox, Include and Exclude Tax in Prices, Google Analytics

The usual reply to something like this is that they registered through Paypal and not on your site, but you said that no payment was made. Are you using Paypal, and if so, Standard or Express ? May we see a link to the site ? If you created/acquired a custom template, does it work if you switch temporarily back to Classic ?

Go to admin->configuration->minimum values, and be sure the Company setting (i.e. minimum length of the company field) is greater than 0. It defaults to 0.

@stevesh: hi, that is what I had thought, but there is no record of a sale via the PayPal Admin or the Zen Cart Admin. (Site is set up to use both Express and Pro (PayFlow))
@swguy: hi, it was set to a value of 3

I have checked the emails, and there is also no email that you normally get when a person registers.
Checking the DB via cpanel shows that in the field for company name = NULL

I have discovered the only way a compulsory field can be left empty is if it is deleted by an admin. The admin logs show this was not done.

I would give a link to the site, but it is not my site and the owner does not wish to have a public link to the site.

The registered address of this user doesn't seem suspicious. She has registered her address as being in a suburb of a small town in the south of England.

I have just done a winmerge of a backup take now to a backup from Jan 2013. No changes except the minor ones I have made. I don't have a clue how it's happened and it's worrying. Tempted to suggest the site owner blocks said account, but don't want to over dramatise the situation.

Try turning off JavaScript in your browser and creating an account with no company name. Try switching to the default template, as @stevesh suggested.

hi, tested in IE, FF and Chrome, switched to the Classic template and disabled all Java & Javascript. I am still unable to register while leaving the Company Name field blank. Rather than the javascript popup saying " Please enter a company name " I get an on-page warning (styled by messageStackWarning) of the same " Please enter a company name "

I have no idea how they bypassed this? Or why the website did not email the owner when they registered? Any other ideas or tests or where to look?

:(

As I am totally unable to recreate this, what are people opinions on this?

Should I be worried and suggest the owner blocks the user? or just put it down to one of IT's typical unexplainable quirks?

Personally, I wouldn't worry about it until it happened again. If I were that customer, though, I wouldn't mind being contacted and asked to help figure out what happened. It's possible she did enter a company name and it didn't make it intoi the DB for some reason.

Hi all, the site in question has had 5 more people register without the website either

a) emailing the store owner
b) the mandatory Company Name field (at a valve of 5) being left blank

Given stevesh's explanation of how the mandatory Company Name field can be bypassed by a customer using PayPal Express

c) No paypal transaction.

I have in fact (i think) uncovered why this has been happening. I believe it is the way the checkout flows when a customer selects Express Checkout.

When a visitor adds an item to the cart, in this example 'Widget A' priced at £10 and selects Express Checkout method, they are taken off site to the paypal page.
From this they can ether select to pay via their paypal account or via PayPal via their credit card. Once the buyer has done what they need to do, they are then returned to the Shipping Pages of Zen Cart, where they presented with the shipping cost. For example, another £10... From this, if they proceed to the Confirmation page they are then presented with Costs plus VAT

so they see

Widget A = £10
Shipping = £10
VAT @20% = £4

Total £24

At this point, if you abandon the cart before clicking 'Confirm Order'. The zen cart store shows the symptoms of what I have been seeing

that is
a) No email from the store as PayPal has created the buyers account on the Zen cart Store
b) Company Name bypassed
c) No PayPal Sale.........

So my next question is.......... can someone please please help me fix this???

How can I change the checkout flow so that when someone chooses PayPal Express, they don't go to paypal first then back to shipping and then see the addition of tax in the confirmation page, causing this cart abandonment.

that is to NOT show the PayPal Express button on the register page or on the Your Shopping Cart Contents.

Add stuff to cart > Your Shopping Cart Contents > Step 1 of 3 - Delivery Information > Step 2 of 3 - Payment Information > THEN Select PayPal

I hope this makes sense and someone can help

p.s. have others experienced this problem?

or make the customer go to the shipping page then confirmation page before being moved off site to paypal

You can remove the Paypal button from the shopping cart page in your Paypal configuration in admin. I would point out that Zencart can't calculate shipping until it knows where the customer lives. If the customer doesn't create an account on your site, Zencart has to wait until the customer returns from Paypal to provide a shipping quote.

Thanks stevesh! lol, i did not know I could do that :blush:

Is there a way to turn it off on index.php?main_page=login? Doing that (I think) would solve the problem of the customer getting the £shipping shock and abandoning the sale. Well, at least they would not initiate a PayPal express checkout before the customer can see the Shipping / VAT and jumping

any help you can give is greatly appreciated!

Are you sure the customers are not hitting the spacebar a number of times for Company name?

Do you also ask for coy number and/or coy tax status details?

ray-the-otter:

Thanks stevesh! lol, i did not know I could do that :blush:

Is there a way to turn it off on index.php?main_page=login? Doing that (I think) would solve the problem of the customer getting the £shipping shock and abandoning the sale. Well, at least they would not initiate a PayPal express checkout before the customer can see the Shipping / VAT and jumping

any help you can give is greatly appreciated!

I don't think so, but that wouldn't solve the 'problem' anyway. As I said, shipping can't be calculated until Zencart has a ship to address, which in your scenario, wouldn't be available until after the customer returned from Paypal.

Have customers contacted you about this, or are you just assuming that the VAT/shipping charges are scaring them away ? People abandon carts for all kind of reasons.

dw08gm:

Are you sure the customers are not hitting the spacebar a number of times for Company name?

I tried that on the OP's site - no go.

@dw08gm - it was one of the first things I tried.

@stevesh - just an (attempted) educated guess based on a stumbled upon discovery.

I approached the site as a buyer ready to do a live test transaction with my own CC via PayPal Express. I selected an item at £10, selected PayPal Express on the Your Shopping Cart Contents page, expecting to pay £10, taken to the paypal page (while keeping an eye on the email logs). Choose pay by CC, filled in the details, click Submit, returned to the ZC site's Shipping page where I seen an additional £10 shipping fee. #gasp... proceeded to the Payment Information page, seen add additional cost of VAT adding £4 #MEGAGASP......... Didn't click Proceed and bounced away faster than a fat man in a salad shop.

Check the logs, all the same pattern as earlier and the site had the same symptoms: i.e No customer registration email, Company Name left blank, No record of a PayPal transaction.

I understand that ZC cannot calculate the shipping costs until the ZC site has a delivery address. But what I want to do is limit the checkout flow / process of only offering PayPal Express at the **Payment Information **page. Rather than offering the visitor an option of checking out with PayPal without registering/creating an account.

I think there are some switches in the admin that can only allow a checkout while logged in. I shall play.

Mind you, the store owner wants to drop PayPal because of other problems he faces when people attempt to checkout using their own CC onsite via PayPal Pro working in the background.

Cheers
Ray

ray-the-otter:

what I want to do is limit the checkout flow / process of only offering PayPal Express at the **Payment Information **page. Rather than offering the visitor an option of checking out with PayPal without registering/creating an account.
See the "EC Shortcut Button" setting in your ZC's PayPal Express Checkout module settings.