coupon restrictions not being applied

V 1.5.1. My webmaster installed so I don't know if it was an upgrade or a new install. I believe I started with 1.3.5

I've been running a monthly coupon on my website valid in 1 category. I had top/DENY; club patterns/ALLOW.

This month I've had 2 customers include product from restricted categories that have had the coupon applied to the ineligible product.

To test, I tried going in and just doing top/DENY, then added 1 item from each category to the cart. The coupon applied to everything in the cart. I went in and denied all categories individually, without top/deny, and the coupon applied to everything. If I deny every category, including top/DENY, then everything is denied, but if I allow 1 category, then all categories are unrestricted.

How can I get it to restrict to the one category?

Go to phpMyAdmin and browse the table:
products

Do all of your Products have master_categories_id set to something other than 0?

On the Discount Coupon you have:
Category Top DENY

When you say you have:
club patterns ALLOW

is that a Category of Products marked as ALLOW or do you mean individual Products are marked as ALLOW?

I'm a babe in the woods on this stuff! I wasn't sure how to access phpMyAdmin, so I searched and found I could do it through cPanel (I'm guessing there is another way to do it directly from Zencart, but...) I was able to check the first 560 of my items, but don't seem to be able to get it to show beyond that (I have about 1500 items). The lowest master product id number that I've seen so far is 5.

This is how I have the restrictions set up:

Coupon ID Coupon Name Category ID Category Name Allow/Deny
33 October 2013 78 Club Patterns Allow
33 October 2013 71 Julies Piano Key Borders* Deny
33 October 2013 65 Build it Your Way Club plan Deny
33 October 2013 79 Other patterns by Laurie* Deny
33 October 2013 70 Dianne's patterns * Deny
33 October 2013 -1 All Categories Deny

The club patterns is a category with sub categories, and then products in the subcategories. Julies is a category with product (no sub categories). Build it is a category with product. Other patterns is a category with subcategories then product in the subcategories. Diannes is a category with subcategories and then products in the subcategories

Is there perhaps an URL where we can see your site so that we can confirm a few things?

ww.itsaquiltthing.com. I'm running a sale at the moment, so the coupon is currently hot valid, but I would still love to get this resolved!

Thanks so much!

Laurie

What happens if you turn off your SEO/re-writes ...

I'm sorry, I don't know what that is or how to do it. (turning off SEO rewrites)

I am afraid I do not know as I do not use things to rewrite the URLs ...

Usually there is a menu choice in the Configuration menu that will refer to "SEO" and a switch to turn it on/off but it would really depend on what SEO/rewite module that you have added to your site ...