Old Product Still in Cart?

It seems that a couple of customers for one of my ZenCart vendors (using 1.2.7) is having a strange problem. I have a theory that I want to run by everyone - please lend your feedback!

Situation is:

A certain coffee product was recently changed to "out of stock", and with several tests the merchant and we have verified it is not possible to order it from the site. However, a couple of shoppers have reported that this coffee is showing up in their cart and they are not able to delete it at all. Even if they log out and try to order from the beginning, that silly product continues to appear in their cart.

My theory:

They previously added this product to their cart before it was out of stock and it was saved in the cart when they returned. Since it is now out of stock, they are unable to delete it. (Maybe if it was in stock, they could successfully delete it.)

Or) Something is cached in their browser which is not allowing the cart to update?

Do you think I could be right? Or could this be some sort of problem with this particular product?

Any advice is appreciated.

How were the products imported to the database and their status to out-of-stock changed?

Thank you for the quick reply Kim.

Actually I just checked the settings of the coffee product to get a clear idea of how it was updated, and here is the skinny.

This product was originally added through the ZenCart admin, in the traditional catalog updating fashion (not with a db import or anything like that). It was working great a few weeks ago as people were selecting and adding it to the cart.

Then, about 2 weeks ago, the merchant logged into the Admin and changed the product to "Call for Price" (NOT Out of Stock). He chose this because when you select Out of Stock it completely disables and hides the product, and they want people to see that they still offer it but it's just temporarily unavailable.

So yesterday, a shopper tried to order a completely non-related product (completely different product id) and this Coffee product kept showing up in their cart. They tried to delete it and say that could not. I checked their order history and they never ordered this coffee previously, so it's not extremely likely that they chose it.

Then today, he just reported that yet another person successfully ordered the coffee product.....even though it is call for price only. I have run several tests and have not been able to order this coffee....it just directs me to the contact us page.

Is it possible that a cached/bookmarked link is causing this issue?

Yet another customer ordered the product that was marked "call for price". Does anyone know if it is possible for a cached page to be causing this? Whenever I or anyone else I know tests that product, it is impossible to add it to cart (just says "call for price"). I imagine if it were just a bookmarked link that wouldn't matter since the page would dynamically generate to the latest version....but maybe cache?

There was an issue in the past on out of stock products that were in a customer's basket ...

This has been fixed so that if the customers_basket contains products that are no longer available or set to products_status = 0 ... they are pulled from the customers_basket and a message given to the customer that this was done ...

However, I cannot recall if I finished that safety in v1.2.7 or v1.3.x series ... :unsure:

Thank you, Ajeh,

I have a feeling that this particular issue might be related to something else anyway, since there was other strange behavior going on for a couple of the shoppers (products showing up in their cart that they never clicked on), and I discovered that the products were not actually set to "out of stock" but rather "call for price". I suggested that the merchant instead change them to "out of stock" and they no longer are experiencing a problem with new orders.

Ajeh:

There was an issue in the past on out of stock products that were in a customer's basket ...

This has been fixed so that if the customers_basket contains products that are no longer available or set to products_status = 0 ... they are pulled from the customers_basket and a message given to the customer that this was done ...

However, I cannot recall if I finished that safety in v1.2.7 or v1.3.x series ... :unsure: