paypal keeps losing shopping cart

[CBGG1]

Hello,

I run a little website (www.greatergoods.co.uk) with Paypal as the only option for paying. I am being contacted by customers who are saying that when they click 'add to cart' a new browser pages opens up with Paypal and adds the item to the cart ( so far so good). When they go back to the website and add another item however, this item does not get added to the cart that is already there, but Paypal opens another window and starts a new cart. So it seems to forget that this customer already has a product in their shopping trolley.
This does not happen to all customers, some are ordering without any problem. I gather that it has something to do with cookies and possibly with the server, but I would love to hear from anyone who can shine some more light onto this. Many thanks, Christine

[MTS_Chiranjeevi]

Hi @CBGG1,

Thank you for contacting PayPal community.

Our sincere apologies for the inconvenience caused.

I have tried to reproduce the issue via your website - http://www.greatergoods.co.uk/ and could able to add multiple products using "add-to-cart" button and even able to view the items by clicking on "view cart" button without any issues.

Please find the below snapshots for reference.

PayPal buttons flow working fine without any issues.

Thank you for understanding and patience.

Sincerely,
Chiranjeevi

PayPal, Inc.

If this post or any other was helpful, please enrich the community by giving kudos or accepting it as a solution.

[Meanteam]

I am writing on behalf of my client who is also experiencing this problem, receiving complaints from customers as of a few days ago. I suspect the person above who tested the original posters site already had a full compliment of PayPal cookies on their machine. I believe this directly relates to the new blue accept cookies banner which appears at the foot of the PayPal shopping cart page. When adding products now from my client's site (www.travellingbee.co.uk), one of three things will happen. If they have visited before and already have PayPal cookies then they will likely be able to add multiple products just fine. If they are a new customer they will see the blue accept cookies banner. If they choose to accept, PayPal appears to forget the product just added so that if they add something else, the first product is missing from the cart. Depending on their device/browser, they will either now be able to add further products (and have to re-add the first missing one) or they will only ever be able to add a single product with the cart contents being lost each time they return to the client website. Testing with Chrome on an iPad as a brand new customer I can only ever add a single item to the cart. Using DuckDuckGo on the same iPad and only the first product is lost but subsequent products are added correctly. The latter is also true using Firefox on Windows 10. The website has been in operation for six years using the same PayPal buttons generated from the PayPal website at that time. Nothing has changed on the client's website to cause this so can only be related to the PayPal handling of cookies or the implementation of the EU cookie law/GDPR cookie banner. This is likely to be affecting other sites using the standard HTML buttons but can only really be tested by completely clearing your cookies first or using a fresh device/browser. Any advice would be appreciated.

[CBGG1]

Hello, it seems that Paypal is leaving it to us to sort this out!. I have been looking into the problem a bit more and somewhere ( I did not make note of which forum it was) someone suggested that it could be a server issue, something to do with PHP. I have no idea how to resolve that, but maybe you do. Let me know if you have any success in getting to the bottom of the problem. Christine

[CBGG1]

Hi Chris,

I just want you to let you know that we have found the solution to the problem that we were having with Paypal not retaining the shopping cart. It was indeed a server issue and came about in a rather longwinded way; we run two webshops from our website, one at www.greatergoods.co.uk and one on a subdirectory of that site. That was working well untill we introduced a security certificate some time ago. This meant that folks landing on the subdirectory based shop were automatically directed to the www.greatergoods.co.uk site, which was not satisfactory. My ISP then tried to create a workaround around this problem, I am not sure about the details of that, which in the end did not work, and we ended up removing the security certificate so that both shops would continue to work independently. He did not however remove the workaround and that was what caused the problem. We have now separated the two webshops onto different domains and added security certs to both, and all seems to be running smoothly. I hope that this helps you to solve your problem. One thing I have learned though is how useless Paypal technical support is! Good luck, I hope you'll find the problem soon, Christine

[Meanteam]

Hi Christine. Thanks very much for taking the time to update this thread. I hate to be the bearer of bad news though but the issue is still not resolved. I've just tested your website and the problem remains. I added one of your products to my basket in order to show the PayPal page and then when on the PayPal cart page I cleared all cookies related to PayPal. I returned to your shop and added a product. This showed up in the cart correctly. I continued shopping and added a second product and as before only the second product remained. Existing customers and likely PayPal support are not seeing this issue because they already have the cookies in their browser. Only by clearing the cookies so that when you first arrive on the PayPal cart page does the blue cookie banner appear at the bottom, can you be sure of simulating the experience for a brand new customer. I've not tried your site on iOS again yet but will do tomorrow. I suspect as before I'll only be able to add a single item to the cart whereas at least with other devices it's only the first product which goes missing. I would be surprised if it was a server issue especially as I tested the first few sites in a Google search last week where they all used PayPal buttons and they all had the same problem. PayPal support have come back to my client and asked for a video of the problem so hopefully that will convince them. I'm sure the blue cookie notification banner on the cart page is reasonably new and it's a bug in that that is preventing proper operation. I'll update this thread with any more findings. Cheers, Chris

[CBGG1]

Hi Chiranjeevi,
Thank you for your reply. It confirms that for some people, the system works fine. My point is that for others, it does not. I have noticed that another poster has posted with the same problem, and they have given a more detailed explanation of the issue. Could you please clarify why there sometimes is a problem and how we can remedy this. The time you take to look into this is much appreciated. Christine

[Meanteam]

Hi. I've just tried your site (www.greatergoods.co.uk) and the problem remains. Using Windows 10 and Chrome with no prior PayPal cookies, I accepted the PayPal cookies on the cart page but upon adding a second item to the cart the first had disappeared. My client has been back to PayPal a couple of times now and they appear not to be listening properly as is clear from their responses. Today they answered that a user must accept the PayPal cookies for the cart to operate properly. We know this! The customers are accepting cookies on the PayPal page and yet still they are not reliably able to add products to the cart. This is especially bad with iOS where you can only ever add a single item. At least with other devices/browsers it only loses the very first item. PayPal appears not to want to admit this problem or test it properly. All they have to do is clear all of their PayPal cookies and try adding products from your site. I suspect this is impacting any website using these buttons but because the owners already have the cookies on their machine they aren't noticing the problem. Until such time PayPal admit there is a problem or offer advice how to resolve it I've had to suggest to my client that we add a notice to their shop page to acknowledge shopping cart problems and to advise that excess postage will be refunded. Hardly ideal.

[CBGG1]

Hi, thank you for your message. What baffles me is that not more websites are affected by this and contacting Paypal about it. That makes me think that it may actually be a local problem. What do you think of the suggestion I read somewhere that it has to do with a php problem on the server? Christine

[Meanteam]

Hi Christine. I don't believe it is a local problem. I just did a Google search for UK shop PayPal view cart. I then clicked on one of the first websites in the results that looked like it may be a shop rather than telling you how to implement the buttons. This was "The RRC - River Restoration Centre". I cleared my PayPal cookies and on their site exactly the same issue was present - first item lost when adding further items. I've emailed to let them know. Only if others start noticing the problem and reporting it to PayPal will it likely be investigated properly and resolved. Could I ask that if you've not already contacted PayPal support directly in addition to posting on here that you perhaps do that so that hopefully the numbers affected start to ring alarm bells. I intend to look for other affected sites (all of them using HTML buttons?) and notify them. Cheers, Chris