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Posts Tagged ‘online store’

Being a consultant, I often encounter issues with shopping cart software not functioning properly. Usually a call to support or some code tweaking will resolve the issue rather quickly. Never in my professional life have I seen such a debacle as I have with the aplus.net and pinnacle cart software.

I am posting this blog to inform anyone interested in using aplus.net or pinnacle cart that they should seriously think twice before committing to a company like this.

The issue begins as a client of mine is having problems with Google Checkout not functioning properly on his web-store. He has many open tickets with aplus.net but none of them have been resolved. Some have been open for weeks with no resolution. So, I begin to think that something must be up with this. I get access to the back-end of the cart and start digging around for answers.

I check and re check settings that are claimed to work through this setup with aplus.net. All of the syntax is good, everything checks out but Google Checkout refuses to work. More specifically, it will not calculate shipping on the fly as it is supposed to.

I log into the client’s Google Checkout account to see what I could find on that end. Well, of course Google being the wealth of information that it is, easily directed me to the problem. The problem was the aplus.net server that the client’s site was hosted on was timing out while sending requests to Google Cart. This makes sense to me. Google provides a 3 second window for cart information transfers for security reasons and the aplus.net server is not communicating fast enough with Google Checkout. Excellent, a quick call to aplus.net support should solve this quickly as I have the exact error that is causing this issue.

Not the case at all. After dealing with aplus.net’s so called “technical support” for a few hours and being passed up to a tier two associate the best they could offer me was to submit another support ticket. (Am I not on the phone with support currently? Do they submit the ticket to themselves?).

So, this is beginning to get ridiculous as I begin to feel that no one at aplus.net cares about my client’s store or his business. All they can do is submit another ticket. Well, how many tickets does it take to get a problem solved? They have no answer to this. Every time I call “technical support”, the only answer I can get from aplus.net is “we will have to submit a ticket for you” and once again, that begs the question… am I not on the phone with support? They are trying to get me off the phone because they have no answer to my query.

So, that being the first issue, I figured I would move on to some more issues that my client is having with the site other than the Google Checkout errors. One of which is W3C compliance for xhtml and CSS. I proceed to bounce the site address off of the W3C validation website and get a list of all errors, all of which are easily fixable. So my next step in bringing the site up to code is to fix the errors on the pages themselves. I FTP into the server, locate the page, open it in my favorite text editor (TextMate) and am shocked at the results. Nothing but encrypted garbage! Are you kidding me? I can’t even do something as simple and important as fix html errors on the website to bring it to compliance standards? That’s just ridiculous.

So, I browse over to aplus.net and decide to live chat with a support agent. This is what I got:

You are now chatting with Julia
Julia: Hello, thank you for contacting Technical Support. Please wait one moment while I retrieve your account information.
Julia: Can you please specify your account number and domain name?
BEn: myclientssite.com
Julia: One moment
BEn: I am trying to edit php files to bring the website up to w3c complaiance standards. When I go to edit a php page, all of the information is encrypted.
Julia: Please specify account number
BEn: my cart license? Where do I find my account number?
Julia: We found it.
Julia: I will invite James to assist you
Julia: One sec
BEn: thank you
James has joined the conversation.
Julia has left the conversation.
BEn: hello James
James: Please verify the main account password
BEn: *****************
James: How can I help?
BEn: I am trying to edit php files to bring the website up to w3c compliance standards. When I go to edit a php page, all of the information is encrypted.
BEn: I need to be able to see lines of code
James: Which file specifically?
BEn: /cart/index.php
BEn: I am getting a list of errors on the w3c validator site, but when I attempt to edit the php page, there are a few lines of php at the top, but the rest of the page is encrypted
BEn: I can copy and past what I see if it would help
James: (here James proceeds to paste a few lines of code which I won’t paste here because it will mess up my w3c validation… either way, we all know what code looks like)
James: That is what I see.
James: The rest is encrypted.
BEn: exactly
BEn: and when the validation shows errors on line 115…. well, those lines are all encrypted
James: I am not sure about this. Let me ask a lead. One moment
BEn: thanks
James: Ok, I have your answer.
BEn: ok
James: The only way you get the source files is contacting Pinnacle Cart directly and asking them for their source code.
BEn: that’s ridiculous
James: We don’t have that information either.
BEn: wow… this is extremely disappointing
James: That was directly from my supervisor.
BEn: so… basically you’re telling me that you can’t help me?
James: Correct. Only Pinnacle Cart.
James: can provide the source code.
BEn: I don’t remember signing up for pinnacle cart
BEn: I thought I just signed up with A plus
James: That is the cart that you are using .
BEn: that you guys set up for me correct?
BEn: since this is all on your server?
James: It is a 3rd party application which is offered in the control panel. But we will not provide the source code.
James: Only Pinnacle Cart
BEn: I know, but what I am saying is that I had no choice in the cart software that you provide as a part of your service
BEn: and you can’t provide support for a service that you provide?
BEn: or a service that your clients are forced to use?
James: You can use any 3rd party software. We just won’t provide the support for it.
BEn: Yes, but I don’t recall choosing a cart service. It was set up by aplus
BEn: nor do I recall the option to chose my own cart service
BEn: Just tell me… did I choose this cart service or was it provided by aplus?
James: We don’t “force” any one to use the carts. The carts offered in the control panel are Pinnacle Cart and OS Commerce.
BEn: so…. if I switched to OS commerce, I would be able to edit pages?
James: You can also use your own cart.
James: Checking.
BEn: my own cart? What am I paying for here?
James: Os Commerce is open source.
BEn: can i switch carts in the control panel
BEn: and will it affect any of my current settings?
James: You can install OS Commerce from the control panel. However it’s not a “switch” you have to reupload to the new cart.
BEn: which means a DB dump and restore?
James: You would have to rebuild the cart. This is because the tables are not compatible.
BEn: Wow… I have worked with a lot of different e commerce solutions and have never encountered problems like this. I know it’s not you’re fault James, but this is absolutely
frustrating
BEn: I guess I’ll contact pinnacle
BEn: thanks

That’s supposed to be “technical support”? So, did I contact Pinnacle? NO… I started shopping around for other solutions for my client as I am extremely dissatisfied with aplus.net’s reaction to anything so far. Why do they make you choose from two shopping cart programs, neither of which they provide ANY support for? I have to contact them directly? Is this for real? A company that provides good customer service and technical support would handle this themselves and not pass it off on a PAYING CUSTOMER!

So, let’s re-cap. I have a so-called aplus.net “shopping cart” that advertises it’s compatibility with Google Checkout, and it’s not working. I have a web store that out of the box is not W3C standards compliant and can not fix it due to their encryption of php pages. So, basically my client is stuck paying for a sub-par, partially working web-store provided by aplus.net and pinnacle cart. Isn’t that what everyone wants? A partially working website? Am I missing something here?

Next item in the battle with aplus.net, I get a call from my client telling me that his customers are reporting to him that his shopping cart is down totally! So, now we’ve gone from bad to worse. I log onto the website and try to check my cart… 404 not found! Are you kidding me? Is this another joke? Nope… it is not. This is real life in aplus.net land.

As you can probably imagine, my head is spinning by now. I am baffled by this company and am starting to question the legitimacy of aplus.net all together.

So, yet another call to support. Same run-around, same brainless answers, same “I don’t care” attitude from the “technical support” department and the answer I got? You guessed it: “We will have to submit another ticket for you sir”. At this point I become fed up and proceed to ask the technician (used very lightly) for a corporate phone number so I can get to the bottom of this once and for all.

He provides it without question, I hang up and call immediately. I am greeted by a human which is a surprise and explain my situation. She immediately forwards me to someone that could help me. Much to my chagrin, I am once again face to face (or phone to phone) with someone who cares NOT! I explain my situation again, I must have explained this at least 10 times today. The man on the other end listens, I express my discontent and tell him that this is costing my client money. I speak in paragraphs of detailed explanation to him, pause at the end awaiting a reply and I get silence. I say “hello” and he confirms that he is still on the line with me. I begin to explain in further detail since he obviously has no answers for me, I felt he should know exactly how I was feeling at that point. He then decides to go on the defensive and tell me that I am not letting him speak in turn (me, the customer). Fair enough, I pause and tell him to continue.

Can you believe what he told me? He would have to submit another support ticket!

That was it. I was done. I have spoken with my client and we are coming up with an action plan to move forward with another shopping cart alternative.

I can not believe that a company can exist and succeed in this economy providing service like this. I would not recommend this company to anyone.

So, once again the bottom line is that the store is currently not working at all. I need to get this up and running so my client can start selling product again. I log into the cart admin panel and start digging around. I notice that the url for the 404 error on the cart page is not routing correctly. It is skipping over a directory. Ah, bells are ringing. I go back to the cart control panel and go to shopping cart options and find that the url entered for the store was missing a backslash “/”. Added the backslash to the url, hit save… store is back up!

aplus.net support couldn’t figure this out? They couldn’t even check for me. All they can do is “open another support ticket”.

So, buyer BEWARE with aplus.net
If you are satisfied with a partially working program that doesn’t live up to it’s own expectations, frustrating phone calls to support only to be left with “we need to submit another ticket” then this is the program for you.

If you would like a shopping cart solution that actually works the way it’s supposed to, I would stay as far away from aplus.net and pinnacle as possible.