price changes not reflected in basket

[keat]

Customer adds an item to his basket, but doesn't yet checkout.

Later in the day, i modify the price of this item.

Customer checks out.

The item in his cart remains the same price as it was when it was added, and doesn't reflect the new price.

 

Is this intentional, or do I have a problem.

[bsmither]

I think that's how the code is written (being intentional or otherwise).

I see it as once the customer has taken the item "off the shelf", the internal "shopping basket" holds on to that price. The customer will always get the cheaper price of: normal retail price, quantity purchase price, group membership price, sale price, any plugin price, then with any options that affect the price.

On the other hand, there is a lot of re-checking of the above prices that happen during every page load. I haven't tested what happens if the customer changes the quantity from one to ten (getting a quantity price), the base price changes, the customer then reduces the quantity to one (going back to the base price), the question is will the customer get the original base price or the new base price.

[keat]

The first day of the year, we have a new catalogue with price increases and some reductions.

These price changes are performed on a mirrored hidden cart.

When we are ready to go live with the new prices, I copy the asscociated database tables from the mirrored cart to the live cart.

 

3 or 4 days later, a customer order came through, but showing the old prices.

I suspect that the customer filled his cart a few days before I copied the tables, then checked out a few days after.

[bsmither]

Other than manually TRUNCATE'ing the CubeCart_sessions table, I do not know of a way to selectively or in bulk to dump anyone/everyone's shopping basket (not the same as a Pending order).

If you feel it is important that the price of an item must be consistent with the current databased values, as opposed to maintaining the understanding that the price will be at checkout what the shelf sticker said it was when placed in the shopping cart (legal requirement in many jurisdictions), I encourage an issue be opened at the Github.

Another apprach would be an operational feature that when the store is taken "offline", that all current shopping baskets be dumped.

Comparing this scenario to Amazon, I have had items in my shopping cart be removed because stock ran out while I was procrastinating, as well as price changes - but was well-informed of what happened and why.