Please, P-E! Do something about your terrible shopping cart!

[fjhuerta]

I've posted about this before, but P-E's shopping cart is the worst shopping experience I've ever had anywhere.

This is strange, since I've seen P-E's page go from excellent (although old-fashioned) to terrible. For example, before we didn't have dynamic pages (where you pick a choice and items are filtered on the fly), but I never use it because the feature is so slow. Actually, the entire site is too slow. Checkout is slow, saving a cart is slow, retrieving a cart is slow, filtering items is slow... what used to be something like browsing a Radio Shack catalogue is now an excercise in patience. But I digress.

The last two days I've tried to place an order. I log in, started adding stuff. Then I left the computer for a while, came back... and I'm signed out. I sign in, and see my cart has been emptied. So I add whatever I remember I had, save the cart, and leave the computer. I come back a while later, reload the cart (just in case) and I find out it combined both carts, so now I have two of everything. I manually delete stuff here and there, and add some new things. Oh, and I order 10 3" drivers to the US and I'm told it'll cost $600 S/H. WTH?!?!?! Then, today's morning I come back, and am ready to finish the order, again have to sign in and find out the cart has, again, been wiped. I reload the cart and yep. It's old stuff- I'm missing tons of things. I forgot to save the newest version of the cart, and P-E has wiped it, so I'm back to square 2.

P-E, REALLY???

I'm tired of this thing. It may seem like a small inconvenience, but this is not the way a cart should work. Log in, add your stuff, come back and NEVER be signed out if you choose so, finish your order, have your cart emptied. It has been working like this for far too long, so it's not a system error. It's the way the cart is supposed to behave. Sigh.

I honestly took out everything I remembered Amazon has and got the stuff from there. If I could, I'd just buy everything from there, honestly. I just log in, get my stuff over days or months of thinking about it, check-out, and forget about it. So simple.

My frustration with P-E is not a thing that has happened this week-end - I've just become slowly fed up over time.

Is it just me?

[David Crewe]

Re: Please, P-E! Do something about your terrible shopping cart!

Never had any of these problems. I've had carts open for some time, always correct, in fact they send me reminders that I've left stuff in my cart. The site has always seemed snappy to me even though the main page could be more geard to me as I am there most important client ;)
No complaints,
David

[whitey019]

Re: Please, P-E! Do something about your terrible shopping cart!

I've had similar issues. Funny thing is that if you don't sign in it seems to work just fine.

[fjhuerta]

Re: Please, P-E! Do something about your terrible shopping cart!

I have to leave the house and come back later. I saved my cart just in case. I'll come back in a couple of hours. I'm pretty sure I'll be logged out by then, and I'm curious if my cart will still be.

As for the site being snappy - it hasn't been that way for me since at least 3 years ago, when they started a couple of changes (Specifically to the inductor page, where we used to have a big, large list with every inductor and value there - I loved it, since I used Ctrl-f and picked the inductor I needed pretty fast).

EDIT: Well, what do you know, I'm already logged out....

[fjhuerta]

Re: Please, P-E! Do something about your terrible shopping cart!

I've had similar issues. Funny thing is that if you don't sign in it seems to work just fine.

Hmm. I'm logged out and my cart is complete. I'll try your idea and won't log in until I check out. Thanks!

[Blacktree]

Re: Please, P-E! Do something about your terrible shopping cart!

It isn't just the cart the logs you out automatically. This forum does it too. It's annoying having to log in twice to post a message, once to be able to post, and a second time to submit the post, because you were kicked while typing it.

As for the cart... it's weird. If I'm logged in while shopping, I'll get auto-kicked and the cart will be wiped. But if I'm not logged in while shopping, the contents in the cart will stay there indefinitely. So I got in the habit of waiting to log in until I'm ready to check-out.

[thekorvers]

Re: Please, P-E! Do something about your terrible shopping cart!

I've posted about this before, but P-E's shopping cart is the worst shopping experience I've ever had anywhere.

This is strange, since I've seen P-E's page go from excellent (although old-fashioned) to terrible. For example, before we didn't have dynamic pages (where you pick a choice and items are filtered on the fly), but I never use it because the feature is so slow. Actually, the entire site is too slow. Checkout is slow, saving a cart is slow, retrieving a cart is slow, filtering items is slow... what used to be something like browsing a Radio Shack catalogue is now an excercise in patience. But I digress.

The last two days I've tried to place an order. I log in, started adding stuff. Then I left the computer for a while, came back... and I'm signed out. I sign in, and see my cart has been emptied. So I add whatever I remember I had, save the cart, and leave the computer. I come back a while later, reload the cart (just in case) and I find out it combined both carts, so now I have two of everything. I manually delete stuff here and there, and add some new things. Oh, and I order 10 3" drivers to the US and I'm told it'll cost $600 S/H. WTH?!?!?! Then, today's morning I come back, and am ready to finish the order, again have to sign in and find out the cart has, again, been wiped. I reload the cart and yep. It's old stuff- I'm missing tons of things. I forgot to save the newest version of the cart, and P-E has wiped it, so I'm back to square 2.

P-E, REALLY???

I'm tired of this thing. It may seem like a small inconvenience, but this is not the way a cart should work. Log in, add your stuff, come back and NEVER be signed out if you choose so, finish your order, have your cart emptied. It has been working like this for far too long, so it's not a system error. It's the way the cart is supposed to behave. Sigh.

I honestly took out everything I remembered Amazon has and got the stuff from there. If I could, I'd just buy everything from there, honestly. I just log in, get my stuff over days or months of thinking about it, check-out, and forget about it. So simple.

My frustration with P-E is not a thing that has happened this week-end - I've just become slowly fed up over time.

Is it just me?

No, it is not just you. I hate it as well and probably so do a lot of other people. I still have issues with carts or things from my cart disappearing or ending up with double the items. The procedure is hit and miss at best and incredibly slow! PE has lost sales from me as well.

PE may not like our nagging about this, but they need to be aware of this and take heed or they face lost sales.

There are additional issues with the carts. I posted this in your other thread a while ago:

At the risk of turning this into another nag thread:

Some time ago this was a real problem. Nowadays the contents of my cart seems to return once I log in (so far), but I really miss the wish list. PE responds that we have saved carts now, but I don't like them at all. Once there are a lot of items in carts, they take forever to load (sometimes several minutes, in spite of my high speed connection).

Not only that, but you have to save the cart you want to use right now, activate the cart you want to save the wish list items in, add the items to it and then re-save the cart. Then you have to re-activate the cart you want to use right now. Until the next time you find interesting items and you have to repeat the whole process again. It would not be so bad if you had a choice of which cart to add the interesting items to, but that is not the case. You are restricted only to the active cart. Compare that to just dumping an interesting item in you wish list.

Another problem is the lag of a global remove and update button. Right now you have to remove items or change the quantity of them individually instead of in one fell swoop. This is especially a problem when something goes wrong when swapping carts and you end up with twice the quantity of everything and have to adjust the quantity of each item individually. Extremely cumbersome!

I have tried explaining these tribulations to PE, but it seems to have fallen on deaf ears. So I end up forever playing musical carts and shifting them around, sometimes at a considerable waste of time and I end up getting frustrated and walking away from a purchase. I know for a fact that this process has reduced my purchases from PE to some degree. It may have done so for others.

[abn1701]

Re: Please, P-E! Do something about your terrible shopping cart!

Hi! Javier
How do you pay your orders?
Are you using paypal or your credit card?
Time ago PE refused to accept my credit card because I live outside of U.S.
I live in Mexico too.

[Bob Brines]

Re: Please, P-E! Do something about your terrible shopping cart!

I have no doubt that you guys are having problems, but.

I am never logged out of the forum unless I reboot. I am always logged out of the PE site after an unknown while. I log into the PE site prior to adding items to my cart, and it is always there when I return. Since I am logged in, my billing and shipping info is filled in automatically. If you dare, you could leave a credit card on file and that would still be there.

I seem to remember that there are some restrictions on non-USA purchases. I thought NAFTA was supposed to make purchasing and shipping throughout North America seamless. What a joke that turned out to be!

Bob

[speedle]

Re: Please, P-E! Do something about your terrible shopping cart!

Honestly, I buy everything I can from PE via Amazon. The retail front end just plain works, and they have all my info.

[Face]

Re: Please, P-E! Do something about your terrible shopping cart!

I have no doubt that you guys are having problems, but.

I am never logged out of the forum unless I reboot. I am always logged out of the PE site after an unknown while. I log into the PE site prior to adding items to my cart, and it is always there when I return. Since I am logged in, my billing and shipping info is filled in automatically. If you dare, you could leave a credit card on file and that would still be there.

This is my experience as well.

[fjhuerta]

Re: Please, P-E! Do something about your terrible shopping cart!

Hi! Javier
How do you pay your orders?
Are you using paypal or your credit card?
Time ago PE refused to accept my credit card because I live outside of U.S.
I live in Mexico too.

I haven't paid for anything without Paypal for a while. I think PE hasn't accepted CC from Mexico since 2009, or so!

[Whitneyville1]

Re: Please, P-E! Do something about your terrible shopping cart!

I've had problems (not "issues") with ordering resistors, caps and coils (in the cart) so many times I get almost all of my cross-over components from ERSE. I didn't like the old "check for an inductor, then check the price" set-up, but it didn't erase things while I'm trying to "build" a $99+ order. Free S&H is the major advantage to ordering from P-E for me. That and quantity discounts make the cost difference even-out. The order system is really a pain.
Really, it CAN be fixed. Try Eastman Kodak's or Fujifilm's photo products ordering sites for how an ordering site SHOULD be done.

[Architect7]

Re: Please, P-E! Do something about your terrible shopping cart!

The login issues sound like a browser cookie issue. I have no login issues on my two Windows OS machines, phone and iPad. Make sure cookies are enabled?

[jsr]

Re: Please, P-E! Do something about your terrible shopping cart!

I just never log in. Mainly because I never remember my password no matter how many times I reset it. But it apparently avoids issues such as these. I always check out as guest and things usually go smooth. Occasionally my coupon disappears between final check to order placement and I have to call in to get the coupon applied. That's about it. On the rare occasion I do log in (usually right after I reset my password), all my orders are there because they track via the email address. So as long as I use the same email, my order history is saved which is something I do refer to.