Covering up broken fix

Hello @simonkane,

Please allow me to try to clarify this matter.

Our plugin was last updated on July 27 at 08:13:00 PM (version 3.4.0). You added your opinion on July 27 at 2:26 PM. This means that you were unable to download the latest update. The previous update was released on June 20, and we have no reports from people regarding issues after the update.

We also checked, and we don’t have any threads in the support forum written by you.

Please tell me, how did you try to contact us? What is your problem – how could we help you? We really care about helping our plugin users. I hope we can make contact and reach an agreement. I will be grateful for any information that will help to clarify this matter.

Best,
Mateusz

IF you had decided to split off my directly related continuation of the issue that you had rather quickly closed (1 week) WITHOUT any actual resolution (and I suspect no reply from the OP because of your first reply of “we changed stuff without warning, so you have to change stuff, even though what we changed makes it so you can’t fix it”), and an apparent lack of understanding of the actual issue (which I put a decent amount of effort into composing – and which you have thrown away), OR if you had at least mentioned that there was a fix in process, things would have gone much smoother.

https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/need-help-problem-occurrs-after-updated-to-the-latest-version/?view=all#post-15866272

But you didn’t. And I was at the current (as of that time) version (3.3). Not being a mind-reader, I didn’t know you were releasing another version – that still doesn’t fix the issue) And your fixes (3.3 or 3.4) do not mention shipping_phone at all.

And, of course, now that I installed 3.4 (fortunately only on a test system), a NEW set of problems was created ( Notice: Undefined index: class in ……/wp-content/plugins/flexible-checkout-fields/src/Settings/Option/CssOption.php on line 63), and the original issue remains – and may have even gotten worse (the metanames got changed – but after the several hours I’ve already put into this problem, I don’t remember why those fields got there — but do know that “Reset Section” doesn’t.

You get the idea why you would get zero stars if I could give it?

Thanks for your answer @simonkane,

From what I can see you got the information from my friend who replied to you. The problem was that the field name you created was WooCommerce reserved and could not be used. In response to your message, you received information on how to solve this problem.

We investigated your case, we managed to repeat this problem in the test environment and we found a solution to the problem that we informed you about. Simply put, WooCommerce blocks the possibility of creating a field called shipping_phone and if you have such a field, you need to rename it. There is no other solution.

The topic has been closed, as we have not received a reply from you for a week. It happens very often that someone adds a thread on the help forum, we will reply to such a person and such person no longer responds. This is the case in most cases. Believe me, for us as tech support, this is very flustering and demotivating. You try to help others and most ignore you and won’t even answer.

Therefore, if we consider that our answer solves the problem and someone does not answer for a week, the thread is considered resolved.

Then we released an update that prevents the creation of such a field name (shipping_phone) in the future, so that no one else will experience this problem again. We didn’t include information about it in the changelog, because this change doesn’t apply to people like you who have already used this reserved field name. We make a lot of changes to the plugin and we don’t list every smallest change because then these important changes would be hidden among many others.

You now report the error after updating. The file you mentioned has not been modified by us for 6 months. Here is a screenshot from our repository:
https://i.imgur.com/TyOiUhp.png

I assume you didn’t just update our plugin, but for example all the plugins you have. Of course, I can only guess, but believe me, I have many years of experience in operating various websites. What I am writing does not result from my malice but from my experience. Very often people say that the bug occurred after the update, but fail to mention that they did a few other things on the occasion. And this information is very important in order to properly diagnose the source of the problem.

The error you mentioned informs that some field does not have the “class” attribute – this attribute is added for all WooCommerce fields and for all fields generated by our plugin. Probably this issue is with a field added by another plugin.

Of course, we will be happy to help you in this matter. Where does this error appear, at what point? We need more information to be able to investigate this thoroughly. We have not encountered such a problem, and as I mentioned, this file has not been changed for half a year. The plugin is used by over 70,000 users, so if there was a bug, we would know it. In your case, this has happened in a very unique situation and that is what we need to investigate.

In this situation, I ask you to add a thread on the support forum and write exactly what I asked about earlier.

WordPress and WooCommerce is a very complex mechanism. Many plugins are often used, in different configurations. They are dependent on each other and a mistake in one plug does not always mean the fault of that plugin. Sometimes it happens that another plugin did something strange, e.g. doing something inconsistent with the WooCommerce documentation, and in another plugin an error appears. And this plugin just works as WooCommerce works. You only see the error message, but the real source of the problem is different.

In this situation, I can help you, but you need cooperation from both sides.

I am asking you for your understanding – we give you a plugin and try to help every user. Please also try to treat us with mutual respect. I have a feeling that you are very upset and angry with us. This will not help us to help you, and there are no bad intentions on our part. We spend hundreds of hours developing plugins and providing technical support to people who use our plugins. None of us ever ignores anyone.

You get a plugin from us, you got a reply from us with instructions and you stopped responding to this thread. We closed that topic, and now you rate our plugin with one star – why? Please tell me, what can we do better to make you satisfied?

Best,
Mateusz

You have me confused with the referenced thread’s OP, and I mentioned that I was not, and that there is no record of me BECAUSE YOU (WPDESK) DELETED IT).
Like most “modern” customer support, you maintain no continuity of any kind.
f O had done this in my nearly 50 years of technical support I would’ve been fired. In fact, I have had to discipline team members for doing exactly what your associate did.

If you had NOT deleted it, you would have found that I was following on the ball YOU dropped when you gave an incomplete answer, that would cause extreme and unnecessary disruption to the OP’s – and my – site.

In short, I used YOUR plugin to create the shipping_phone field long before Woo (finally and rightfully) made it an “official” field. Then when they did this, your code blew up, and your “fix” made it worse. There is now no difference between shipping_phone and shipping_city (etc.) BUT YOUR CODE IS BLOCKING USE OF IT.

“Probably this issue is with a field added by another plugin.” Of course –
the plugin’s name is WooCommerce. Maybe you’ve heard of it.

Maybe they are not following your rules of detecting a “WooComemrce Default Field”.
You might want to take that up with them.

@simonkane Please tell me who and when deleted some of your messages?

You’re talking about our code blew up after WooCommerce blocked the use of the shipping_phone field. This is not true – you only received a warning in the debug.log. This is not even an error, much less a fatal error.

Why do you think our amendment has made the situation even worse?

“the plugin’s name is WooCommerce. Maybe you’ve heard of it.” – maybe instead of attacking me you will tell me which field has no “class” value, you know that?

If not, then maybe let us check it out and find out. Many plugins add their own fields to the Billing or Shipping section. This is done by shipping plugins, invoice plugins. If we do not find out what this field is, we will not find a solution.

Best,
Mateusz

Moderator note: No plugin author can delete messages.

The message you cited was removed by a moderator and you should have received this via email:

@simonkane I have removed your comment in this thread (and will remove this response from me, too). If you have a problem with this plugin, please start your own thread instead. https://www.ads-software.com/support/plugin/flexible-checkout-fields/?view=all#new-topic-0

Hello @simonkane,

Please tell me, did you have the opportunity to read my answer and what the moderator wrote?

I’ll just add that the support forum is not our service – it’s a WordPress public forum. Me and my coworkers who are developing our plugin are regular users here. We cannot moderate responses in this forum – this is what the WordPress team modders do. We have no influence on their work.

I would be very grateful for the opportunity to clarify this issue in full. I have a feeling that we have not fully understood each other so far and that hence some difficulties arise.

Best,
Mateusz