Intermittent duplicate orders

Hi @frogm

Woo who have looked at the logs and say that it appears to be this plugin that is causing the issue.

Woo support often says that but I have never seen an instance where our plugins caused this kind of issue. Did they offer any specific evidence to support that claim?

What you’re describing usually indicates that there is a 3rd party plugin that’s triggering an error during the checkout process. Navigate to the WooCommerce > Status > Logs page and check if there is a “fatal-error” log file with a timestamp around when that duplicate order occured.

Another possible reason is some plugins like Germanized force WooCommerce to create a new order if certain address fields change. That results in an order that looks almost identical to the previous order but only one is processed.

Kind Regards,

Thanks for your response – there are no fatal errors from that time.

This is what woo said:

This is part of your error log:

[value] => 0.00
[issue] => CANNOT_BE_ZERO_OR_NEGATIVE
[description] => Must be greater than zero. If the currency supports decimals, only two decimal place precision is supported.
[message] => The requested action could not be performed, semantically incorrect, or failed business validation.
[debug_id] => ca667411834a1

Basically, it looks like there’s an issue processing the order due to a 0 value
But the order value was in fact ￡60.?
?
It also looks like you only have the following payment gateway and it is the same one mentioned in the error logs:
Payment Plugins for PayPal WooCommerce: by Payment

I’m not sure why it is trying to process an order for ￡0?

Hi @frogm

The PayPal plugin uses the WooCommerce Cart object to create the PayPal order and it gets the amount using the standard WooCommerce functions. The same functions WooCommerce uses to render the totals on the checkout page.

It also uses the WC_Order object to update the totals. Those values are returning $0 for some reason.

Does the error log entry match up to one of the WooCommerce orders in question?

Kind Regards

Yes – but on other dates it looks like the below – there were 4 actual orders placed on the 19th with two duplicates. This is the log in Woo from your plugin…

2023-04-19T09:00:36+00:00 INFO Webhook received. Event: CHECKOUT.ORDER.APPROVED
2023-04-19T09:01:22+00:00 INFO Webhook received. Event: PAYMENT.CAPTURE.COMPLETED
2023-04-19T10:12:00+00:00 INFO Webhook received. Event: PAYMENT.CAPTURE.COMPLETED
2023-04-19T10:12:27+00:00 INFO Webhook received. Event: CHECKOUT.ORDER.APPROVED
2023-04-19T12:11:51+00:00 INFO Webhook received. Event: CHECKOUT.ORDER.APPROVED
2023-04-19T12:12:02+00:00 INFO Webhook received. Event: PAYMENT.CAPTURE.COMPLETED
2023-04-19T13:08:13+00:00 INFO Webhook received. Event: CHECKOUT.ORDER.APPROVED
2023-04-19T13:08:42+00:00 INFO Webhook received. Event: PAYMENT.CAPTURE.COMPLETED
2023-04-19T20:06:22+00:00 INFO Webhook received. Event: PAYMENT.CAPTURE.REFUNDED
2023-04-19T20:06:26+00:00 INFO Webhook received. Event: PAYMENT.CAPTURE.REFUNDED
2023-04-19T20:07:44+00:00 INFO Webhook received. Event: PAYMENT.CAPTURE.REFUNDED
2023-04-19T20:48:39+00:00 INFO Webhook received. Event: PAYMENT.CAPTURE.COMPLETED
2023-04-19T20:48:50+00:00 INFO Webhook received. Event: CHECKOUT.ORDER.APPROVED

Some customers are actually putting two orders through and paying for them because it looked like the first one didn’t go through. If its helpful one customer who this did happen to described a ‘loading failed’ screen which was faded – this was towards the end of the process of purchasing she thinks…

Hi @frogm

That log doesn’t tell much of the story since those are just entries confirming your webhook is working properly.

If its helpful one customer who this did happen to described a ‘loading failed’ screen which was faded – this was towards the end of the process of purchasing she thinks…

Yes, that is helpful. That usually means you have a 3rd party plugin that’s triggering a Javascript error on your checkout page that interferes with the checkout process.

Please use our contact us page and we can go deeper into the troubleshooting.