Customer login difficulties

[datasmog]

I see from a search of these forums that this is a common problem, and as far as I can see there is no definitive solution. I stand to be corrected if I missed it.

One shop I administer gets at least 2 phone calls a day from frustrated potential customers and some existing customers, either unable to login to their accounts or unable to process an order. They either get shunted back to the login page or back to the index page. Subsequent repeated attempts to login fail with the same results.

And yet, given the customers email address and password I can log into their account successfully.

 

This also happens to people who forget their password and request a new one after trying an incorrect password first. They immediately try to login again with the new password, and fail.

 

I ran some tests this evening and while I admit this may not be news to some people, it may help others.

This appears to be a session cookie problem. The cookie is remembering the incorrect details.

 

When this happens, the simplest solution is to navigate away from the site which kills the session cookie, and then come back, setting up a new session. You can then login successfully, assuming you input the correct details.

 

This seems to happen when details are input incorrectly into either the login page, or the checkout payment page, where incorrect credit card details will cause this to happen. I would have hoped that would simply result in an error message, but it doesn't for me.

Maybe one of the contributions we have installed is causing these problems, but I have no idea which one.

 

I've put some additional words onto both the login and payment pages to hopefully help anyone who finds themselves locked out. We'll see if the phone calls stop.

 

But it's not an ideal solution. Forcing people to leave your site in order to buy from you is a teensy bit counter productive.