For those whom sell download products via Google Checkout through Zen Cart...
I've recently observed customers, whom clicked the option "keep my email address confidential" on the GC order page, and then after submitting their order, then clicked the link on GC order complete page to their fetch download, instead end up observing a Zen Cart timeout page (rather than being properly redirected to ZC checkout success page showing a download button, and therefore at the same time auto logged in to Zen Cart account) .
It appears this issue may apply differently to 'returning' customers whom have previously setup an account on the Zen Cart shop using the alias email address assigned by Google Checkout, and to those whom are not hiding their email address.
(as a reminder when a customer choose to hide their true email address, GC generates a new 'alias' email address, and then the mod creates a new Zen Cart account based on this alias at the time an order is submitted via GC. The alias looks like '[email protected]". When customer is redirected to Zen Cart to fetch their download they are automatically logged into that new shop account).
So it appears to me the issue is after submitting a new download order via GC, whenever there is any delay in creating the new ZC account causing the account to not be generated in time before the customer redirects to Zen Cart, the GC mod cannot automatically log in the customer, and instead a timeout page displays.
Then the customer, not remembering they hid their true email address from you, attempts to login to your shop with their true email address, not the alias assigned by Google Checkout. Of course if they never previously setup an account with their true email address they will not be able to login. And if they indeed already have an account with their real address, the brand new download order will not be listed under My Account for that login account. It will only be available via the new account set-up by Google using the alias email address.
I hope I explained this well enough so you can appreciate all the logic required in the mod, dealing with all the login/redirect logic permutations, maintaining state, passing session variables and the like.
And another possibly related issue might be with SSL (the Zen Cart checkout success page displaying the download button should be protected by https).
It is strange as I was not observing these errors previously on the shops I support and only began noticing these occurrences more recently. I hope to do more testing so I can narrow down all the conditions which generates this issue and then hopefully mitigate the problem. If I learn anymore I will post back.
But easiest if I could just disable the ability to keep customer email address confidential. That GC "feature" just ends up creating a customer support bottleneck and makes it more difficult to integrate Google Checkout.
Woody
