1.4 releases still missing essential functions !!!

[bobbob]

I've been keenly awaiting the arrival of PS 1.4 but it looks like I've been waiting in vain :down:

I appreciate PS 'powers' many online stores, however I can only imagine the struggle and heartache the owners face by using Prestashop. Oh wait, I actually do know, from experience!

I've tried Opencart, Magento, Ubercart and Prestashop. I was shocked to learn Prestashop won the recent open-source awards. It is far from the best!

As someone who runs several online shops, I note the following essential functions are missing:

# The ability to simply create a new customer in the back office
# The ability to create new orders in the back office
# The ability to properly amend existing orders in the back office
# A decent checkout process
# The ability to handle product returns / refunds efficiently

They may seem 'trivial' to the dev team, but I can assure you that when you process hundreds of orders a week, these features are essential. Anyone hoping to run a successful business without them will soon find customers walking away in disgust! Customer service is key to success, and Prestashop fails miserably.

I know there are several paid mods that accomplish some of these functions, but they should be core to the software. When it comes to updates etc, the last thing you need is hassle with modules that should be core processes.

With regards to the checkout process, customers rightly expect guest checkout as the default. The process should also be as streamlined / logical as possible. I refer you to the Ubercart checkout process "link":http://demo.ubercart.org (shockingly bad demo site I admit :bug: ). There are also free mods for the already excellent Magento checkout process (I actually rate PS above Magento overall, just...). And the soon to be released Opencart 1.5 promises to blow them both out of the water. And what does Prestashop 1.4 offer in this regard?

The worst thing however, was that up until very recently, Prestashop couldn't even handle basic arithmetic! Rounding numbers messed up invoices every time! Read: It produced invoices that were not legal!

The crazy thing is, I've spent over £200 on modules to try and get Prestashop to function at the minimal level any e-commerce store should offer out of the box, but now I give up! Opencart 1.5 and Drupal 7 / Commerce are the future of open-source e-commerce !!! What a shame, Prestashop showed so much promise. But if you can't get the basics right...

Sorry for the rant.

Mokijo --> :zip:

[Mav]

I can feel what you are feeling now, but still want to stick to Prestashop 1.4 although it's still in alpha. I like its internal Smarty structure/architecture.

Planning on a reservation cart but no luck so just looked into internal structure and found not hard for me to plugin my own modules and/or hack into its core OOP php/smarty/javascript/xhtml/json/xml codes.

My experience is no out-of-box system can meet your demands exactly even in the case that you hire your own team to code on your own, which is extremely cost-prohibitive even for a public firm, let alone small businesses or startups. However the Smarty Engine structure made your own shop decorations much easier than any other carts and the most important thing is all your projects can be outsourced to a third-party or done by your own programmers, so manageable and thereby cutting total ownership costs significantly almost to the ground zero.

Try to think if you hire a software engineer, how much do you need to pay on a yearly basis? In the States, this kind people you need to pay at least $100K a year. Compared to 200pound you've spent, hiring a professional is way too high. However, no one people can be eligible to do a whole cart package on his/her own at 100,000 lines magnitude, which means if you want to do it by yourself, you may need to hire a decent team spending millions of dollars year after year. The ironical thing is those people you hire will no doubt use the same cart codes and then customize them or add in their own modules, otherwise they cannot finish a very large project like Prestashop in a few months or even in a few years.

Also, the Prestashop team has been working so hard to release version by version extremely fast-paced. Try to think on half a month, they release two versions on 1.4 alpha from 1.4.0.2 on Nov 10 to 1.4.0.3 on Nov 25, at which speed all necessary needs will become normalized in very near future. Prestashop launched in August 2007, but now 1.4.0.3 has been much more full-fledged, faster and optimized.

My 2 cents is to give them time to grow as you grow and just tell them what you need or what is necessary for a shopping cart. Complaints only will not solve anything. I bet if you switch to other carts in production, you'll face other issues as well, more or less.

[bobbob]

Hello Mav,

I get your point. And yes, £200 is cheap. But I could go with "Shopify":https://www.shopify.com/services/signup for the same money and I'd get free hosting!

You're right when you say no cart fits 100% "out of the box". But with all the other carts I mentioned, I could get most of what I need in the base install, and the rest either with free Mods or creative, well documented 'copy pasta'. I guess my main gripe is that the PS team are releasing all sorts of fancy features that actually benefit a very small amount of the user base.

The features I listed are probably essential to 95% of shop owners. I guess the commission they get from the paid modules that do provide these 'essential features' discourages the Dev's from including them in the standard release. Which is a shame. (Mod's / Dev's please correct me if I'm wrong in this regard, I would certainly appreciate clarification!).

I will re-iterate, £200 isn't really the problem. Updating the core and 3rd party mod's is the biggest gripe I have. Not only do you have to contend with the code the dev's are putting out, but you also have to worry about the coding / compatibility of mod's from three or four 3rd party developers. Every time there's an update. For features that should come as standard.

But hey, I haven't donated any money to the core-developers so I think I'll shut up now... :red:

[bobbob]

In the interest of fairness, I guess I should clarify a couple of points...

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1. The ability to simply create a new customer in the back office

You can create a new customer in the back office. But its a very disjointed process. The customer account and the addresses associated with it are in two different admin panes. Still a mute point as you can not then place an order once the customer is created. And no, the super-user mod is not a solution!

3. The ability to properly amend existing orders in the back office

You can can change / amend shipping and billing addresses and you can delete products. You can not ammend the shipping method, change the shipping costs, add products or amend product prices.

5. The ability to handle product returns / refunds efficiently

Most customers who need to return something pick up the phone. All they want to hear is 'send it back in its original packaging with the invoice and we'll refund you as soon as we receive it'. The RMA system does not allow you to do this easily. I'm not sure why they over complicated this supposed feature.

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I apologise if my initial post misled anyone, but my sentiment still stands. Prestashop is a nightmare to use with regards to dealing with customer service. Especially if you have a telephone number customers can call. Which they do. All the bloody time!

[bobbob]

And on an unrelated issue, do the PS dev's even bother looking at the feature request? See "link":http://www.prestashop.com/bug_tracker/view/3304/

[sebastiann]

http://www.prestashop.com/forums/viewreply/339696/

[bobbob]

http://www.prestashop.com/forums/viewreply/339696/

:bug: :wow: :bug:

[bobbob]

Just had word from one of the dev's:

Bruno Lévêque (prestashop team member)

Guest checkout is coming very soon (we are working on it right now!); in order to create orders from the admin panel, you’ve got addons at "addons.prestashop.com":http://addons.prestashop.com

+1 on the guest checkout, but doesn't look like they intend to allow order creation via the back office. I guess the modules that allow this feature are top earners for them ;-P

Still, credit where credit is due, 1.4 seems to be making some half decent strides in the right direction. Mostly...