We have a setup where we use all products for subscriptions to create subscriptions for product bundles.
We sell a subscription usually consisting of two items; insurance and services. These work fine, but we also sell a subscription without insurance, for which we use a product bundle with only our service charge included for consistency. In this case, two subscriptions are created when a customer purchases this product; one for an empty product bundle, and one for the service product. It should be noted that the subscription to the service product is always monthly, while the product bundle subscription has the chosen duration.
We have tried to disable all plugins and themes, and have come to the conclusion with the help from WooCommerce support that this issue only happens when WPML is enabled. I know that this is likely a very niche issue, but I figured it should be reported in any case. We have a workaround that we are testing, which is to replace the variable product for the service with three simple products, and it seems to work for some reason.
See the attached screenshot for how this appears as a test transaction on staging.
I have now provided you with login infomation that can be found at hidden link. To log in, go to staging.bikefinder.com (adding anything else in the URL has a tendency to break the login for some reason).
I did a bit more testing, and have figured out that the problem isn't necessarily due to the WPML plugins being active, but rather it works in the default language (Norwegian), but not in any of the other languages. It should be noted that none of the problems are translated at the moment, as we encountered a lot of issues, and it became quite cumbersome to manage all the products in all the languages.
Here is the screencast of purchasing the product on the Norwegian page (the subscription picker is a bit different, but it is the same product): hidden link
Here is the screencast of purchasing the same product on the UK page: hidden link
For reference, the product can be found at hidden link, and the variable product used in the bundle can be found at hidden link.
After some more testing, it appears that my original theory was correct; that the WPML plugin being active causes the issue. The problem was that I had linked the wrong product to the button (monthly instead of 24 month), which creates one subscription as expected, since the bundled product always ends up with a monthly renewal.
This video shows it working when WPML is not active hidden link.
Compare the subscriptions between one that worked and one that didn't for the default language:
Worked as expected (no WPML plugins active): hidden link
Did not work as expected (WPML plugins active): hidden link + hidden link
Thanks for your reply. This seems to be a compatibility issue, and your setup is quite complex. I’ve prepared a sandbox site for you here hidden link with WPML and WC installed, so could you please install the required plugins and theme there and replicate the issue? Once done, I can check it and escalate it accordingly.
Thanks for getting back to me so soon! I have now installed the essential plugins and created the products the same way we have on our website.
However, I should note that I'm having issues replicating the issue. I have gotten it to the point where the English page allows you to purchase the bundles as expected, but I'm getting a generic critical error on the German page when I try to make a purchase (see screenshot).
Is there a way for me to see the error on a sandbox site like this? It is difficult to know exactly what went wrong without some debug logs.
I don't have time to troubleshoot more today, so I figured I would update you on the state of the sandbox so far.
Thanks for your reply. I've activated the file manager plugin, and this will allow you to access the folders to check for the debug logs. I've also enabled the debugging mode on the site.
From the debug log, it seems like the site is running out of memory. But I figured out that the subscriptions still went through anyway, and they looked like expected (one subscription for the bundle). So I wasn't really able to replicate the issue.
Because of this, I did some more testing on our staging site and found out that it might be another unrelated plugin causing the issue that had not been disabled in our earlier testing for some reason. That plugin is "Smart coupons for WooCommerce Coupons". I tested and found that when it was enabled, a 24 month product bundle turned into two subscriptions - one monthly with the content of the bundle, and one 24 month subscription for the bundle itself. When I just disabled this plugin, it works as expected.
To demonstrate, I tried installing it on the sandbox page, but it seems to break the page somehow when it is active (white screen when going to checkout, 500 error when trying to access the file system with WP File Manager).
Not sure what the way forward is, if I should contact the developers of this plugin, or if we should try to replicate it properly on the sandbox?
Thanks for your reply. It appears that the Smart Coupon plugin you’re using hasn’t been tested for compatibility with WPML. I recommend reaching out to the plugin author to confirm whether it supports WPML.
Thank you for all the help through this process, we really appreciate it!
I will look into replacing the plugin with the one you suggested, it does indeed look like it will fit our requirements. I assume there is no point in troubleshooting this further with you guys, so I'm closing the ticket.
