Payment options disappear when $0 option is selected

[gholt]

We've been using CiviEvent for conference registration for a few years now, and I've come across a problem that I've never seen, and I can't find anything like it in the forums. This same set-up worked fine for our event registration last year. We're running 4.4.5 in Drupal 7.

We have an event set up with a price set. On some of the price set items there is a $0 option, like no late fee, or free registration for your spouse. While registering using the live registration form, when we select that $0 option the payment options (PayPal or send a check) disappear. And they don't come back when we select a non-$0 option on another price set item. So we're seeing a $150 "Total fee(s) for this participant", and the payment options don't appear if we have the $0 late fee option selected. The payment options only reappear if you select the $25 late fee option.

We need to require registrants to select an option on the late fee option field so that they will remember to select the appropriate late fee if they are registering past the normal registration time period. So we need a $0 option for that field if they register before the late fee date.

Is this a bug? Or am I configuring something wrong? Any work-arounds?

Thanks in advance.

[joanne]

I can't offer any advice on the disappearance of the payment processor.

However, have you thought about configuring your event using price sets? You would set:

• a price field with your standard fees that expires at the end of the normal registration period
• a price field where the fees where $15 more (ie included the late fee) that doesn't become active until then.

That way registrants are only ever offered the appropriate fee and you don't have to rely on their honesty to select the late fee if it is applicable.

If you want to reinforce that they are being charged $15 because they are late in registering then instead you could configure

• a price field with your standard fees that doesn't expire
• a required price field where the only option is the $15 late fee. This field would be set to become active once the normal registration period has finished.

 

[gholt]

Thanks, Joanne.  Good ideas. We are using a price set, and that would give us some options for the late fee.

Unfortunately, we also have two other price set fields with $0 options:
Registration:  "spouse/significant other registration"
Meal package:  "no meal package"

When I disable the late fee, the $0 option on the meal package causes the same behavior where the payment options disappear and don't come back.

It seems to be more buggy using radio buttons as options. When I do the meal package field as a select field, I can select the $0 option without having the payment options disappear (sometimes even when it causes a zero balance). But I've also noticed that when I select a workshop option for $30 when the balance was previously $0, the payment options don't appear. Ironically, I can fix it by selecting the $0 spouse select option for registration.

I'll have to do some more testing, but it may be possible for me create a workaround by combining your idea for the late fee with the solution of converting radio button fields to select fields.

Thanks again for your response, Joanne.

[gholt]

Even with the work-arounds on the meal package and late fee, it still happens when we select a $0 workshop option. And we can't use the select field option for the workshops because they need to be able to select more than one.

Anyone have an idea of what might be causing this? The only thing I can think of that is different from last year is that we've changed our domain name. Is there something that I might have missed in the configs in changing the domain which would cause this?

[joanne]

The next step would be to see if you can reproduce the problem on our demo site. The drupal site would be the one to start with as you are using drupal http://drupal.demo.civicrm.org/.

If you can reproduce it there then it is a bug and you should create a jira issue for it. If it is a bug perhaps it has been caused by an overzealous solution to https://issues.civicrm.org/jira/browse/CRM-13233 (unlikely I would have thought), so if you do file a bug point to that issue.

[gholt]

Thanks, Joanne. I was able to recreate the problem on the demo site here:
http://drupal.demo.civicrm.org/civicrm/event/register?reset=1&id=8

I'll file a bug report, but you may want to check up on whether I've done it correctly, since it will be my first.

Thanks again.

[joanne]

Thanks for posting the bug report. I have just expanded it a little.

Two things I forgot to say. 

1. Demo is reset every couple of days, so you should include screenshots showing what happens, rather than refer to an event that could be wiped out by the time someone looks at the issue. (I learnt that the hard way.)

2. You should post the issue link back here so that anyone who finds this topic  can find the issue to see how it is going. Issue is https://issues.civicrm.org/jira/browse/CRM-14908.

Also,  I don't know if it happens on your site but on the demo site the problem only appears if the zero option is selected in the first price field.  Perhaps reordering your price fields could give you a work around for now.

[gholt]

Thanks again, Joanne. I'll try to keep those tips in mind when posting future bug reports. (I've made some notes.)

Unfortunately, none of our price set options without a $0 price make sense to go first. Also, in our longer price set, the problem is not isolated to the first field.

[Eileen]

It may be that this fixes? https://github.com/civicrm/civicrm-core/pull/2758/files
https://issues.civicrm.org/jira/browse/CRM-14278

If so it was indeed introduced in the ticket that JoAnne referred to - in this commit https://github.com/civicrm/civicrm-core/commit/5d2ce77ec453a058f359d4c81f6b838cd0897937

[gholt]

The patch referred to here:
https://issues.civicrm.org/jira/browse/CRM-14908
seems to have fixed the problem. We've run several registrations through with different scenarios, and never had the payment options disappear when they should have been there.

Thanks!