[ic] cookies and the shopping cart

[Mark Weaver]

Hi all,

This moring I was handed a message sent to head of the sales department 
from a customer who had been on our storefront recently and experienced 
something interesting while attempting to save their shopping cart 
during their visit to Interchange.

As I understand it they wanted to save their cart and do some more 
shopping, however their cookie settings were such that it was not 
possible at the time for them to do this. Apparently they were greeted 
with the following message:

"You must have cookies set to leave the basket. Check out now or forever
lose your shopping cart."

My suspicion is that this is a customer that is using IE6 with SP2 
installed on their Windows XP machine. If this is indeed the case the 
only way for them at the moment to be able to save their cart is to 
change their security settings themselves. To my mind this just isn't a 
viable option. Following is the rest of the message outlining their 
cookie settings:

*******************************
This is the message dispayed when I went to check out. Actually, I 
wanted to add a couple more things to my shopping cart and not check out 
right that second. Your message tells me I'm unable to do so.

My cookie policy is pretty much standard. I block cookies from tracking 
sites (third-party cookies) but allow cookies for personalized services. 
I block third-party cookies that use personal inforamtion from my site 
with my consent. I also block first-cookies that try to use personal 
information from my site without my consent. This is standard practice 
in internet explorer and my firewall. I like my privacy.

It's not the message that needs to be changed although... It's the
cookie policy by your webmaster.
********************************

So, my question is this: is there a better way to approach the cookies 
and their setting so that a tightly configured browser with secure 
settings can still be able to save their shopping carts?

======= Interchange Information =======
RedHat 9.0
Perl 5.8.5 ( compiled with no-threading )
Interchange 5.2 ( foundation )
Mysql 3.23
Perl mods ( all of'em including the kitchen sink! )

-- 
Mark Weaver
American Micro Industries, Inc.
Webmaster/Database Systems Administrator
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