Wrong data when reïmporting product variants

-- HikaShop version -- : Up to date
-- Joomla version -- : Recent
-- PHP version -- : 5.5.24
-- Browser(s) name and version -- : Multiple browsers
-- Error-message(debug-mod must be tuned on) -- : No error message, only wrong data

Hi, hope you can help us with this problem.

We are in urgent need of suddenly updating a large number of prices a.o. for option variants.

A. We exported the option variants and imported into MS Access, where we changed the prices.
B. We reimported the option variants with the new prices into our test system 123.valkyrie-guitars.com. To our dismay we found that the system had replaced null values and some others with the price of 999.9900.
C. We re-exported the option variants to be able to show you this behaviour.

We made screen prints of the csv and txt files as they opened in excel, to show you the strange changes.
What is happening here, and how can we avoid the system adding fictive 999.9900 prices to our product variants?

Cheers,
Marjoline

P.s.: The *.txt files for A. and C. were actually csv files, I had to change the extension because this form would not let me upload *.csv files.

Hi,

We are going to help you on this one I think. We will update our test environment to the current situation and give you access. My webmaster has discovered that there is significant behaviour difference when reuploading "old-style"-processed variants, which come out just fine, no problem there. But when re-uploading new style variants as created after a recent major Hikashop updat, the trouble begins.

Our webmaster had the impression that perhaps the import/export functionalities for variants have not completely kept up with the new processes around the Hikashop variant functionalities.

We will try to get a suitable test environment available to you tomorrow.

Thanks for looking into it so far for us.

Cheers,
Marjoline

Ok, we have now recreated the site in a test environment that we can let you access, how do we proceed?

We have also encountered another urgent problem, probably associated. If customers order an item that has options (which have the variant choices), it now throws the checkout process into confusion. We want to bill the customers once for the shipment. However, customers are billed separately by the system for the shipping of the products which do not have options, and a second time for the products which do have options, see attached image. So the shipping part of the checkout process is duplicated. How can we ensure that shipping is only charged once to the customer? This is very embarrassing and will definitely cost us customers. It has only come about since we reïmported the new prices for the variant options.

I have now sent in details of the testsite through your contact form. The products which cause the problems are from this series:
123.valkyrie-guitars.com/nl/webshop/category/23-ml-factory.html
and then particularly with those which have options, which is most of the MLFactory guitars. If you order any of those, even without choosing any options, and then you ad anything more, like a can of spray paint, these problems start showing. The MLFactory guitars are the ones for which we had to export and import the data in order to change the prices.

Kind regards,
Marjoline

In reply to the suggestion about mass actions, to my knowledge we have not used that functionality so far. Though looking at it now, it seems a very interesting functionality well worth using. But we will not confuse things by starting to use it right now.