wiki/knowledge/ecommerce-strategy/doudlah-farms-duplicate-order-resolution.md · 461 words · 2025-12-12

Duplicate Order Resolution — Doudlah Farms

Overview

In December 2025, Doudlah Farms' WooCommerce store began generating duplicate orders for some customers. The issue was investigated by the development team and resolved through cache clearing and plugin cleanup. Two confirmed duplicate orders were identified and refunded.

Root Cause

The developer was unable to pinpoint a definitive cause but suspected a backend timeout issue — where a slow or stalled checkout response caused the system (or the customer) to resubmit the order. Notably, the duplicate orders did not arrive back-to-back; in at least one case there was a 30–45 minute lag between the two orders, which complicated diagnosis.

Resolution

The developer performed the following remediation steps:

  1. Cleared server-side caches
  2. Deactivated unnecessary plugins that may have been contributing to latency or conflicts
  3. General site cleanup and performance review

Mark Doudlah was scheduled to do a follow-up review of the changes to confirm nothing was missed.

"He cleared some caches, he deactivated some plugins that we didn't really need. He did a lot of cleaning… and he's hoping that that fixes the problem moving forward."
— Karly Oykhman

Affected Orders

Two customers were confirmed to have received duplicate charges and were refunded:

Customer Notes
Courtney Swann Duplicate order; refunded by Karly
G. Medlin (South Carolina) Order #64247; buckwheat flour + organic white popcorn; refunded by Karly

A third order (developer Ishaq) appeared in the system but was likely a test order placed during the investigation.

Alicia Macias — Incorrect Product Expectation

A customer ordered 25 lb yellow cornmeal but called expecting "masa" (a nixtamalized corn product Doudlah Farms does not carry). The order was refunded. No duplicate was involved; this was a customer misunderstanding.

Karen Scribner — MAA Coupon Code Failure

The MAA10 coupon code failed at checkout for this customer. As a goodwill gesture, Jason shipped the order with a free sunflower to compensate for the missed 10% discount. If the customer reorders using the code, the original order will be cancelled and the new one kept — no additional product will be shipped. See [1] for coupon code details.

Monitoring & Follow-Up

Action Items (from this meeting)

Sources

  1. Moms Across America Coupon Code Structure
  2. Index
  3. Ups Shipping Plugin Implementation