Unbelievable shopping cart BUG

[junglei]

Imagine if Amazon had no way to make purchases. That's what is happening in Steam right now.

I created an account (because I can't access the email associated with my old account).
I want to purchase a game, I search for it in the store, click "Add to cart".
I'm sent to an email verification page.
I get the new email, click on the link, go back to see the page change to "email verified".
I Click on "continue", expecting to enter my payment details.

Instead, I'm sent to the steam home page!

There's no link to the shopping cart ANYWHERE on the steam site.

Google tells me "go to steampowered.com/cart".
I get to my cart.

It's empty.

I go search for the game again, and it says that's already on my cart.

WHAT!

[spoof]

if you added it your cart in the steam client it will still show it in the cart there , the email verification opens in a browser.
right top of the steam store if you have something in it.

first world problem just add what you want again no big deal.

I can be logged in in chrome and IE add something to the cart in chrome and it does not transfer to IE or the steam client.

[Wall]

what

[junglei]

I did all in the browser, no Steam client.

Anyway, I managed to go around the bug, and in the process I kind of figured out what the bug is, even though the details should be investigated -and fixed- by the developers.

Turns out I was in a weird "fake-logged-in" state.

It looked like I was logged in, my username showed in the upper right of the steam site. It somehow knew that I had already put the game in my shopping cart.

But I wasn't really fully logged-in. So I logged out (I could do that because I was, in a way, though not completely, logged-in), and logged in again.

This time I had a clearly visible link to my cart, it was empty. I added the game again and this time the normal check-out process continued without issues.

So, Steam devs: look into this, because a first-time user will nope the f..k out of here in no time if this is the user experience they get. I stuck around because I already know Steam is a huge brand and I know that this *has* to work.

[spoof]

the community and the store are seperate logins for the same accounts.

there is nothing wrong with the system as it is.

[junglei]

What does the community have to do with this? I was logged in as a steam user. Just had created the account and I could not make a purchase. No relation to anything else.

[spoof]

there is no fake logged in on steam.

it can be a problem your end I had a similar thing after my provider updated my router.
it would show me loged out after a page refresh and the next page refresh I would be logged in again.

factory reset on the modem/router combo fixed it.

[junglei]

I don't think the router is the problem here. It looks like a mismatch between the session cookie and the server-side state. Once I logged-off and in again, everything works. I think this happened as a result of the email verification page doing something it shouldn't, maybe timing-out server-side because it took I while for me to find the email in my spam folder. But this is for the devs to figure out. I'm happy to provide any info needed.

OSX 10.10
Chrome 41.0.2272.101

[spoof]

what you describe is the rare bug that took me 3 weeks to solve when I see nobody else here post about it.

my ISP made an update that enabled all routers as a public wifi spot and I enabled it.
than i got this problem.

I disabled it and did a factory reset.
steam works fine under normal conditions.

maybe you have something messing or blocking cookies like advanced system care.(macbooster)

[junglei]

My ISP did the same a while ago, but I disabled it as soon as they did it. I also changed the wifi SSID and password, as I always do. I honestly don't think this is the problem. It looks like a very typical mixed logged-in state, a mismatch between front- and back-end.

Anyway, thanks for sticking around and trying to help.

[spoof]

I recomend a factory reset if this keeps bugging you.
I am a market buyer it was mega annoying.

[junglei]

If I see this happening again, I'll try your suggestion. Thanks.

[spoof]

a few page refreshes also works.

[junglei]

I had tried that, didn't work.

[spoof]

it was not always a quick fix for me either.
it was intermittent at its best.

[junglei]

Those are the worst.