Why isn’t my shop offer working?

An offer that isn’t applying at the checkout, or has quietly stopped showing, almost always comes down to one of a handful of causes. Work through them in this order and you’ll usually find it in the first two.

Working through the usual suspects

1. Check the order of the offers. Open any offer on the item and use the ‘Set offer priority’ link. The shop applies the first offer in the list that fits, so the biggest discount must sit at the top; a small offer above a big one means large orders get the small price. This is the most common cause by a distance.
2. Check the dates. Offers vanish silently when they expire, so a discount that “worked last month” may simply have run out. Extend the end date, years ahead for a standing offer.
3. Check the bands. The quantity ranges must join up without overlapping or leaving gaps: 6 to 25, then 26 to 99. If a number sits in two bands, or in none, the price at the checkout won’t be the one you expect.
4. Offer applying correctly but not showing where you expect? Where an offer appears is decided entirely by what it’s attached to. An offer attached to a category shows on that category’s page and the pages beneath it. An offer attached to a single item shows on that item’s page and on the category page directly above it. Nothing you write in the description changes this.
5. Still not on the page you had in mind? That page needs a Special Offers module on it before any offer can show there. An offer with nowhere to render simply doesn’t appear, even though it’s working perfectly at the checkout.
6. Check what the offer points at. An offer aimed at a whole category applies to every item in that category, which is a surprise when two similar items are meant to have different discounts. If it’s for one item, point it at that item alone.

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Good to know

• There’s no character or symbol you can put in an offer’s description to change where it appears. If you’ve read that somewhere, it isn’t so; use the offer’s scope and the module placement instead.
• Naming every offer after its item (“Luke’s Gospel £3.00 for 6 to 25”) makes the priority list readable, and most of these problems visible at a glance.
• Setting bands up from scratch? The full walkthrough is in how to set up bulk pricing with shop offers.
• If you’ve been through all of these and it’s still misbehaving, raise a support ticket and we’ll look at the offer with you.