sarah818•25d agoProlific Poster

Vent: Spent 6 weeks trying to fix a Shopify checkout bug myself before finally hiring someone

Thought I could save money by debugging it on my own. Three different support tickets with Shopify got me nowhere. Finally paid a dev $350 and he fixed it in 2 hours. The problem? A javascript conflict with a free theme plugin I installed six months ago. Has anyone else wasted way too much time DIY-ing something that a pro could handle fast?

3 comments

3 Comments

jennifer_jenkins25d ago

Completely hear you on this one. I spent about a month trying to get a contact form to stop breaking on my site. Turned out to be a caching plugin I installed ages ago that was blocking the form from submitting. I kept thinking I was smart enough to figure it out cause I watched a few YouTube videos. Finally caved and paid someone $150 to look at it and they found it in like 20 minutes. Its so frustrating cause you think you're saving money but you're really just wasting your own time. Now if something takes me more than a few hours I just call a pro immediately.

the_lee24d ago

I get where you're coming from, but I actually see it the other way. Spending a month on a problem you eventually paid $150 to fix in 20 minutes sounds like you learned a lot about your site and how caching plugins work. That kind of hands on knowledge sticks with you way longer than paying someone else to figure it out.

miles_garcia25d agoTop Commenter

Uggh that's the worst man. So did the dev actually explain to you why it was happening or did they just fix it and dip? I ask cause I feel like that's the real value - not just getting it fixed but actually understanding what went wrong so you dont repeat the same mistake. I had a similar thing with a slow loading site, paid a guy $200 and he showed me exactly which scripts were conflicting. Now I check for plugin conflicts way more carefully before adding anything new to the backend. But if all you got was a quick fix and no explanation I can totally see how you'd still be left wondering if you could've caught it yourself with more time.