Why did some customers not receive free gift with their order?
Ideally, all eligible customers should see the free gift offer as expected on your store but there are a few cases where a customer won't receive the gift even if they're eligible for it. This guide explains common reasons why this might happen and how to address then.
The free gift product is in stock
The free gift product is set to Active status
The free gift product is available for sale in the 'Online Store' sales channel
There are 3 possible reasons why an order might not include the free gift -
1. Express checkout options at cart or product page
If a customer proceeds to checkout through the 'Buy Now' or 'Buy with Shop Pay' button on the product page, their order won't get the free gift as intended. This is because Monk runs it's code on the cart step and needs it to load to trigger the logic configured inside the app. The 'Buy Now' button skips the cart entirely resulting in the app's logic not executing. To avoid this, we'd recommend removing the express checkout option from the product page in your theme.
Similarly, if there are any express checkout options at the cart (eg. PayPal, GPay) and a customer uses these to place their order, they might not get the free gift as expected. This is becuase some express checkout options open a payment and checkout flow different from Shopify's checkout. Monk is compatible only with Shopify's checkout and will not work if any third party payment gateways are used.
The app works seamlessly with all payment methods & options (PayPal, GPay, credit card, Apple Pay, COD etc) at checkout.
The above mentioned issues only occur if they're at the product page or cart. Hence we'd recommend keeping simple 'add to cart' and 'checkout' buttons on the pdp and cart respectively and have all payment options available only at checkout
2. Customer removed the gift manually
There is a possibility that a gift was added to a customer’s cart but they removed the gift manually. To ensure that the customer is unable to remove the gift, kindly keep the 'Gift opt-out enabled' setting disabled in your funnel set up on Step 2 under Advanced Configurations.
Keeping this setting disabled will ensure that the gift gets automatically added again in case a customer tries to remove it.
3. Interference from other cart apps
Monk is only compatible with your theme’s native cart and not with any other third party cart app. Hence, if you are using any other third party cart, it could cause some interference with Monk’s code causing the gift to not add at all. Such cross app interferences cannot be fixed from our end as there is no data sharing between the two apps.
4. Slow or unstable internet connection
In some cases, a customer might be on a slow or patchy internet connection or is using a slow device which can cause the entire website to load slow. Monk loads after your entire theme code has loaded (to avoid performance issues) & hence a slow network can cause issues with Monk running its code. Such issues are likely to arise for 1-2% of all eligible orders. If you notice any increase in the frequency of such orders, please contact our support team via live chat/email and we can investigate further.
If you're still unsure of why this might be happening for your customers, please reach out to us via chat support or write to us at support@monkcommerce.com and share the order IDs where you see the issue, we'll look at the detailed buying journey of each order to identify potential root causes.
Before investigating further, please ensure the following settings are correct for the Free Gift product in ‘Products’ section of the Shopify dashboard:
The free gift product is in stock
The free gift product is set to Active status
The free gift product is available for sale in the 'Online Store' sales channel
There are 3 possible reasons why an order might not include the free gift -
1. Express checkout options at cart or product page
If a customer proceeds to checkout through the 'Buy Now' or 'Buy with Shop Pay' button on the product page, their order won't get the free gift as intended. This is because Monk runs it's code on the cart step and needs it to load to trigger the logic configured inside the app. The 'Buy Now' button skips the cart entirely resulting in the app's logic not executing. To avoid this, we'd recommend removing the express checkout option from the product page in your theme.
Similarly, if there are any express checkout options at the cart (eg. PayPal, GPay) and a customer uses these to place their order, they might not get the free gift as expected. This is becuase some express checkout options open a payment and checkout flow different from Shopify's checkout. Monk is compatible only with Shopify's checkout and will not work if any third party payment gateways are used.
The app works seamlessly with all payment methods & options (PayPal, GPay, credit card, Apple Pay, COD etc) at checkout.
The above mentioned issues only occur if they're at the product page or cart. Hence we'd recommend keeping simple 'add to cart' and 'checkout' buttons on the pdp and cart respectively and have all payment options available only at checkout
2. Customer removed the gift manually
There is a possibility that a gift was added to a customer’s cart but they removed the gift manually. To ensure that the customer is unable to remove the gift, kindly keep the 'Gift opt-out enabled' setting disabled in your funnel set up on Step 2 under Advanced Configurations.
Keeping this setting disabled will ensure that the gift gets automatically added again in case a customer tries to remove it.
3. Interference from other cart apps
Monk is only compatible with your theme’s native cart and not with any other third party cart app. Hence, if you are using any other third party cart, it could cause some interference with Monk’s code causing the gift to not add at all. Such cross app interferences cannot be fixed from our end as there is no data sharing between the two apps.
4. Slow or unstable internet connection
In some cases, a customer might be on a slow or patchy internet connection or is using a slow device which can cause the entire website to load slow. Monk loads after your entire theme code has loaded (to avoid performance issues) & hence a slow network can cause issues with Monk running its code. Such issues are likely to arise for 1-2% of all eligible orders. If you notice any increase in the frequency of such orders, please contact our support team via live chat/email and we can investigate further.
If you're still unsure of why this might be happening for your customers, please reach out to us via chat support or write to us at support@monkcommerce.com and share the order IDs where you see the issue, we'll look at the detailed buying journey of each order to identify potential root causes.
Updated on: 13/06/2025