Critical Data Integrity Issue

Title:

Critical Data Integrity Issue: Google Listings & Ads Causing Missing Order Items in Lookup Table Description:

We identified a serious data integrity issue affecting WooCommerce order processing, potentially caused by the Google Listings & Ads plugin. Summary of issue

Orders are correctly stored in:

wp_woocommerce_order_items

However, some line items are missing from:

wp_wc_order_product_lookup

This causes:

• Missing products in WooCommerce admin order view
• Incorrect packing lists
• Risk of short-shipping orders
• No error or warning in admin

Evidence 1. Database mismatch confirmed

Example:

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM wp_woocommerce_order_items WHERE order_id = X;
— returns 7

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM wp_wc_order_product_lookup WHERE order_id = X;
— returns 5 2. Scope of issue

• 132 affected orders
• 1,671 missing line items
• Issue spans multiple years and worsens over time

3. Action Scheduler failures

Large number of failed actions tied to GLA:

gla/jobs/update_products/process_item → 650 failures
gla/jobs/resubmit_expiring_products/process_item → multiple failures
gla/jobs/update_merchant_product_statuses → failures

Errors include:

• “Error updating Google product”
• job processing failures
• repeated retries

4. Timing correlation

• Missing lookup rows occur during same periods as heavy GLA failures
• Suggests plugin is interrupting or conflicting with order-related writes

5. WooCommerce behavior

WooCommerce admin UI appears to rely on:

wp_wc_order_product_lookup

When lookup entries are missing:

• Items are not shown in admin
• No fallback to wp_woocommerce_order_items
• No error raised

Mitigation applied

• Disabled:
  • Google Listings & Ads plugin
  • HPOS data sync (was enabled while HPOS disabled)

After disabling:

• No new missing lookup entries observed (pending further testing)

Questions

1. Can GLA background jobs interfere with order creation or analytics lookup writes?
2. Should WooCommerce fallback to wp_woocommerce_order_items if lookup rows are missing?
3. Is there a known issue with:
   • Action Scheduler failures
   • lookup table writes being interrupted
4. Should lookup table writes be transactional or retried?

Impact severity

This is a high severity issue because:

• Silent failure (no admin warning)
• Causes incorrect order fulfillment
• Leads to customer-facing errors (missing products)
• Difficult to detect without direct DB inspection

Suggested improvements

• Add validation between order_items and lookup table
• Add admin warning when mismatch occurs
• Add retry mechanism for lookup writes
• Ensure plugin failures cannot interrupt core data writes

Environment

• WooCommerce 10.4.3
• MariaDB 10.5
• WordPress (Cloudways)
• HPOS disabled, but data sync previously enabled