Subscriptions - not possible to remove a subscriber.

[maciejpilarski]

Impacted plugin

Jetpack

Quick summary

Site: goolawahmembers.com

The user would like to remove one of the subscribers 'tonyandlouadventures' from their Subscribers list - https://wordpress.com/subscribers/

Steps to reproduce

1. Navigate to https://wordpress.com/subscribers/ and search for the subscriber 'tonyandlouadventures'.
   The subscriber is not displayed.
2. Search manually for that subscriber, they will be displayed on the 8th page (page=8) of the subscribers list.
3. Click on the ... and select the 'Remove' option - nothing happens.
4. Go to the details of that subscriber and select the 'Remove' option - nothing happens.

A clear and concise description of what you expected to happen.

No response

What actually happened

Nothing happens when the 'Remove' option is selected.
The search does not work and allow to find the affected subscriber.

Impact

One

Available workarounds?

No and the platform is unusable

If the above answer is "Yes...", outline the workaround.

No response

Platform (Simple and/or Atomic)

Simple

Logs or notes

No response

[maciejpilarski]

9241993-zen

[jeherve]

I cannot seem to be able to reproduce on a test site of mine ; the problem may be limited to that one subscriber on that one site. For now I've deleted the subscriber mentioned above myself. I'll close this issue, and we can reopen in the future if it happens again.

[github-actions]

Support References

This comment is automatically generated. Please do not edit it.

• 9241993-zen
• 9217399-zen
• 9266819-zen
• 9271127-zen

[arthur791004]

@jeherve Thanks for looking this issue 👍

One issue I found is we don't support searching by displayname for the email subscribers. I'm not familiar with it but maybe it's weird that the email subscrbiers have the displayname (I cannot check whether tonyandlouadventures is an email subscribers again).

[msilbers]

We have another report of this in 9217399-zen
I can reproduce it on their account, for the user Emilcar. Customer is unable to remove a subscriber with the same steps in the original issue.

[arthur791004]

I can see the following error when I'm trying to add or remove a subscriber

• To add: You can not add more subscribers on your current plan - The user has imported 100 subscribers, and it's the max number on the free plan.
• To delete: That user is not found to be following this blog.

In addition, I cannot search the user by the displayed email as it's different from the data of email subscribers

[arthur791004]

I found the user unsubscribed from the blog on Dec 27, 2024, so that's the reason why the user is not found to be following this blog. However, the user is still listed as an email subscriber, and that's the owner cannot remove the user.

[arthur791004]

@jeherve I proposed Automattic/wp-calypso#98066 to remove the subscriber from both followers and email followers to resolve the 9217399-zd-a8c. It's just a quick fix and it would be better if we could fix it by the endpoint. What do you think?

In addition, the search functionality seems a little buggy as

1. I cannot search the email followers by the display name
2. The email of the email followers may be different from the email on their wpcom accounts.

Maybe both of above are related to the issue that the subscribers are removed from the followers but are kept in the email followers 🤔

[jeherve]

It's just a quick fix and it would be better if we could fix it by the endpoint. What do you think?

At first it made sense to me to remove them from everywhere at once, and from the endpoint directly so there is no need for the extra logic in Calypso (or elsewhere).

That said, I cannot find any extra info about the need for the 2 endpoints in the first place, beyond p42NdW-1hb-p2#comment-4886

@lezama Do you by chance recall why the 2 endpoints were necessary at the time? Is there any reason one would want to delete a follower from one list, but not from the other?

[lezama]

Do you by chance recall why the 2 endpoints were necessary at the time?

Not sure, but I assume we use the individual endpoints in other clients/UI for cases where you might want to receive post notifications on mobile without following by email, or vice versa, for example?

[msilbers]

I've let my customer in particular know about this part:

To add: You can not add more subscribers on your current plan - The user has imported 100 subscribers, and it's the max number on the free plan.

And what the issue is with the deleted/unsubscribed user. Just an FYI that we don't necessarily need to notify them again

[jaredrethman]

We have another report of this on 9266819-zen
The customer has unsuccessfully tried to delete a Jetpack > Subscriber, through testing I can confirm this behavior.

[arcangelini]

@jaredrethman I have resolved the issue with 9266819-zd feel free to update them.

I tested and approved the PR that @arthur791004 drafted up because it resolves the issue in an acceptable manner for now. It fixed the issue on the ticket I mentioned above and if nothing else is probably a good catch we should have either way.

[jaredrethman]

Thank you @arcangelini , I have updated customer and confirmed Subscriber is longer displayed!

[msilbers]

we have another case of this in 9271127-zen

[arcangelini]

This should be fixed. We have tested this for a few different users. If you are still seeing this issue please feel free to submit a new issue here ⇢ https://github.com/Automattic/loop/issues/new?template=newsletter---issue.yaml