My solution so far
Well, I found a way (on my own) to make changes to my product variations "stick." I am on a Mac/ OSX 10.6.8... but my solution should work for any platform so long as you can actually monitor your network activity. Personally I used the software called, Little Snitch, to watch what happened when I clicked on CafeCommerce's green "SAVE VARIATIONS" button.
THAT is when I noticed that even though CafeCommerce appeared to be done with it's "save" (because their web interface gave me back control and their green "SAVE VARIATIONS" button went to black and then back to green again upon moving the cursor) according to the network activity, my computer was still very busy UPLOADING to CafeCommerce. I counted off (in my head) 15-20 seconds of continued network activity with my account on CafeCommerce after I clicked their "SAVE VARIATIONS" button. I am on a relatively fast cable modem connection - so absolutely no issues with my connection.
In any event, I found that if I did absolutely nothing (ie. did not continue to work on my e-store) until AFTER the Little Snitch software told me my computer was no longer communicating with CafeCommerce, THEN any change I made to pricing or otherwise was actually saved.
Seems to me the CafeCommerce web interface should NOT be returning control back to me until AFTER all my variations have indeed been saved. This is a major flaw in this interface for anyone like me who sell products that allow lots and lots of variations.
My products for example have 7 "Groups" and each group offers 2 - 3 options.
This also may or may not explain CafeCommerce's bug of auto-populating my products lists with those hundreds of Variations as individual Products when all I was doing was deleting the Groups. I suspect, there too, if I had NOT repeatedly, quickly, deleted whole Groups as soon as CafeCommerce returned control back to me following it's confirmation screen... but rather, had watched the network activity and WAITED for there to be none before deleting the next Group, then the auto-populating bug would not have shown up.
I share all this in hope it will save others from many hours or days of lost time working with this ecommerce software.
