List of £0.00 Culprits

[Bud]

Blocked by me for having just too many £0.00 Items:

elingerie.uk.net
budgetbatteries
burner
mills and boon
spritz
savapoint
inkclub
cdwow
euro pc
maplin
evocal
gifts2drink
partybox
getting personal
efurniture
artgallery
click bathrooms
diysupply
woodline floors
premiere cookware

Also, notable mentions to:

CXlondon for daft pricing.

Boardsportwarehouse for not having a clue.


Add your own or let us know when the offender has sorted things out.

[Bud]

Just to revive this oldie ...

Most of these I'm either not bothered about of have sorted it now, which is good.

Just 2 that would be nice to sort:

elingerie.uk.net - fine apart from not a single price in 476 items.

savapoint - I can now see the £0.00 items are promotional gifts (nice idea) but can it be made clearer in the feed?

Thanks

[amarath]

Nice one Bud, Ill get this over to Ugo to look at on monday.

Thanks!

Amo

[Ugo]

Thankyou for letting me know.

Our account development team are still working on the existing issues in regards to datafeeds displaying these values.

I'll pass these two merchant queries through to them aswell. Best efforts are being made to chase merchants up and ensure that these feeds are tabulated correctly.

As soon as I know more, I'll keep you informed.

Ugo
Support Technician.

[Ugo]

Hi Bud,

One of our account managers's contacting elingerie, with regard to Savapoint at present there is no way to flag promotions/competitions in the feed. Our development informs me that in the next version of ShopWindow zero priced items will not be listed.

Kind Regards

Ugo
Support Technician

[Confuscius]

If zero priced items will not be listed then does this mean that Mobile Phone Contracts will no longer be listed?

Paul

[Adrian]

Hi Paul,

Just to confirm, mobile phone contracts will still be listed. It's still very early in our development for this and we're aware of the potential issues for some products.

We may take the route of asking Mobile Phone companies to provide us with the minimum monthly contract price as a solution to this, but its still yet to be decided.

We will not be removing products as a consequence to this change, but will find solutions to accommodate them.

Cheers,

Adrian
SW Integration & Technical Support

adrian.botelho@digitalwindow.com
www.digitalwindow.com

[Bud]

Another lease of life for this:


There are bound to be more but these are the current ones which I hadn't blocked, until now.

I have only blocked the ones which cause major problems.


Savapoint - still the same so had to block

Premiere cookware 1594 - pointed out long time ago

Europc 1221 - ditto (eg. http://www.shopwindow.com/category.php?c=0&rb=3-1221&sListSort=lo&iListLimit=30)

24Ace 1660 - 400+ items at 0

Rapid Electronics 1799 - 1000's at 0! (shame as have good desc. and images)

DIY Tools 513 - 100's without price or image


************************

Can someone please let me know as these are sorted so I can unblock them, otherwise I won't know!

************************


I've also left these, although there are plenty of 0 price items which need addressing:


DIY Supply 1262 - could be better

Gifts2Drink 798 - ditto

SBR Sports 1491 - 100+ items £0.00 and poor descriptions

Saverstore 1732 - discrepencies in feed and site prices (ie. most £0 items have aprice on site)

The Beauty Room 1818 - 40+ items at 0 and seems to have some problems with pricing on site.

24Studio 1657 - 40+ items at 0

The Digital Camera Company 502 - could be better

Maplin 1256 - 100's at 0, only reason not blocked is a couple of items are selling well. Monitoring.

Door Furniture Direct 1287 - 100+ items at 0, only just not blocked.

Wesfalia 1366 - 50+ at 0


*Updates appreciated*

Thanks

[Confuscius]

I cannot for the life of me understand why DigiWin did not implement some simple rules at the point at which data is supplied from the merchant that goes along the lines of 'if merchant = 1234 and if value = 0 then delete item or not depending on whethr zero itmes are accepted from the merchant' - what peeves me is that the SEs index the zero value items and they make sites look a mess - well at least we will not see this issue in Version 2 when it arrives eventually.

Paul

[Bud]

Apathy rules... apparently...

Merchant 1818 - The Beauty Room.

Still not corrected.

I've had to block them now as I got fed up with their feed making my sites look bad.

[GeorgeGaz]

Hi guys,

We have been looking into this this morning and can conclude as follows:


***Savapoint - £0.00 products are part of a loyalty scheme which pays commission on delivery

***Premiere cookware 1594 - Closing this month, 28th April 2008

***Europc 1221 - £0.00 priced items are sample colours and not products

***24Ace 1660 - £0.00 products are colour swatches or free samples

***Rapid Electronics 1799 - RESOLVED

***DIY Tools 513 - RESOLVED

***DIY Supply 1262 - Feed is disabled

***Gifts2Drink 798 - Feed is disabled

SBR Sports 1491 - Looking into

***Saverstore 1732 - £0.00 products are actually £0 on site and checkout and the store pays commission on delivery

***The Beauty Room 1818 - RESOLVED

***24Studio 1657 - £0.00 products are colour swatches or free samples

***The Digital Camera Company 502 - RESOLVED

***Maplin 1256 - RESOLVED

***Door Furniture Direct 1287 - RESOLVED

***Wesfalia 1366 RESOLVED

***Jewellery TV 512 - RESOLVED



We will update this thread as soon as we know of any advances.

Cheers

[Confuscius]

Thanks to Bud for keeping up the pressure! And to George & Co (aren't they a merchant?) for some positive action!

It crossed my mind that these valid zero item thingies still interfere with lo-high searches and generally disrupt the flow of a site and if I was a merchant then I might be tempted to use a few freebies as a means to getting more visabilty on Shodigifilow sites!

Personally, what I would like to see being considered is the setting up of one or more 'free stuff' categories and merchant being required to put their free stuff into these categories - also a free stuff category might make an interesting home page. Alternatively, ban all free stuff! Now, what is 5% of nothing? Also if I had a free sample sent to me, what is the likelihood that I would return via the same route later to make the purchase, so I reckon that there is a high chance that my cookie will not be the last one. Any views, anyone?

Paul

[james]

Can you add:

Jewellery.tv 512

to that list please.

[GeorgeGaz]

Thanks James,

Have located the error in that feed and have fixed this.
I have contacted the merchant so hopefully this fix will go live in the very near future.

Regards

[Confuscius]

Hi George

What is the progress on the unresolved ones? Also, would it not be better to EXCLUDE free samples / swatches etc ?

The likelihood of someone returning via the same route some days after they have had their free stuff is probably minimal and the free stuff sent probably includes lots of phone numbers, etc. Views, anyone?

Paul

[GeorgeGaz]

Hi Confuscius,

I am in talks with the relevant account managers at the moment regarding these two remaining merchants. We are chasing he merchants in question as I post this in order to hopefully get a response by the end of this week.

As for the point made regarding the free samples, I will raise this with the ShopWindow team and respond in due time.

Cheers

[Bud]

This really is getting beyond a joke now.

Just did a search for MP4.

Result:

mobiles.co.uk had 480 items (all for two phones! The Nokia 5310 & 5610) at £0.00

http://www.shopwindow.com/search.php?c=0&q=mp4&sListSort=lo&iListLimit=10&iListOffset=0

Now I know that they are contract type deals (and hence no price) but this makes an absolute mockery of the order by price low-high.

Blocked (or will be when the interface is back in operation)

[Adrian]

Hi Bud,

The reason for the poor search results on this occasion is due to the fact that SW.com is running a bespoke version of ShopWindow (v1.9). We are aware that there are many problems with this version (not isolated to searching), but as you know we are hoping to move onto the the new v.2 very shortly. ShopWindow.com will also be running v.2 so we're awaiting this transition as a solution. If you try this same search example on your own site you should see much better results...?

Will take a look into the mobiles.co.uk problem raised - thanks :).

Cheers,

Adrian

[Bud]

If you try this same search example on your own site you should see much better results...?


Thanks Adrian, but I also get the same results on my site... that's how I spotted it.

[Confuscius]

Out of interest the Version2 that I am testing returns 985 products for a 'mp4' search across all categories. The first 480 results are all zero price items.

My observation is very simple - I am not buying a phone for nothing but I am entering into, say, an 18 month mobile phone contract which does not cost nothing. Get mobile phone companies to state the FULL cost of the contract over its lifetime, that is the price that should be shown - the cost of the contractual commitment to purchase - after all that is what clicking the BUY button and handing over your card details is going to cost you.

As a flippant example what if I advertised every 50 inch HDTV for nothing as well using the argument that the manufacturer's 2 year warranty costs nothing but to get the warranty for free you need to give me £1000 for the HDTV! Stupid idea or a neat marketing ploy?

Until you find a way to stop these MISLEADING zero price items then I, for one, will make no effort whatsoever to promote mobile phone contracts.

Paul