A bad case of excessive wind!

[Confuscius]

Consider the following item ( one amongst many and used for illustrative purposes in an attempt to put the wind up someone at DigiWin ) :

http://www.shopwindow.com/product.php?p=30682645

You can also look at the related products at the bottom of the page.

To cut a long story short, a green minded friend of mine has been looking to grind out a bargain on not the normal run of the mill type of product - click the visit store link and it ain't quite free BUT the point is that he was breezing through one of MY websites and found this. He was just wondering how I would react if he wrote to the nice friendly local Trading Standards people telling them that he would ask me to supply the product at the price quoted on my website which, in my opinion, would make an intersting test case as all Shop Window users are falsely advertising this item as a free item, the price acting as 'price bait' to get him to the merchant website.

When will DigiWin realise that zero priced items in the product feed that lead to a HIGHER actual price are a clear breach of the recent 'Rogue Trader' legislation changes and that a storm is brewing?

Perhaps, someone at DigiWin would be kind enough to draft the email with some gusto that could be sent to future complainants who may huff and puff more than my friend.

Blow me down.

Paul

PS .... and I didn't even mention the freephone phone number on the landing page! I must have gone from bellowing to mellowing!

[authcode]

My take on this subject has always been that we, as affiliates, are not retailers, and are merely information providers and that information, in any medium, is subject to errors, typos and changes. Take this example from Kelkoo (Yahoo!):

YAHOO! MAKES NO WARRANTY OR REPRESENTATION THAT (i) THE SERVICE WILL MEET YOUR REQUIREMENTS, (ii) THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, TIMELY, SECURE, OR ERROR-FREE, (iii) THE RESULTS THAT MAY BE OBTAINED FROM THE USE OF THE SERVICE WIL L BE ACCURATE OR RELIABLE, (iv) THE QUALITY OF ANY PRODUCTS, SERVICES, INFORMATION, OR OTHER MATERIAL PURCHASED OR OBTA INED BY YOU THROUGH THE SERVICE WILL MEET YOUR EXPECTATIONS, AND (V) ANY ERRORS IN THE SOFTWARE WILL BE CORRECTED.

As far as I'm concerned I'm not advertising anything because I have nothing for sale, and by extension cannot be falsely advertising either. I'm just providing an information service that might not be 100% accurate.

Of course, this is all my opinion, I have no idea what the exact legal implications are but I'd be suprised if the law required all information on the internet to be 100% accurate all of the time. Merchants, on the otherhand, if the datafeed is considered a form of advertising, might be in trouble for intentionally adding misleading prices, but I'm still fairly sure there'll have similar E&OE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E&OE) clauses in their T&Cs.

I would like a definitive answer from AW though. They're more likely to have laywers that know about this than we do.

[Andy]

Forgive me for siding with the merchants and networks in the following sentences:

There's always a chance that "0.00" is a default in the DB row. Infact thinking about it, there needs to be a default on a 'double' field.
If the merchants are accidentally adding invalid characters in the 'amount' field, then MySQL (Im assuming MySQL) would automatically default the 'amount' field to "0.00"

I've started giving the benefit of the doubt on all SW related issues. new merchants can't possibly be up to speed with the does and don'ts, Old merchants have less excuse, but accidents happen.

Right, that's the last time I'm siding with the merchants and networks!! Back to being an affiliate:

I was VERY worried about this issue quite a while back. I do worry about the little things. False advertising is a very grey area and I didn't have access to a lawyer to draft a disclaimer or fight stupid battles. With traffic rising, I was convinced this issue would see me bankrupt, homeless and possibly in jail (thankfully, there's no death penalty anymore).

So, I added code to my smarty template (Im sure this is posted elsewhere):
{if $oProduct->fSearchPrice > 0}

{$oProduct->fSearchPrice}

{else}
<a href="{$oProduct->sProductBuyLink}" rel="NOFOLLOW" target="_BLANK">Click for Price</a>
{/if}I sleep again.

Even with that, I do feel that it would be better to have a price, an honest price at that.
there was an argument about mobile phone merchants having zero prices and that it was due to the price being per month line rental.
Again, no real excuse tbh.

least complicated way:

"iIsRental" => '1'
"sWhatRental" => 'Per Month Line Rental'


{$oProduct->fSearchPrice}
{if $oProduct->iIsRental != 0}
{$oProduct->sWhatRental}
{/if}Just an idea for Version 6.

[Confuscius]

The fact is that we should not be having to code around these issues.

Clearly, potential false advertising appears to be of little or no concern to DigiWin. So, if they ain't bovvered then I ain't bovvered! My new defence!

Merchants should be tagged with a filter that assesses whether zero priced items are legitimate and in what circumstances (say, in a certain category) and then if anything falls outside the 'control' mechanism then it should be deleted, full stop.

Paul