RANT: Affiliate Future & product feeds

[deadgoodundies]

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Ok i've already put a email in to affiliate future (again) through the feedback form in the merchant admin section but im going to post it here as well in hope that perhaps a little public critisicm might get them to actually do something about this as im tired of hearing that "oh not sure how we missed your email" (that excuse can only be used so many times).

So i need to know am I alone in the merchant ranks that are not happy with the way that product feeds are being dealt with by affiliate future, i've lost count of the amount of times i've had to ask them to check why they are not updating the feeds that we have put in the pre-specifed location where they are meant to pick them up from us.

Anyway below is a copy of my email to them, if anyone else is having a similair problem please PM me.

Hi there,
can you please sort out 2 things with your datafeed retrieval!!!!!

1. sort out why the ' symbol is sometimes getting converted into ƒ? , i had a message a while ago saying that the ' symbol is not a valid ASCII - which is rubbish and even if it was the case then why do some get included and some don't

2. sort out acutally picking up the feed regularly from the location that was given to you
http://www.justhom.com/feeds/justhom-af.csv (pipe delimited) - it's impossible to know when you have actually updated affiliate future with the feed that is provided so i could be going weeks with affiliates promoting products that we no longer have available.

As you can tell im not very happy regarding product feeds and affiliate future at the moment and am having to tell people who want to use product feeds from us to join up with affiliate window, im trying to keep things balanced between the two networks but you guys aren't making it easy.

[ChrisAF]

Hi Adam,
Unfortunatly I don't look after the product feeds so I cannot answer your questions but according to our logs there was an issue with your feed last time we tried to collect it.
We will be in touch with you tomorrow regarding these issues.

[deadgoodundies]

Ok thanks, if im correct it's Yolanda that deals with the feeds.

If you could let me know when the last time you tried to get our feeds and also if you knew that there was a problem why wasn't I informed.

[ppcxml]

Having just downloaded the 'current' 365ink feed that's available to affiliates, I've found that ours is also very much out-of-date.

Chris please could you find out if there was also a problem collecting ours the last time an attempt was made?

[deadgoodundies]

1 x email from Pete saying that the techies are looking into it
1 x email from Chris saying that Yolanda was out of the office but will get back to me.

1 x Adam still non the wiser