in_stock value accuracy?

[Neddy]

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Why is the in_stock value hardly ever accurate?

Our latest merchant (Send It) has the value of 'no' ( should be 0 or 1 according to the 'create a feed' tool tip ) for all 3500+ products we use. All the ones I have checked are in fact in stock on their website.

How can we promote a merchant when they tell us they have no stock what so ever ?

They are not the only merchant, with 24 merchants with 69,000 products, 45,000 are out of stock, using these terms 'Out of stock', 'Unknown', 'no', 'O[Out of Stock]', again should be 0 or 1 according to the create a feed tool tip, in fact none are 0

Promoting out of stock items to me, seems a waste of my visitors time and a complete waste of a click, so we don't display them in our comparison pages, but were missing a lot of items that are in fact in stock. Is there another value I should be checking? or a combination of values ?

I assume that these feeds are generated from the merchants own site, which has accurate stock values, is it that hard to add that value to the feed ?

[SophieK87]

Hello Neddy,

I’m Sophie and am an Account Executive at buy.at/AWin on the Sendit.com affiliate programmes. Thank you very much for your comments above and for flagging this - indeed the products are not actually all out of stock. We are looking to rectify this straight away – apologies for any inconvenience. I will of course keep you updated and once everything is resolved, it would be great to have you working with Sendit.com.

Please don't hesitate to contact me directly - sophie.kellett@buy.at

Many Thanks,
Sophie

[Neddy]

Hi

Thanks for the reply, hope to see the Send It feed sorted asap.

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I'm not totally sure how it works, but assume other Buy.at/Affiliate Window staff are in charge of other merchants?

Because Send It is not the only one. Took a while to work out but these merchants all set there products in_stock value to 'no'.

Gameseek.co.uk, asda-entertainment.co.uk, comet.co.uk, direct.asda.com

With Affiliate Window we use category 579 which is Entertainment > Video Gaming > Video Games .. So the value may change out side of this category.

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With Buy.at using the availability field in the feeds these merchants always have the availability field blank.

zavvi.com, gamestation.co.uk and thehut.co.uk

gameplay.co.uk appear to have the ideal values for the in_stock or availability field, which are - In Stock / Out of stock / Pre-Order

Play.com and Game.co.uk appear to have there own way to do it which is also good, but contains more information then is really needed, but it is better then no information what so ever.

[Neddy]

Nobody else care to comment on the accuracy of the feeds ?

It is a little frustrating when other sites appear to have accurate stock details.

[EdBlane]

Hi,

The feeds are generated from the merchants side however we aim to make them as accurate and well structured as possible.

We will look into the feeds showing out of stock products and try and rectify the situation.

Thanks

Ed

Edward Blane
3rd Line Support Analyst | Affiliate Window
edward.blane@affiliatewindow.com