Littlewoods/Very - What the hell's going on?

[Elaine]

Have I missed the email outlining the procedure affiliates are supposed to take during this changeover?

Most of the links aren't working - going through to an error page.
Some of the products have disappeared from the catalogue - even the paddling pool I included late last night?
Nobody's answering their emails - nobody manning the phones

and why have Buy.at removed their telephone number from their site - had to contact another affiliate to get it - but, surprise, surprise, there's nobody answering!!

WILL SOMEONE LET ME KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON - PLEASE!!!

[Paul Newton]

Elaine,

I cant help directly, but ill do my best to get hold of someone for you. I cant make any promises, but ill do my best.

Regards

Paul

[Warrick Lambert]

Hi Elaine,

We've tried to get hold of someone at Littlewoods but unfortunately haven't been able to. Apologies that you've not been able to speak to anyone, if there's anything that I can help with then please drop me a line - warrick@buy.at or give me a call 07917 610 124 and I'll see what I can do.

We'll pick this up with Littlewoods first thing on Monday morning to make sure we have this corrected ASAP.

Cheers

Warrick

[accelerator]

My standard link to Littlewoods Direct is working and going through to Very, so maybe it's just deep links that are affected?

Rgds

[Elaine]

Unfortutely 99% of my links are deep links to individual products - far more effective than a generic link - when they work!!

[Elaine]

well I had a brainwave - thought the product feed might have been updated with the new urls etc - and the first link I tried was - then the next 5 weren't - arrggggh!!

and apart from Paul and Warwick - not a dickie bird.

[mrbishi]

I got a phone call from Buy.at yesterday, asking me did I know that littlewoods direct was changing to very.co.uk and that I would need to update my creatives and content by when it went active today (nice to be warned with plenty of time!). If I hadn't have had an account with Littlewoods anyway I'd have had no idea what she was talking about.

However the Littlewoods Direct Account manager did say that all the tracking links should remain the same but obviously this is not the case as some of mine are working but others aren't so obviously some first day teething issues. Thank god they chose to launch on a working day when buy.at/littlewoods could be contacted

[RebeccaRiches]

Hello,

First off please allow me to apologise for the current issues affecting the Very programme. The technical changes went live today and we have updated all of the links and creatives in the Management Area to ensure all activity going forward is reported correctly.

The specific programme information has been updated and you should be able to view this in your Management Area now. All affiliates on the programme will be emailed shortly with deeplinking instructions and following this a formal communication will be going out first thing tomorrow morning - in the meantime please accept my apologies and if you have any questions please feel free to contact me.

Kind Regards
Becky

rebecca.riches@platform-a.com
Account Manager
Platform A's buy.at

[Entrepreneur]

One reason the deeplinks don't work is because Very seem to have far less products. Sending deeplink instructions won't change that. Affiliates should have been given notice of what was happening - it appears that they were totally forgotten.

It's really poor of both Littlewoods Direct and Buy.at not to have warned affiliates about this - especially when they then make the change on a Sunday. I'm having to waste time on a Sunday checking links so that customers that I send to Littlewoods / Very aren't inconvenienced.

Interesting that Very do have a phone number on the error page should a product be from the Spring or Summer books - ie most of the deeplinks that no longer work.

VERY disappointed with both Littlewoods and Buy.at.

[mrbishi]

It's not just the transition to very.co.uk that seems to have lost products, some products I've been promoting at Marshall Ward for months have now just vanished without a trace but strangely are still on the very.co.uk site.

[Shop-Direct-Group]

Hello all

Following some of the comments on this thread about broken deeplinks we have investigated the causes of this and found that sale products unique to the Littlewoods Direct site will not be on the Very site as the sale ended 4th July.

As I am sure you will understand we may have some teething problems at first but please be aware that we are working to make sure that the affiliate programme is as unaffected as possible during this transitional period.

I would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused and ask you to remain patient with us whilst we iron out some of the initial problems. We are confident that the Very programme will prove even more successful than the Littlewoods Direct programme.

In addition to the communication sent out on Wednesday, a further communication with more information about the Very brand and confirming the correct URLs to use will be sent out today.

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact Steven.north@shopdirect.com, Lesley.kettle@shopdirect.com or rebecca.riches@platform-a.com.

[TheBoy_78]

Hi,

following on from mrbishi's post, there still seems to be many products missing from the site.

Take xbox 360 for example, only one of the three variants is available and the other two cannot be found, they were present on Littlewoods Direct site but not any more, they were not in the sale either.

Please can this be looked into? I can see many products missing.

rgds
Chris

[Entrepreneur]

Hello,

All affiliates on the programme will be emailed shortly with deeplinking instructions and following this a formal communication will be going out first thing tomorrow morning

I didn't receive anything first thing this morning - or indeed today. Was I missed out or have all affiliates still not been informed?

[mrbishi]

No I didn't receive one, however the deeplinking information is on the buy.at site and nothing has changed it's just a lot of the products have been removed so If the product no longer exists obviously the deep links won't work

[Entrepreneur]

No I didn't receive one, however the deeplinking information is on the buy.at site and nothing has changed it's just a lot of the products have been removed so If the product no longer exists obviously the deep links won't work

If the majority of deeplinks don't work I'd say a lot has changed. Plus the fact that anyone clicking a link marked Littlewoods Direct will end up at a site called Very is quite a big change too.