Still waiting for DAZ site to get all features working
ebrochure
Posts: 0
Since the DAZ3D site was upgraded, two MAJOR problematic areas still exist.
#1. Whenever I add an item to the cart, and I'm not sure I have purchased it in the past, I have to MANUALLY go to my account and search my itemized list (by alphabet instead of being able to do a search) to see if I purchased it. In the past, the shopping cart would let me know I had already bought it. What a HUGE pain this is!
I would like to see this function return OR at least a search box that allows me to search with the name of the product to see if I already own it . Will there be an improvement or changes in that area?
#2 Where are the sale end dates?? There are dozens of items on sale but NO sale end dates? Is this a new DAZ strategy to keep things mysterious? It's such a simple thing to add to a listing -- when the sale ends.
I think this is extremely frustrating and I have missed purchasing a lot of products because of a missed sale date. Now, when I miss a sale, I just shrug my shoulders because it doesn't make sense that necessary information is being withheld from customers.
While DAZ3D is a great site, it is a lot more frustrating to shop here than it should be. Somebody please tell me IF and/or WHEN these issues will be corrected
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Comments
Hear hear! I agree completely! Plus I would like the option to turn OFF the Mac downloads!
@ Stelz
Turning off the Mac downloads is definitely a #3!
In the meantime, I have saved a couple of hundred dollars after missing a sales deadline over the last three months.
Like Utopia Labs. I had no idea when it went off sale (today, I think) and after I realized it had, I really didn't care because I wanted it but I didn't need it, so that $29.95 stayed in my pocket.
If DAZ would correct the three issues you and I listed, the shopping experience would improve 150%
I hope they're reading this -- and at least will give some feedback and/or explanations.
Wishlist is acting up for me. I add an item, my wishlist count goes up, but it's not there. Eh well.
DAZ is a great site but some things need work
As far as I have heard DAZ have said that the "Already purchased item" feature will come back, but it will only work for items you have bought since the new store was introduced. I'm not sure it it's true since there don't seem to be any technical reasons for this limitation as far as I can see.
In any case, if you're running Windows (or Mac with Crossover) there is an alternative here:
http://taosoft.dk/software/dazhm/
It can compare your cart with your history and show you if you've already bought an item. Currently it's not 100% reliable since it's based on product name comparison, and product names sometimes change, but I believe it will work for about 98% of the items. Current version will not work for items from bundles either but if all goes well next version will.
If DAZ limits the "already purchased item" feature to 2012 and 2013, what's the point? I can remember what I bought 6 months ago, it's 3 years ago that I can't remember all the purchases. Jeez -- i hope they don't shoot us in the foot on that one!
they could even do a search feature AND at least allow you to search by alphabet instead of "page number" in your inventory.
How does a "page number" help you when you're trying to remember if you purchased "The Library"? (come on DAZ)
Or why not just re-create the function that reminds you that you already purchased an item when you place it in your cart???
Thanks for posting the software link.
Has anybody else out there used this software?
As far as I can tell it's not a technical problem, so much as it is one dealing with the amount of work involved with making the two databases work together...I'm guessing the new store software and the old store used two different database formats...
From what I've seen/read of the Magento docs, it shouldn't be too hard to have nearly anything for the customer accounts, Magento is very configurable. It's more of how easy is making the old database understood by Magento...is it 'worth' the effort?
I'm pretty sure that we can all agree that we don't want just anyone messing around with our account records, so that pretty much limits who can actually work on meshing the two databases, too. Even using a script/series of scripts like Taozen's to generate a new 'merged' database for every customer would be a huge undertaking, although, each customer doing it on his own...(like when running Taozen's stuff) is doable.
So what I'm seeing is this is a problem of a vast amount of work, for one (or a very few) staff that, doesn't have that much of a return benefit compared to the time involved to do it...in other words, it's less time/effort/money involved to refund a duplicated purchase than it would be to mesh the two databases.
I can see rolling those features into the 'official' download manager package, when ever it is available...
Thanks for the info
Maybe a faster workaround is to have the customer's database searchable by alphabet instead of by page number. At least that would cut down on the time and work expended by the customer. It would be a great good faith effort.
It would also be helpful for DAZ to publicly explain what you just explained so the end users will know what and why it is happening.
Last thing, why doesn't DAZ post the darn sale end dates? That's a very simple thing to do and to NOT do it seems very contrary.
Yeah...that one is puzzling to me...because it sounds like pure laziness for not doing it.
As to the database...I was involved in several switches in forum software with that exact problem. Imagine how much more difficult it will be with customer data as opposed to just a 'forum persona'...and there were enough who were 'touchy' about that. It's a nightmare...and you damned if you do and damned if you don't.
One doesn't need to know the CONTENT of a database to work with it. Much of my programming career involved creating new databases, the code to maintain them, and merging old data into new formats for various clients such as Revlon, AEG Telefunken, Gund, Reynolds Metals and Saturday Night Live. In no case did I see any ACTUAL data contained therein.
At a minimum for this aspect there would be a product db, a customer db, and an invoice db. Before, they may have simply looked up the customer ID from the customer DB, used that to look up all the invoices and match the product ID's with the one currently being put into the cart. I think THIS is where the main problem is now. The product ID's have changed and for several products have changed more than once. If the current product DB doesn't have fields for the previous ID's that you could index on, then even if all the previous invoices were merged in for a customer, there would be no way to match product ID.
You could have a DB of every product number that ever ever existed and for each have fields for each of every associated ID. Meaning hundreds of products would be listed several times each time with a different ID in the 'first' slot. That would work. But putting that together would take a lot of work but it is doable I think.
I just find it interesting that the whole purpose of moving to this store was to make things better/easier... but after 7 months of being implemented, the store is STILL buggy and less functional than it was before this "UPGRADE".
This is a simple "look-up function", and it is not complicated. The difference of databases is irrelevant as its nothing but data and that data can be downloaded to a medium to be searched (like a table); The same way this same very same data is viewed in your order history. Compare the added item added to the cart to the customers previously purchased items and if a match is found, display that order number. If it so difficult for those staffed at Daz to do, with the vast array of technical people that Daz has customers, Im sure SEVERAL of us could write that algorithm. And if Daz kicked those forum developers back a gift certificate saying "Thank You", that would even add more incentive to a collective of "us" in perfecting that algorithm.
-MJ
It would be worth a shot, asking forum developers to help update the database.
A good start would be posting the sale end dates and work on the rest.
Otherwise, DAZ is a great-looking site and a lot of great products.
The lack of a sales end date, and a poor ability of searching for previously purchased items are the reasons why i spend very little here now-a-days.
I said i was going to give Taozen's engine a try, but i feel i shouldnt have to do that. But maybe soon, one day I will.
-MJ
Yes, looks pretty simple to me too. It can be made as a simple subfunction that is called when you put an item in your cart, and it should be fairly simple to integrate it with the rest of the store code.
They have changed yes, but as far as I can see the invoices in the customer database are being dynamically updated with the current SKUs whenever you reset items purchased before the new store was introduced. Or they have already been updated but don't show the SKU and filenames before you reset the item.
Here's a random old product I just checked, you can see that the SKU from my invoice is the same as the one on the product page for that item:
The truth is since the site upgrade the only noticeable enhancements have been marketing related. I've been keeping an eye on how hey have been strategically utilizing more and more "bells and whistles" in this area. I know this mentality all too well, the goal is to drive more sales but they never fix old issues because the resources aren't dedicated to fixing problems that don't return a lot of money.
Besides if you buy something twice it doesn't hurt them. There is a chance you won't notice and a chance you will. If you do, you request a refund, no harm no foul. If you don't notice in 30 days they keep the money. Sounds like a win-win scenario for them. :-P
I agree, it shouldn't be necessary to use such third party tools, and I sometimes regret I made it. It was just meant as a temporary tool to help out until DAZ got the store working again as it used to do, but that doesn't seem to be going to happen.
Greetings,
I agree, it shouldn't be necessary to use such third party tools, and I sometimes regret I made it. It was just meant as a temporary tool to help out until DAZ got the store working again as it used to do, but that doesn't seem to be going to happen.
Heh; I don't really regret making my tools ( 3dwishlist.com ) available. It's been a lot of fun, but I haven't been doing it here as long as you have... (I may have been scraping web sites longer, though, since I've been doing it for eBay since 2000.)
Heck, I'm darn near tempted to build an iOS app for browsing the web site, since the darn pages don't work right on the iPhone or iPad. With a custom app like that, I could even annotate pages in the in-app browser with whether you'd bought it or not (after a hopefully-brief download of your order history in-app), just like I do if you use the 3dwishlist browser plug-in.
Oddly enough, DAZ makes their site pretty easy to extend like that.
-- Morgan
The thing is, Taozen, your program is doing all of that on the user's machine at the user's request...think about the implications of doing to all the users at once by some third party. It's not that it isn't possible...it's the work for doing it ALL that's the problem. Personally, I'd love to see DAZ give you a nice fat buyout and package what you wrote as the 'download manager' that's not shown up yet...
larsmidnatt...I mentioned something like that, earlier...it's like it's easier to do the refunds than it is to actually tackle the mountain of work it would take to do the conversions,
cypher...well that's actually one of the selling points of Magento. It's more or less compatible with all that kind of stuff...all the nice, nifty, new and shiny web features we've come to expect in the day and age of smartphones and such. So writing apps to extend the features of the 'store' is doable...but usually most places don't have their users coming up with them...they do it themselves and then plug the hell out of them.
Heh; I don't really regret making my tools ( 3dwishlist.com ) available. It's been a lot of fun, but I haven't been doing it here as long as you have... (I may have been scraping web sites longer, though, since I've been doing it for eBay since 2000.)
Well what I meant with "regret" was that if I hadn't made the History Manager, people might have put more pressure on DAZ for implementing the features from the old store. Now many just use HM instead of complaining.
Writing the programs is no big deal as such, the biggest problem is actually the lack of consistency in the data in the store.
I wouldn't mind that either. :) But their program is very different from mine and can do things mine can't because theirs has direct access to the database.
Well the store is already set up to handle thousands of users at once. If it is well written you just add the code for the functions you want, and the store takes care of handling the users. I can also run multiple copies of the History Manager at once on my computer, simulating multiple users. I don't need to do anything extraordinary or write extra code for that - Windows handles that automically. Only CPU power, system resources and RAM sets the limit for how many copies I can run.
Actually, I was pretty sure that was the case...reading the Magento documentation (not all the way through it yet...just parts of it), But now the question is...is DAZ actually aware of that?
If they aren't then that could explain a few things...there's a 'hard way' (the way I described) and an 'easy way' (what you describe) and I have a feeling that they are stuck thinking there's only the 'hard way'...
...not sure if others have dealt with this but for me the clickable preview thumbs on product pages no longer show up.
Also, I notice product details are no longer displayed by default but require clicking on the details tab to display them.
Definitely a couple steps backwards form just a week or so ago.