AOB Forum - Refreshing on Half?

gpetsch Ex Member I love YaBB 1G - YaBB 2!	Refreshing on Half? May 7^th, 2009 at 2:39pm Hi, All- Just curious-How often do you request a refresh of your inventory on Half? When you re-price? Weekly? Thanks for indulging my curious streak! Gloria
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plaidpineapple Ex Member Llet me never be put to confusion Psalm 71:1	Re: Refreshing on Half? Reply #1 - May 7^th, 2009 at 2:41pm When I start getting duplicate orders. About once every 3-6 months or so. I guess I also request one if I haven't had an order in over a month. Don't know if it really helps but it makes me feel better.
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BookLadies

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Re: Refreshing on Half?
Reply #2 - May 7^th, 2009 at 2:53pm

We try to refresh eBay and Half whenever we reprice, but in reality it's more like once a month or so, unless we're having problems.

Every now and then, we get some crazy unmatched double sales on Half - from a few months ago and I've been told that it needs a resync. We've had to order one twice now and that clears up the problem.

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d_love Ex Member I love YaBB 1G - YaBB 2!	Re: Refreshing on Half? Reply #3 - May 9^th, 2009 at 11:02pm How do we refresh our half.com inventory?
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Night_Runner Ex Member 42	Re: Refreshing on Half? Reply #4 - May 10^th, 2009 at 11:12pm d_love wrote on May 9^th, 2009 at 11:02pm: How do we refresh our half.com inventory? You ask one of the helpful chat dwellers. I usually refresh at least once a week.
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d_love Ex Member I love YaBB 1G - YaBB 2!	Re: Refreshing on Half? Reply #5 - May 12^th, 2009 at 12:58pm I got it, thank you. I did it only because I still have books that never made it from an initial upload last month. What is the point of refreshing though?
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BookLadies Ex Member I love books! Gender:	Re: Refreshing on Half? Reply #6 - May 12^th, 2009 at 1:12pm Night_Runner: Are you actually physically a runner at night? Or is that just a name? I follow a jogging/walking interval program and generally, I really enjoy it. Ever read Dean Karnazes' book? Love him! Or Pam Reed's book was good too. Both are very inspirational.
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robin_culver Ex Member Gender:	Re: Refreshing on Half? Reply #7 - May 14^th, 2009 at 11:37pm I got it, thank you. I did it only because I still have books that never made it from an initial upload last month. What is the point of refreshing though? I agree, I just don't understand why this is neccessary. Can someone explain this. Robin
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Stacks_o_Books

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Re: Refreshing on Half?
Reply #8 - May 15^th, 2009 at 7:47am

Because once in a while, eBay/Half hiccups.

They either don't process an update sent to them by AOB, or reload data or ... who knows. But for whatever reason, your inventory there may not be entirely accurate. And you may end up with a sale for an item you sold months ago.

Refreshing your inventory is a way to clean up your inventory files on those venues and make sure that everything that should have been deleted has been. And it may add missed new listings - although you're less likely to discover a listing MIA - it just doesn't get sold on that venue.

So doing a refresh is preventive maintenance.

Also, if you run Soloist, Half.com and eBay prices won't get updated without a refresh. They WILL, however, update if you manually change individual listings.

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Opinions expressed here are strictly my own. I am not an employee or representative of The Art of Books.

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povertyhillbooks

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Re: Refreshing on Half?
Reply #9 - May 15^th, 2009 at 7:53am

Robin,

One reason is that sometimes a customer may have had a book in their shopping cart when AOB tried to remove it because it sold elsewhere on another venue. If the purchase wasn't made, the book goes back into your listings as active because the venue missed the delete request. This was because the book appeared as an inactive listing while in the customers cart so AOB couldn't remove it Half.com allows items to remain in carts for a long time (also Alibris). Obviously, when it does sell on Half, it is unmatched and will result in a double sale. If you refresh, AOB purges and replaces your AOB inventory (and I believe) any sku's with a zero quanity get deleted.

I only refresh when a maintence glitch somewhere causes some sku's not to get deleted (maybe once a year or so).

I don't know if I actually explained it well enough, maybe someone else can add something.

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weirdbooks

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Re: Refreshing on Half?
Reply #10 - May 28^th, 2009 at 10:48am

My question to the Admin is WHY?

Why does a manual price change get applied to Half.com correctly, but a Soloist change does not? I have over 3000 items in inventory. I cannot check each one against Half.com for manual updating.

Any why does the refresh have to be requested manually via support, and not done simply by clicking a link or button on the site. I would imagine that it would be easy to setup a script for refreshing Half.com automatically for users that need that. I reprice 1-2 times daily. I really doubt that you want me opening 2 tickets a day for Half.com refreshing.

My big problem now is that I sold a $499.95 current market value book for $249.95 on Half.com. There was a resurgence in interest in the title, and my price update did not get applied to Half. That is $250.00 in "lost" profit. There is no way to get that $ back, canceling the order just to markup the price is unethical, and will lead to some nasty feedback.

I deal with many price volatile books like textbooks and bestsellers. I see prices swing for $10, $20 and more daily on some textbooks, and drop by 10% or more on bestsellers. Since the eBay integration, my Half.com/Ebay sales have about doubled, but unfortunately I am seeing my books selling for much less on Half.com than the AOB price. That needs to stop.

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Stacks_o_Books

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Re: Refreshing on Half?
Reply #11 - May 28^th, 2009 at 1:59pm

Please read the tag line under my postings. I'm not an AOB employee. I'm a seller and AOB user just like you. The only reason I have Admin privileges is because I was reporting spam postings so often (because I check in here usually daily) that they gave me Admin access so I could clean them out myself. That's why any postings from shoe makers in China get deleted here fairly quickly.

You need to direct your question to AOB staff directly, either through chat or a ticket. My understanding is that eBay restricts the amount of uploads they get from anyone. So this manual refresh process is a restriction on eBay's end - not something arbitrarily dreamed up by AOB. But that's about all I know - I don't have any specifics.

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Opinions expressed here are strictly my own. I am not an employee or representative of The Art of Books.

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weirdbooks Ex Member I love YaBB 1G - YaBB 2!	Re: Refreshing on Half? Reply #12 - May 28^th, 2009 at 7:03pm Sorry about that. Just a bit frustrated with such a big hit on the Half.com reprice issue, and while support is responsive as to answering tickets, they failed to answer my questions as to why such an issue with Half.com exists.
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BookLadies Ex Member I love books! Gender:	Re: Refreshing on Half? Reply #13 - May 28^th, 2009 at 8:11pm Look at it this way - you very well may not have made the sale at all if it had been twice the price. Better $250 than nothing at all, right?
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BTBooksellers Ex Member	Re: Refreshing on Half? Reply #14 - May 28^th, 2009 at 8:29pm What happens if you use repriceit and have it ftp'd to AOB? does it automatically refresh the prices that changed on all venues or just AMZ? Just curious...
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