Wine Searcher Broken (or possibly ‘upgraded’)

As a very long time user of WSPro, I find it to be one of the key tools of the truly Berserk. It’s excellent!

But today, I’ve found a bunch of changes to it’s behavior that have made it much more annoying to use. Wine Searcher people: please undo these changes, or at least make them optional.

(1) a search in your selected state (in the US, with the “include stores that ship to your state” option unchecked) that would otherwise yield no results, instead shows you results outside of your geography. If the wine is available in the US, it is thus shown. If none is available in the US, then global results are shown. If I want to see results outside my geography, I’ll check that little box.

(2) Alert setting has been changed. I haven’t tested exhaustively but it appears that if a wine is available anywhere in the world, you must include a price lower than the shown price in your alert as a threshold. There doesn’t seem to be a way to set an alert without a price threshold. This by itself is a bad feature. But even worse, it interacts with problem (1) in terrible ways. Search on an obscure German Riesling. Not available in the US, but is in Germany for $18. I want to set an alert but am forced to set a price threshold for below $18. We all know that this wine will be more expensive once it gets here, but with this required threshold my alert is useless.

Wine Searcher people - pls undo these changes!

Ross Brown of wine-searcher is aware of these issues, because we made him aware of them.

One thing we discovered is that the some of these behaviors in the app are different from the web.

The web interface doesn’t have as many problems.

Interesting. I use WSP nearly every day (yes, I need therapy) and these are new changes to me. WSP functionality changed for me in jus the last few days. I’m not happy that these broken features are apparently being rolled out more widely.

I’m using the web interface on an iPad with Chrome.

Perhaps the 4th was with them? :stuck_out_tongue:

I emailed them about these issues yesterday, because they just cropped up for me in the last 2-3 days.

EDIT: I realize I also emailed them about three months ago with an issue related to #1 - the “ship to your state” option is unusable. Many stores claim to not ship to your state on the site, but on their websites they make it clear that they can make it work. Alternately, some stores claim to ship there but don’t. I wanted to ability to eliminate stores in specific states from showing up in search, but they don’t have that capability.

I can’t stand #2. Especially when there is a bottling that comes in multiple sizes. I still have select lower than the price for a split if I’m really looking for a 750 mL. I’d rather they give the ability to select a price range for triggering the alert, how hard could that be?

W-S continues to muck up its own site. They are the one business where I regularly wonder why they go out of their way to make things worse for their customers. At least for their wine-buying customers.

I just searched for a wine. Wine X was not available in the US. Though my search was only for wines in the US, it automatically pulled up the wine elsewhere…in this case Europe. I went to set an alert for when the wine becomes available in the US, but it now uses the price found in Europe as the point below which I am only allowed to set an alert, even though that price is in F*^*ING Europe.

I need to make sure I’m not on auto-renewal.

I’ve seen that happen on the alert setup, however, when then checking the alert in profile, it doesn’t have the price marker. Probably just a UI issue, but in my experience the alert gets set up correctly (YMMV)

They just emailed me saying that a software upgrade will fix these problems - at least I think that what they were saying. The message was a little muddled.

Same. Hopefully the fix will happen soon.

And I have to say, I’m a big fan of the service. It has its glitches - I am unclear why they only renew prices/send alerts once a day when it seems like there could be more real-time responsiveness - but otherwise it’s really helped me both save and spend a lot of money.

It’s also an ingenious business model - freemium for both sides of the market.

The thing that grates me about the alerts is that they come out when we west-coasters are still asleep, so folks to the east get to buy things up before we see them. I’d love if if they could delay these for a more few hours!

“West-coasters are still asleep. So folks to the east get to buy things up before we see them.” I was always under the impression that West Coasters were early risers - and you get the sunsets on the Pacific to enjoy your Chardonnay.
In all seriousness, we pick up prices from tens of thousands of shops throughout the night, process the wine and spirit names and prices, then push them live on Wine-Searcher.com all at the same time. A change to incremental uploads more than once a day is something we are looking at. It would be a big data uplift and a non-trivial task But we can’t have the West Coast missing out!

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Russ any updates on the geo search and alert bugs?

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I’ve seen that happen on the alert setup, however, when then checking the alert in profile, it doesn’t have the price marker. Probably just a UI issue, but in my experience the alert gets set up correctly (YMMV)
[/quote]

Yes, we picked up a software bug in the alerts system during the latest update - the trigger conditions for alerts are complex! A fix has been rolled out.

New ‘Expanded searches’ feature
In Search Settings and halfway down the account menu under your name where you sign in (top right of the website), there is a toggle switch to turn off the new ‘Expanded searches’ feature. The purpose of the expanded search update is having not found an exact match for your search, we automatically expand the search criteria to give you related suggestions (eg. a different vintage or a more distant location) rather than no results.

We agree that sometimes a ‘zero’ result is still a valid result. So if you turn this toggle off, we will not go on to make suggestions that are not an exact match for your search.

Compact view
Part of our new look is a quick-scan way to see prices – compact view. This offers a quick-scan view across a large number of stores and prices.

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Here you go:
Expanded geo/vintage searches can be turned off in Search Settings. Look for 'Expanded searches 'toggles switch, 3rd item down in menu Search Settings, in menu list under your name.
Alert software bugs. Believe we’ve got all the bugs squashed and alerts are now working as before.
Coming soon - in the case of a Zero result where we cannot find any shop listing a particular item - we will show the last known location and price.[/list][/list]

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We’re listening. Apologies regarding the software bug that affected trying to set an ALERT. A fix has now been rolled out.

On the search results page you’ll see a new look. There’s a new and different way to see prices – compact view offering a quick-scan view across a large number of stores and prices. In the default view there is a new emphasis on important buying cues. Filters to change the location of your search, bottle size, and currency have been clustered together and updated to speed up searching, with fewer clicks.

Where no results are found an Expanded search looks further afield or to different vintages until it finds a related wine or spirit. This expanded-search can be turned on/off in your account Search Settings for those who want the focused result only.

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Thanks Ross!