Serious recurring pricing errors

PetahChristian

Yet again, the % off discount is incorrectly being applied if you own any of the items in a Black Friday sale item.

This is the fourth time this month that the exact same pricing issue has happened:

• Reformation Day bundle
• Mobile Ed Fall sale
• Black Friday sales
• Logos 7 expansion bundles (taken down)

FL doesn't seem to address the error for good, but deals with it on a product-by-product basis. For that reason, I won't link to specific examples or provide photos showing the errors, but hope that FL will finally realize that how they compute % off needs to be fixed on a global basis.

[quote]If you want proof, view a Black Friday sale item with dynamic pricing. Notice the dollar amount for the "Lexham Press Black Friday Deals." Now sign out or open a private browser window, and view the same item again. Notice that the discount is greater. Here's an example of a product with an incorrect discount:

• Signed in, Lexham Press Black Friday Deals: -$291.37 off.
• Signed out, Lexham Press Black Friday Deals: -$390 off for the same item.

In that particular case, you are no longer getting the full 60% off discount when you own items in the set.

Until FL takes this problem seriously, and fixes it for good, please check the math, and make sure the discounts are correctly being applied, to avoid being overcharged.

Colin

Hi PetahChristian, 

I hesitate to wade in here since I know you've been posting a lot about this lately. I've pushed back a few times myself and usually Glenn comes on and shows me I've misunderstood how things work. I just wanted to make sure you're aware that the discount price is calculated AFTER your dynamic price has been calculated. 

Here's an example. If there's a total price of $100 and a 50% discount is offered, you'll save $50 signed out.

But if your dynamic price is  $80, you'll only save $40 in the sale.

Is this the kind of thing you're seeing?

The discount is not an amount of money but a percentage of the price of the products you do not have licenses for.

Forgive me if I'm missing the point here entirely.

Colin.  

PetahChristian

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/866968#Comment_866968

Thank you for wading in. If I misunderstand this, I'm happy to be educated!

Let's say in your example, that the $100 total price is made of up four $25 books.

If I don't own any of the books, and you give me a 50% off discount, making the total now $50, each book is on sale for $12.50.

But if I happen to own 2 of the 4 books that are on sale in the bundle, I'd expect my dynamic price would be $25 ($50 - 2 x $12.50).

I may misunderstand how it should be calculated, but it seems that the dynamic pricing is applied before the sale, instead of afterwards.

In other words, it shouldn't be 50% off the remainder that you own (which is no longer a 50% discount off the regular price), but 50% off the regular price, and then take dynamic pricing into account. Otherwise, you're giving a lesser discount off the regular price to people who own some of it, rather than people who don't own any of it.

Mathematically, we'd agree that ($100 - $50) * 0.5 = ($50 - $25) = $25, whether the % off discount is applied before or after the dynamic price.

Since FL has been fixing the previous occurrences when this has been pointed out, there apparently is some type of error going on that they didn't initially catch.

PetahChristian

PetahChristian said:

In that particular case, you are no longer getting the full 60% off discount when you own items in the set.

I assumed that the same error was present for that product, and didn't bother to check the math. I'm wrong. Sorry about this.

Mark Barnes

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/866976#Comment_866976

I've just checked the Lexham Press Theology Bundle ($649.99, minus 60% off).

The hover text for me says $444.97 for items I own, which would bring the price down to $205.22. With a 60% discount, I'd expect to pay $82.01, which is exactly what I'm being charged. That bit is definitely correct.

The problem is that the list of resources in the middle of the page is incomplete. All the Spurgeon volumes are missing. That makes it the maths for my dynamic pricing discount look entirely wrong. However, if you look at the "More details about these resources" section, you can see the error, and then the maths makes sense.

In other words, I don't think it's a pricing error. I think it's an error in listing the resources that are included. (The same problem affects the Kuyper collection.)

PetahChristian

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/866993#Comment_866993

Mark Barnes said:

The hover text for me says $444.97 for items I own, which would bring the price down to $205.22. With a 60% discount, I'd expect to pay $82.01, which is exactly what I'm being charged. That bit is definitely correct.

Yep. I figured that out after the fact and came to the same conclusion. They're right, I was wrong.

I notice that you also apply the discount to the dynamic price. I think that is probably a much easier way for FL to "calculate" it, rather than determining discounted dynamic prices of items you own, and maybe that's the only way that the back end can calculate it.

I normally don't look at the "More details about these resources" sums, since the "Total value" math has its unrelated set of peculiarities. I tend to check the "Your custom price" hover box that appears for the dynamic pricing.

The fact that FL removed the whole "Your custom price" hover box for base packages worries me. I have no way to see or check how they arrived at the  the final price they give me, and have to trust that the price is truly accurate.

While I think FL generally intends to do right by us, we need to be able to trust and rely on the prices, rather than having to point out different issues with the product pages.

When you have a complex issue that involves:

1. a bundle discount savings (over buying the items separately),
2. a dynamic price because you own one of the items in the bundle,
3. and a % off sale applied to the bundle

and FL's fix is to eliminate the bundle discount, you really have to ask yourself why it's that complex (for a person or a computer system) to come up with the accurate prices in the first place.

JH

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/866993#Comment_866993

Yes, this doesn't look correct:

PetahChristian

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/867002#Comment_867002

JH said:

Yes, this doesn't look correct:

I think part of that particular issue is that the product contains volumes that haven't shipped, and that FL is only showing available resources that are new to you.

The total value if sold separately is based on all volumes, including the ones that haven't been produced yet.

Fortunately, FL doesn't have too many products where they ask people to pay the full amount up front, when it can take years for the remaining items to ship.