Inconsistencies with "Books you own ... Books you get"

djskinner@ualberta.net
djskinner@ualberta.net Member Posts: 60 ✭✭
edited November 2024 in English Forum

I just moved the following over from another topic, as I understand this is the place for website bug reports.

I originally purchased the Leader's Library (LE), and the upgrade page accurately reflected what I already owned, and what I would get if I were to upgrade.  Just this past Monday (January 10, 2011)  I got the free upgrade for the Leader's Library (KF) and now on the upgrade page it shows an upgrade to would give me books I already have.  For example, previously with Leader's (LE) I already had the Douay-Rheims bible, and an upgrade example left it pale blue (already owned).  Now, with Leader's (KF) it is shaded green, even though the colored dots show it is part of both libraries.

Why did the indicators suddenly become inaccurate?

Comments

  • TCBlack
    TCBlack Member Posts: 10,980 ✭✭✭

    Donald S said:

    Why did the indicators suddenly become inaccurate?

    I'm not certain, but I do remember reading that the license caches refresh every X hours or something like that.  

    Unfortunately I can't recall if that was user speculation or webdev explanation.  :-)

    Hmm Sarcasm is my love language. Obviously I love you. 

  • Kevin Becker
    Kevin Becker Member Posts: 5,604 ✭✭✭

    I just checked my upgrade page and it's gone bonkers too.

    It says I would get books that are clearly in the base package I own. strange.

  • TCBlack
    TCBlack Member Posts: 10,980 ✭✭✭

    Hmm.  So it is Kevin.  Sorry I should have checked my own account before posting.  

    Apparently someone at Logos needs to check how the packages are set up.

    Hmm Sarcasm is my love language. Obviously I love you. 

  • steve clark
    steve clark Member Posts: 3,591 ✭✭✭

    This is really bad since i got the free upgrade to the KF package!

    Most of the books it shows that i would get, i already have that came with my LE package.

    QLinks, Bibl2, LLR, Macros
    Dell Insp 17-5748, i5, 1.7 GHz, 8G RAM, win 8.1

  • Rosie Perera
    Rosie Perera Member Posts: 26,194 ✭✭✭✭✭

    The website has not been fully accurate with this from the day they rolled out the new one. Now it seems perhaps worse than it was before. But I have not been trusting it yet. I've been checking in my library to see if I own something. It's a bummer, since this was supposed to be one of the big improvements of the new website.

  • fgh
    fgh Member Posts: 8,948 ✭✭✭

    The Upgrade chart really has gone completely nuts. It simply shows everything that's marked 'new' as not owned! And of course I've already got lots of it in my base package, and got lots more in the Christmas deal...

    And talking about the Christmas deal: after that had registered properly, I went back to the 50% pages and added "&unlocked=no" -- and it still showed 57 products! Out of those, half a dozen at most were items that should have been coloured; all the rest should have had grey buttons and not have shown up at all. So it's not just a few titles; it's a lot! And when I checked something else a few days later, I also noticed that all the lower base packages had coloured buttons. Now, that's really ridiculous! And if I've bought both the OT and the NT sets of a commentary, then, obviously, I also own the combined set (and the other way around)...

    And then there's the opposite one: I've got this one title that keeps showing up on my prepub "&unlocked=yes" page, in spite of the fact that I haven't ordered it and the button, quite correctly, is coloured. How is that even possible? Doesn't the code that make unlocked buttons grey and the code that sort out unlocked items get their information from the same place?

    Mac Pro (late 2013) OS 12.6.2

  • Tobias Lampert
    Tobias Lampert Member Posts: 761 ✭✭

    fgh said:

    The Upgrade chart really has gone completely nuts.

    Yep. I only hope somebody's working on this issue!?

    "Mach's wie Gott - werde Mensch!" | theolobias.de

  • djskinner@ualberta.net
    djskinner@ualberta.net Member Posts: 60 ✭✭

    I was considering upgrading to the Scholar's Library, but this upgrade page issue has unnerved me somewhat.  I think I'm going to hold off on further upgrades until things are consistent on the upgrade page.  I hope the issues are only with the upgrade page, and not with the upgrades themselves.  But I must confess I have now grown very cautious.  This is very bad publicity.

  • Phil Gons (Logos)
    Phil Gons (Logos) Administrator, Logos Employee Posts: 3,803

    Thanks for reporting this. We're aware of the issue and are working to correct it.

  • (na)
    (na) Member Posts: 54 ✭✭

    I also get the same problem, It's really confusing.

  • Rick
    Rick Member Posts: 2,020 ✭✭✭

    I was reading this thread: http://community.logos.com/forums/t/29563.aspx and thought that I would take a look at the upgrade calculator and this is still not fixed. It may be adding to some confusion.

  • Ward Walker
    Ward Walker Member Posts: 1,217 ✭✭✭

    Concur that the website's accuracy WRT what I own has much to be desired, and I'd love to see this fixed; it would seem to be one of the easier bugs to eliminate.

  • Tobias Lampert
    Tobias Lampert Member Posts: 761 ✭✭

    it would seem to be one of the easier bugs to eliminate.

    I agree, Ward! This shouldn't take so long to fix - and I just don't understand why Logos isn't putting more effort to this, since overall this is really bad sales promotion. If I could afford and had the need to upgrading my base package right now, I wouldn't do it unless this is fixed. When I spend a serious amount of money I want to know exactly what I'll get for it.

    "Mach's wie Gott - werde Mensch!" | theolobias.de

  • Thanks for reporting this. We're aware of the issue and are working to correct it.

    As March Madness and St Patrick's Day approaches, wondering about http://www.logos.com/upgrade improvements to accurately highlight Books You Get ?

    Currently appears already have more Books You Get than Portfolio upgrade would add (wishing for less green on upgrade page)

    Keep Smiling [:)]

  • Tobias Lampert
    Tobias Lampert Member Posts: 761 ✭✭

    It has been nearly two months now since Phil Gons stated Logos was aware of the issue and working to correct it.

    I really don't want to offend anybody, and this is nothing personal at all - but something's telling me that this statement cannot be quite faithful. Nothing's been changed on the Upgrades page so far, and I still can't believe it is so hard to fix two or three databases to tell customers what they can or can't expect when purchasing an upgrade.

    Dear Logos, please remember it's your customer's money when it comes to purchasing your products - it's not yours! So please grant your customers a way to know what they get for their money they can rely on!

    If there's just  too much work to do at the moment to fix this problem - I'm not blaming you! But there are several ways to deal with it: you could temporarily disable the Upgrades page, you could leave a note there telling customers that they should be aware of the inconsistencies with the chart graphics, or you could temporarily remove the bars in the chart graphics. Or / and you could tell customers in this thread why it's taking so long to fix this problem.

    But, let me be honest, stating that you're working on this (as far as I can imagine: minor!) problem and then changing nothing is really disrespectful towards your customers, considering this has to do with their money. As a consequence, I (and I'm sure I'm not alone with this) won't even think of upgrading to another package as long as I can't be sure of what I'm getting for my money.

    Thus said: thank you for all your good work on L4! and: be blessed!

    "Mach's wie Gott - werde Mensch!" | theolobias.de

  • Mark Barnes
    Mark Barnes Member Posts: 15,432 ✭✭✭

    I doubt it's a minor problem. The main issue appears to be resources that you've purchased in a set or collection, but are then available individually. There's the even more difficult question of resources purchased individually that then mean you have part of a collection. From a technical point of view this is likely to mean upgrading a database from one-to-one relationships to one-to-many, which is potentially a big change. Indeed, it's not just that, but also the check would need to be recursive (I have this base package, which includes this collection, which includes these resources). From a practical point of view there's the tricky question of how you deal with collections that you partly own. So I think it's a difficult problem.

    That said, I agree about the updates page. About three-quarters of the resources I'm recommended on that page I already own.

    This is my personal Faithlife account. On 1 March 2022, I started working for Faithlife, and have a new 'official' user account. Posts on this account shouldn't be taken as official Faithlife views!

  • Tobias Lampert
    Tobias Lampert Member Posts: 761 ✭✭

    Mark, I see the problem's bigger than I was first aware of - thanks for pointing this out!

    Anyway, the inconsistencies already start when comparing nothing than one base package to another, without any additional titles having been purchased after a base package or such. In this case, it is really only two databases that have to be aligned with each other. But even here the chart graphics is totally mixed up - at least this single issue could be solved quickly.

    There are currently 80 titles I'm recommended on that I've already got with the base package I bought a couple of months ago. All the other titles I have purchased after that don't show up in the chart graphics and aren't part of any collection belonging to a base package, so there should be no interferences with the databases in this case. Being told I will get 80 titles more than I actually would is in outcome very close to being fraud, although I'm totally aware that there are ways to double check the chart graphics with my library or the dots indicating which title belongs to which base package and although I would never accuse Logos of wanting to mislead their customers.

    As I said, it's not that there's a problem that makes me being disappointed - it's the way Logos is handling it. I think that's what we agree on. I would be satisfied if they only accounted for one of the several possibilities I've mentioned to let customers know the chart graphics isn't reliable at the moment. But simply doing nothing in months is grossly negligent.

    "Mach's wie Gott - werde Mensch!" | theolobias.de

  • Phil Gons (Logos)
    Phil Gons (Logos) Administrator, Logos Employee Posts: 3,803

    It has been nearly two months now since Phil Gons stated Logos was aware of the issue and working to correct it.

    Thanks for bringing this up again. I asked our web team to pull the functionality that highlights the resources you have and the resource you'll get until we have the time to build it correctly. We're working on a big back-end piece that should make this a fairly easy fix eventually. For the time being though, we're going to show less information until we can make sure that it's correct.

    I apologize that this has taken so long. Thank you for your patience.

  • TCBlack
    TCBlack Member Posts: 10,980 ✭✭✭

     I appreciate the update Phil.

    Pulling the bad code is a good move for now.  :-)

    Hmm Sarcasm is my love language. Obviously I love you. 

  • Donnie Hale
    Donnie Hale Member Posts: 2,038 ✭✭✭

    I doubt it's a minor problem. The main issue appears to be resources that you've purchased in a set or collection, but are then available individually. There's the even more difficult question of resources purchased individually that then mean you have part of a collection. From a technical point of view this is likely to mean upgrading a database from one-to-one relationships to one-to-many, which is potentially a big change. Indeed, it's not just that, but also the check would need to be recursive (I have this base package, which includes this collection, which includes these resources). From a practical point of view there's the tricky question of how you deal with collections that you partly own. So I think it's a difficult problem.

    If they were starting from right now knowing that this is a requirement, it wouldn't be that hard a problem to solve. The important design consideration is that you have to take a snapshot of every collection / package at the time a purchase is made and copy it to something directly associated with the customer. You can't just have a reference from the customer to the collection / package as it stands at that moment, because it changes over time. You need to record what a customer actually got at their time of purchase. If you have that information, it's fairly trivial to do a different between that list and the current list of what's in any individual package or collection.

    This is not uncommon in these types of systems. You have to record a copy of things like sale prices, tax rates, etc. so that you have a complete picture of the transaction that stays correct forever even if those things change over time.

    I imagine what makes it difficult in this situation is that Logos may not have recorded this level of detail of each customer's purchases going back to when everything was delivered on discs. So they may have to recreate it from purchase history, license information, etc.

    That's my speculation, anyway.

    Donnie

     

  • Tobias Lampert
    Tobias Lampert Member Posts: 761 ✭✭

    Thank you for your answer, Phil! [:)] That's exactly what I was hoping for! [Y]

    "Mach's wie Gott - werde Mensch!" | theolobias.de