Misleading Pricing on Logos.com

Tony Thomas

Barnes Notes for $3.95? Really??

Not so fast:

My question is: Why does the website default to showing the monthly rental price as the full price of the product?

That is not only misleading but very frustrating when trying to find products!

Please fix this!!

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Comments

MJ. Smith

This has been discussed quite recently. Logos is in the process of changing the site and this is a temporary state before implementation of individual preferences of some sort.

Matthew C Jones

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/621052#Comment_621052

Yeah, it was a bad idea......whoever's it was.

Tony Thomas

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/621056#Comment_621056

I can't believe an error that serious was not found during testing!

I am sure it has a negative impact on sales...

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/621057#Comment_621057

I can't believe an error

As I said, it is temporary - there is no indication that giving the monthly rate is an error although the particular price you show (in comparison to other screen shots) seems odd. http://community.logos.com/forums/t/87877.aspx

Tony Thomas

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/621063#Comment_621063

If you search on "commentary" and sort using "lowest price", you can see plenty of errors like the one I commented on.

For example, Spurgeon's Treasury of David (6 vols.) for $1.95! And Lightfoot's commentary (4 vols.) for $2.29!

Look here:

https://www.logos.com/products/search?q=commentary&sort=pricelo&pageSize=15&Resource+Type=Commentaries

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/621064#Comment_621064

Ah they are in the process of changing things and are now showing rental prices for all items. Definitely worst than earlier in the evening.

DMB

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/621073#Comment_621073

The problem with the fix from what was described, is that if you're a whiner (eg me), you have to be logged in to un-whine your view (option in your account).

Logos seems to fully embrace the misleadingness. But luckily for me, my browser erases the Logos price allowing me to save money.

Actually from what I understand, there are actual geniuses in the forum that suggested putting 'both'. I'm just amazed at how they thought that up. Anyone in marketing knows that showing the real price defeats the purpose of showing the fake price.

Glenn Airoldi (Faithlife)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/621105#Comment_621105

Thanks for the details on what you were finding Tony. We'll be looking into why you would be seeing this in the search results and making the appropriate fixes.

abondservant

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/621138#Comment_621138

there ought to be one price in search results, and the option from the primary product page to rent or payment plan the item in question. The one price ought to be the full dynamic price of the resource (else the full normal outright purchase price).

Three in search results, or worse, only rental prices in search results is a major headache.

Mark Barnes

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/621056#Comment_621056

Yeah, it was a bad idea......whoever's it was.

It wasn't an idea, it's a bug.

Monthly rentals used to be separate products, and therefore they'd show up in the search results alongside the full priced product, but the product name would include the phrase "monthly rental", so none of us really minded. The new design has effectively merged the two products, but has had this unfortunate side-effect.

Mark Barnes

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/621141#Comment_621141

The one price ought to be the full dynamic price of the resource (else the full normal outright purchase price).

I agree with this, although it's surprisingly difficult to accomplish. That's the dynamic because it has to be calculated for every product, which takes processing power. It's fine to do this for one product on the product page, but Logos probably can't afford the computational time for every product in the search results. (And it would have to be every product — even if you searched for all 15,000 of them — as otherwise sort by price wouldn't work.)

abondservant

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/623035#Comment_623035

The one price ought to be the full dynamic price of the resource (else the full normal outright purchase price).

I agree with this, although it's surprisingly difficult to accomplish. That's the dynamic because it has to be calculated for every product, which takes processing power. It's fine to do this for one product on the product page, but Logos probably can't afford the computational time for every product in the search results. (And it would have to be every product — even if you searched for all 15,000 of them — as otherwise sort by price wouldn't work.)

Agreed - to a point. Logos servers only have to calculate the dynamic price for 10 results at a time though. If a search result brought back 15000 results on a single page that would be a different story all together.

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/623056#Comment_623056

If a search result brought back 15000 results on a single page that would be a different story all together.

You don't know which 10 results you will show unless you have calculated all of the 15000 subject to dynamic pricing.

abondservant

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/623059#Comment_623059

Calculate and cache. Then its just pulling up a field from a database.

Calculate (initial calculations might be rough) initially, and then only calculate again based upon what collections a title is included in at check out.

IF Title 1 is included in collection 1 basepackage 3 and bundle 6, then when you purchase title 1, you simply re-calculate dynamic pricing for C1, BP3, and B6 after taking payment. The database already has some indication of what titles are included in which package.

Mark Barnes

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/623061#Comment_623061

IF Title 1 is included in collection 1 basepackage 3 and bundle 6, then when you purchase title 1, you simply re-calculate dynamic pricing for C1, BP3, and B6 after taking payment. The database already has some indication of what titles are included in which package.

I didn't say it was impossible to achieve, just that it was "surprisingly difficult". And that's one way of handling it. But if you have 25,000 paying customers and 15,000 products, many of which contain dozens of individual resources, then it's quite a job to prime the cache. And quite a job to keep the cache up to date: both when we purchase products and when Logos add a product (which happens several times a day). Doable, but computationally very intensive.