Shopping.com - Tales from the Absurd

by Brian Smith, on November 9th, 2007

I’ve learned not to post in depth when I’m mad.
Well, I’m extending that to not posting in depth when I’m feeling sick.

As SingleFeed friend, Miguel Salcido writes out on the eVisibility blog, Shopping.com is no longer accepting new merchants:

It just boggles my mind when merchants are not prepared for their busiest times of the year. But for one of the most established and well backed CSE in the world it is just disgusting. They will lose out on so much money this season because of this. Although they have been making many efforts to improve their program lately, this is pretty terrible. Honestly, the traffic from Shopping.com has not been performing too well for the handful of shopping data feeds that I run and submit. And I also hear that they are now requiring a $700 minimum deposit to get started with them, that is ridiculous! I remember last year they could not accept one of the credit cards, can’t remember if it was Visa or MasterCard, but it was a big pain in the but since the merchant I was submitting did not have another card to put it on.

Add to this the fact that Shopping.com increased their minimum required initial deposit to $700, automated emails from customer support say to expect a response within 7 days (thanks for the tip, L!), and the company is giving away the farm in the UK to try to get customers back, and I actually feel sick to my stomach.

I’ll just stick to the facts for now and hold off on commenting until I’ve talked with SDC directly. I really feel sick. I love this industry. What’s going on?

ShareThis | Tags: Comparison Engines, Shopping.com

Tim said

I�m on the other side of the coin, a publisher with accounts at most of the comparison shopping engines. I don�t think shopping.com wants publishers either. In the past few months I�ve completely stopped using The shopping.com program for one simple reason� Their product database is a mess in my sector. New products that are widely available from most of the major chains take months to appear, duplicate productIDs for the same product/SKU that segment the store offers, and store offers that get misaligned with the wrong product ID.

As a result I�ve almost stopped using their API in favor of shopzilla.com. The fastest response time I ever got from a support question from shopping.com was 5 days. Problems that I reported with productIDs were almost never fixed. With shopzilla I typically hear back within 2 hours. While their product database isn�t perfect, they make the necessary changes fast and have fewer errors to begin with.

November 10th, 2007 at 8:54 am |

LauraMandzok said

I admit that I�m pretty new to the Comparison Shopping Engine industry, having come from the world of PPC.

With that said, the level of service - in all respects - I�ve received from Shopping.com has been absurd.

Reporting is definately subpar and there have been many instances in which my support inquiries have just been flat out ignored.

I am not surprised that this badly mis-managed company can�t handle new business. It�s really a shame.

November 12th, 2007 at 8:37 am |

search_junkie said

I got it! I just realized WTF is up with SDC. I can�t believe that I did not realize this earlier! SDC is own3d by eBay right, so maybe eBay is trying to build the worst CSE ever so that more shoppers will use eBay. Damn, I am so good sometimes that I scare myself.

November 12th, 2007 at 10:41 am |

jordanblum said

Shopping.com had a known bug in their system with Yahoo stores that went ignored for months and cost one of my customers a ton of cash. Instead of displaying the Sale Price, Shopping displayed the Regular Price. I emailed them three times and on the third attempt finally got an email back telling me they were working on it. I asked for a credit, they ignored my requests. Their service stinks and the quality of their traffic is even worse.

November 15th, 2007 at 12:41 pm |

Shopping.com - There are always two sides to a story | ComparisonEngines.com said

[...] As I said last Friday, Shopping.com is no longer not accepting new merchants until January 1, 2008. [...]

December 24th, 2007 at 5:50 pm |

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