[Dirk Martin]

I’m shocked that SB support isn’t jumping all over this.
I’m sorry to hear your frustration.

How much RAM is in your machine?
Do you have a LED showing hard disk activity?

How many baseball cards do you have ahead of you?
I’d seriously consider entering them into Excel. With the use of formulas and features of Excel, that would be faster than any other program you’d consider.
Then suck them into Sixbit, and boom….done.

[Dirk Martin]

Please specify your search, and then click the little Advanced down arrow.
Copy your SQL statement, and paste it up here with your reply, so we can take a look at it.

[Dirk Martin]

Boy, this is gonna be like pulling teeth….

What’s the FTP address, to which you’re trying to upload?
What’s your FTP client software?
Is this your first attempt? Or have you done this before, and this is your first time with errors?

[Dirk Martin]

Can you give us a little more info?
Are you doing this on eBay? Amazon? Within Sixbit?
Are you doing this with an FTP client program? Using Sixbit?
Fill us in….

[Dirk Martin]

Maybe I don’t quite understand what you’re asking, but this feature allows you to create a new item on Amazon, via Sixbit.
You fill out many fields, and after successfully submitting it to Amazon, Amazon returns an ASIN.

It supports all of the identifiers that Amazon accepts.
You give it the identifier, as well as the identifier type…..and a bunch of other fields.

If all is good, Sixbit will create a brand new inventory record on Amazon, complete with ASIN.

[Dirk Martin]

In .285, it’s instant.

[Dirk Martin]

Not sure why SixBits would push something out and not work

lol….try working with Amazon variations in Sixbit….

And, yes, I agree, doing it in Seller Central is much, much easier.

[Dirk Martin]

That’s slick, Jim.
You should make a little YouTube video, showing off this trick.

[Dirk Martin]

eBay’s modifications, aren’t gonna help Sixbit’s implementation of variations with Amazon.
The problem is trying to get AZ’s variations to conform to eBay’s……

You’ve had eBay’s variations defined well in Sixbit for a long time, and they work great.
Trying to make Amazon’s variations to look like eBay’s is like forcing a square peg in a round hole.

I honestly think the best thing you could do, is to simply do nothing with AZ’s variations.
Just leave them down in the items grid with all the non-variations.
By bringing child items grouped into detail view (like you do eBay), you’ll literally need to duplicate the entire Items grid.
Any time a user would ask “Where are my amazon variations?”, you simply educate them with “They are in the grid with all the others….simply group by Parent ASIN, and filter by Variation=true”

Advantages:
1) Each variation gets it’s own title…like it should.
2) Each variation gets it’s own allocation plan….like it should.
3) Each variation can also be listed on eBay, with out listing all the children.
4) No additional code to write or maintain….NONE.
5) When additional children are added, on Amazon, they actually come into SB properly.
6) Each variation can have it’s own Organization fields, Spec fields, and Notes.
7) And the biggest advantage: this could be implemented with the next beta…due to #4 above!

Disadvantages:
1) Variations are handled differently in Sixbit between eBay and AZ.

The reason I offer so much push, is because I’m dying to get Amazon’s variations working in Sixbit !!!
And, now, last week I find out that if I edit an Amazon variation child, in Sixbit, Sixbit will change the title of ALL my variations to be the same as the parent !!!!
How on earth did that “feature” get released? Variation Parent Titles, are never even seen on Amazon….and now Sixbit overwrites all the child listings with that title?…wow.

I know…I know….it’s your baby….not mine…..
Amazon support has been in Sixbit for how long now?….and still variations don’t work.
Because you demand similar functionality…..what are we, going on a year now with Amazon variations that don’t work?

Tell you what….how about you remove your current implementation of Amazon variations entirely (they don’t work anyway), from Sixbit, and add ParentID in the Items grid, while you work out the bugs? At least then we can actually use Sixbit with AZ variations, and you can take your sweet time to get them to “look like eBay”.

I love Sixbit.
It’s the best thing I’ve done for my business….hands down.
I use it all day, every day.
But our need for Amazon variations, is even greater.
Our Amazon sales went up 42% when we started using variations.
By using variations, shoppers automatically get exposed to our similar products.
The way your code sits now, Sixbit has done a lot more harm than good, to those listings.

[Dirk Martin]

I fully agree, John.
Case in point….let’s say I go out to Amazon, and add children to a variation.
I’d then go to SB, and delete the parent item, so that SB can reimport it, with the new children.
This is a perfect example of when I wouldn’t want the listing removed from the site.

But, SB’s current behavior is confusing to many people.
They delete an item, only to see it reappear, in 10 minutes, when SB refreshes…..because it wasn’t deleted from the site.

Every time we delete a listing in SB, SB asks us if we wish to disable or delete the listing from the site.
But, when we delete an item….which then automatically deletes the SB listing, we get no prompt.
That’s not consistent.

Every time a listing gets deleted, from SB, we should be prompted with:

1) Do you wish to disable the listing on site
2) Do you wish to delete the listing on site
3) Do you wish to leave the listing running on site

We should be prompted with those 3 choices whether the SB listing is deleted from the Listings grid, or the Items grid.
It would remove all confusion.

You ask 1 and 2 when we try to delete a SB listing, so why not ask the user the same questions, when SB deletes a listing (via item deletion)?

[Dirk Martin]

Are you talking about creating a whole brand new ASIN?…..that new feature SB has rolled out into beta?

I’ve gotten pretty far with it, but then I gave up when all my submissions generated errors.
The gist of it is, you open that large form, by clicking the small icon next to the empty ASIN field.
Then you pick the category for your item….which will then present a shit-ton of fields for you to fill out (in the center pane of the form).

There’s no way to tell which fields are mandatory, which sux, cuz most of the fields aren’t.
But, you spend all kinds of time filling in fields, and then you click the validate button, until it quits returning errors.
Then you submit the form.

Problem I ran into was that after submitting the form, the new item still ended up in the Submissions Errors folder, with an error so cryptic, only Amazon would understand it.

Why I really threw in the towel, was this:
Even if you did get an item to post successfully, you’d have to go thru the whole exercise from the begging, for your next item.
Copying an item, didn’t copy all of those Amazon fields!!

So, I’m back creating Amazon items, using Excel.

Is your experience any better?

[Dirk Martin]

John, can you post the resolution here, when you’ve found it, so we all don’t need to open a ticket?

[Dirk Martin]

Bam is certainly correct.
This is one of the most time saving features of SB, I feel.
I love those snippets and wrappers.

[Dirk Martin]

How can we use SB with Amazon variations, if we can’t even set the variation titles from Sixbit?

I really suggest you guys quit grouping all of the Amazon variations together.
Just leave the variations alone….afterall, on AZ, they are almost exactly like stand alone listings, so just leave them in the Running grid, and the Items grid, like non-variation listings. Then, if we want to group them, give us the Parent ASIN field, and we can group by that.

Rolling Amazon variations up, like you do with eBay variations, just isn’t gonna work, and there’s no need for it.
Explain to me what the drawback would be, with my suggestion?

[Dirk Martin]

Gary is right….but you need to always be sure and shut down the listing from the Listings grid in SB.
If you simply delete the corresponding Item, the listing will indeed be deleted from SB, but not from eBay nor Amazon….which personally, I feel is poor programming.

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