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posted on September 23, 2002 04:43:48 PM new
At the end of the checkout it ask the buyer to print out a copy for reference but when buyer's try to print the completed checkout it doesn't fit on 1 page. It cuts off the final price and shipping amount. I was having a few complains about this when buyer's send money order with the printed checkout. Can AW please make it fit on 1 page please?
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ChristopherCS
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posted on September 23, 2002 05:08:14 PM new
Hello,
Thank you for the feedback on this issue. We have passed it along to the product development team for further review.
Christopher
Got Questions? Check out AuctionWatch.com\'s Customer Service center at http://www.auctionwatch.com/service
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magazineframes
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posted on November 21, 2002 06:59:31 AM new
I would like to followup on this problem. I have also had a couple of buyers complain about this problem. Since the printing of this form for the buyer's records and to include with their check or Money Order is one of the lasting impressions that our customers have about us and AuctionWatch it seems resolution of this problem should be escalated. Image is everything. We can perform well, but if what our customer's remember about us is a shoddy printout, then we have lost.
It's been almost two months since this was reported (since the forums don't have a search function I can't check further - that also is needed), I don't know if it was reported earlier.
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retrobargains
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posted on November 22, 2002 03:17:17 PM new
This is an interesting point.
I have had a few customers print out the checkout screen and mail it with their payment... however... in each and every case where this has happened the printout is obviously from an older (much older) dot matrix printer. Nothing wrong with that, but the printouts themselves tell the tale.
I just went to a very old computer system that I have and performed a random printout test of the Checkout Order Confirmation page and it printed perfectly.
The computer is a Pentium I, 300mhz, Windows 98 with an old Epson 440 inkjet printer. Now this system is ancient compared to today's systems - but using Internet Explorer window print function it translated everything correctly with no problem and printed out the page just fine.
My point here is that yes... how "our" printouts look is extremely important, but it is impossible to know what each customer is using in their toolbox to print with. Some customers will not have the proper settings on their computers to enable them to print a "clean page" from a web browser... no matter what is tried from the engineering standpoint.
Support for very old systems is difficult and costly and most, if not all, large companies and vendors determine a cutoff point for providing support for their own software and products. There's a reason. There comes a time when the older systems just can't perform to the current standards of technology.
As an alternative to this printout problem a lot of sites offer a TEXT ONLY printout button on the page just for those people that have the older systems or just don't want to waste the ink printing all of the graphics.
I would suggest to AuctionWatch to provide this Text Only button on the Checkout page. With one click the page is translated to text only and presented in the browser window where the customer can print it out.
Even with this solution there will still be customers that won't have their browser's print functions set correctly and the page will still be wrapped or cut off. What is one to do? <grin> (I know... not everyone is a computer tech... but I bet they know one!)
What is that phrase? "The customer is always right"? Well... sorry, that's just a myth. (It is true to a point... sometimes the customer is right....right out there in left field!)
The key is to "lead" the customer out of left field and into a solution that is workable for them... in this case it may be an optional TEXT ONLY display button. Give them a chance to fix it themselves if they didn't get a proper printout to start with.
Just my two cents worth.
NOTE: Trademarks mentioned above are the property of their respectful owner and are only expressed here as an example.
Greg Williams
Retro Bargains
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magazineframes
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posted on November 22, 2002 04:50:30 PM new
I agree with retrobargins's suggestion for a text only print function but there is also no reason that they can't fix what they have now.
I was curious about the suggestions about older printers so I decided to do some testing myself. I allow users to pay direct through paypal rather than using AW and then complete the Checkout myself. Some users just don't want to use a checkout form and I don't want to alienate those that don't. I just had to complete a checkout page for a paypal payment that came direct and tested the confirmation page by printing it on an HP LaserJet 5 and a Canon S9000 printer. Both are fairly recent printers. And neither printed correctly. Both had the right portion of the page cutoff. I also looked at a number of pages that were mailed to me with payment. 13 out of 17 were printed wrong. That's over 75% bad. So its not just old printers, it's all printers.
Several people had written in the amounts that were cut off. And two had nasty notes written in about this. To quote one the notes; "Executing this form was a waste of my time. Why does it print this way; do you know?".
I don't like receiving notes like this especially when it is something so easily fixed. There is no reason that they can't fix this. I'll even tell AW the fix.
They are using an HTML table to display the checkout results. The table is sized too big. On line 40 of the page source for the checkout page I looked at is the HTML that the are using for the table that holds all the information for the page and it is:
<table width=750 border="0" cellspacing="0"
A table width of 750 is just too large. The size of the table should be 600 or 650 maximum. I took that page source, modified it for a width of 650 and it printed fine on both my printers. It took about 2 minutes to change this.
I don't know if AW reads posts after it's inital post to a subject. If I don't see an AW reply within the next couple of days, I'm going to repost this as a new post.
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retrobargains
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posted on November 23, 2002 09:55:24 AM new
That's a great point magazineframes!
I agree with you. The table width of 750 is too large. At your prompting above I looked at the HTML for the checkout page and found towards the bottom another reference to the 750 width that probably needs addressed too. I don't have the line number but here is the code:
<table align=center width=750 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0>
Easy to locate it by using FIND and searching the word width or 750.
This could be an extremely quick fix if it were addressed as a priority.
Greg Williams
Retro Bargains
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magazineframes
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posted on November 23, 2002 10:12:20 AM new
I agree. Maybe if we keep responding to this thread, someone from AW will read this thread and respond to it. How do we AW them to read this?
One of the reasons I am familiar with this problem is that I wrote the shopping cart software for my own web site. One of the pages in my shopping cart is -- guess what -- a confirmation page that the buyer can print out. One of the first thing I did during testing the page was to actually print it out like a user would do and discovered during that process that the page should be no more than 600 to 650 pixels wide.
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SonyaCS
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posted on November 23, 2002 10:46:33 AM new
Hello,
Are you on the final page of the checkout? If your checkout page has a Confirm Order link on it, that is not the final page -- please let us know what exactly you are printing.
Regards,
Sonya
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magazineframes
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posted on November 23, 2002 11:00:18 AM new
We, and buyers, are printing the page titled "Checkout, Order Confirmation". The next line of text reads "Thank you! Your order has been confirmed."
Are we going to be able to get this problem escalated? It's so simple to fix this.
Thanks,
Larry
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SonyaCS
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posted on November 23, 2002 12:08:18 PM new
Hello,
This has actually been raised in one of the other forums. I posted there that I have escalated the issue again. I will keep you posted.
Regards,
Sonya
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magazineframes
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posted on November 23, 2002 01:56:13 PM new
FYI, this problem/bug is also discussion in the Sales Manager Business Edition forum. The tread there is http://www.auctionwatch.com/mesg/read.html?num=15&thread=73136&id=73182.
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null
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posted on November 23, 2002 05:10:26 PM new
wow....i see finally AW is going to step up and do something about this. It's been over 2 months since I first bought up this issue and still nothing has happen. Seems like the only way for AW to fix things is to have alot of complains filed on message board.
I also brought up another thing 2 months ago regarding the invoice/packing slip that AW provided. Why isn't the buyer's email address including on the packing slip? I request that this addition be added but got no reply from AW.
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RetroBargains
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posted on November 24, 2002 11:18:36 AM new
Hello Sonya,
Just trying to catch up here. I was also looking at a completed checkout form: CHECKOUT - ORDER CONFIRMATION
Same one that Larry referred to above regarding the 750 width in the HTML.
Thanks for escalating this important issue!
PS - Looking at that page in the browser the line that informs the customer they can print this page gets lost in the standard fonts on the page. Suggest making this stand out a bit more.
That line reads:
"You can print a copy of this page for your records."
Thanks again!
Greg Williams
Retro Bargains
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magazineframes
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posted on December 9, 2002 07:23:26 AM new
IT's FIXED. IT's FIXED. IT's FIXED.
I tested it this morning and they have changed the page width to my original suggestion of 650 so it's no longer cut off.
Thanks AW.
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RetroBargains
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posted on December 9, 2002 08:28:53 AM new
AWesome!
Thanks AW!
Greg Williams
Retro Bargains
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