Price Retrieval Problem

  • WebEndev

    (@munman)


    11 years, 3 months ago

    I have a template called ‘price’ (template type is Product) that contains this:

    <div class="book-price">Amazon Price: %PRICE%</div>

    I am displaying it in a template like this:

    if (function_exists(amazon_shortcode)) echo amazon_shortcode("template=price&asin='$ASIN'");

    When entering some ASIN’s, no price is displayed. Only on some ASIN’s though. It does work for some.

    For example, it does not work on ASIN’s B008MP38DG or B006HKTCV0.

    I don’t see anything different in these than others that work.

    Any idea what the problem is?

    Great plugin!! Thanks

    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/amazon-link/

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • Plugin Author paulstuttard

    (@paulstuttard)

    11 years, 3 months ago

    Hi,

    Have you tried running those ASINs through the Advertising API Scratchpad to see what price info it returns – sometimes it just isn’t in the database. It also depends upon the locale.

    Scatchpad

    Paul

    Thread Starter WebEndev

    (@munman)

    11 years, 3 months ago

    Hi Paul,

    I did not know about the Scratchpad. Handy little tool. 🙂

    I ran the B008MP38DG ASIN through the Scratchpad and got a valid response with no errors.

    Soooo….. any ideas what to look for next?

    Thanks much for the help!

    Thread Starter WebEndev

    (@munman)

    11 years, 3 months ago

    Hi Paul,

    Correction –

    The response was valid, and did not contain any errors.

    BUT the ItemAttributes for ASIN B008MP38DG does NOT have a ListPrice section. I checked another ASIN that Amazon Link does retrieve the price correctly for, and it DOES have the ListPrice section, with the pricing.

    So what would cause some ASIN’s to have the ListPrice in the database, and others not to have it? Do you know?

    Thanks again for your help.

    Plugin Author paulstuttard

    (@paulstuttard)

    11 years, 3 months ago

    Hi,

    The AWS database quite often does not provide as much information as you would hope for!

    Some things I’ve noticed regarding the price data:

    • Kindle items do not have Offer Prices at all, and quite frequently do not even have list prices.
    • Kindle items that have a price in one locale may not have a price in other locales.
    • Some items are ‘parent’ items e.g. Apple iPad and do not have prices, but their ‘children’ do have e.g. Apple iPad 32Gb White.
    • The default AWS request is for only ‘New’ items which is what the plugin does, the next version will allow you to request for ‘Used/New/All’ items which is more likely to return an Offer Price

    You can always put a price in manually, by adding it to the shortcode (&price=$1.99) but not very satisfactory.

    Paul

    Thread Starter WebEndev

    (@munman)

    11 years, 3 months ago

    Hi Paul,

    I am contacting Amazon Associates about the intermittent and inconsistent missing data in their database.

    I will try to remember to post back what I learn from them.

    Thanks.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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