BCSE cant fix it themselves: point reward sys
 

Goodday readers,

We have a company in Holland ( largest tuning company of Europe ) and use X-Cart for our webshop. Because Dutch people like reward systems we implemented the 'Customer Reward Points System' from BCSE ( BCS Engineering ).

Unfortunately this system has a mind of its own and applies points to orders even though the customer did not want this. Even worse, it takes all the points owned by the customer but it does not give any reduction on the final invoice.

This is the latest state of the reward system, but it has had alot of different issues from the beginning. Everytime we gave BCSE a way to prove that their paid add-on works perfectly, but unfortunately it takes months now and everytime they do something it gets worse or broken elsewhere.

Our business is now suffering from alot of angry customers due to this pointsystem and we have alot of manual work to correct this.

Now we have to options:
1. We build our own system wich now seemed to be a much cheaper solution afterall.
2. We use a little community help to fix the BCSE system because they cant themselves.

Anyone who has had problems with this system and perhapbs has some idea's? Thanks in advance.

Re: BCSE cant fix it themselves: point reward sys
 

I believe the OnSale module from AlteredCart.com may be a better solution. Bill's products are very well developed, and he provides top-notch support.

Here's the feature I believe could replace your points system, in bold, plus the benefit of all the other features of that module:

Just a note, another feature is the ability to apply multiple coupons at checkout, and the customers of course have the ability to determine *when* they want to apply a coupon.

Re: BCSE cant fix it themselves: point reward sys
 

Moving to Third Party Add-Ons

Re: BCSE cant fix it themselves: point reward sys
 

Sounds good Intel352. I'll check this out later!

@balinor: my bad!

Re: BCSE cant fix it themselves: point reward sys
 

We too use the Rewards Points mod - and as you say it has a mind of its own.

We have been waiting for a reply and a fix from BCSE for over a month

Re: BCSE cant fix it themselves: point reward sys
 

Ouch, I just purchased the BCS reward system. are we saying I should hold of installing it.

It has always worked well for me on the BCS site where I buy a large number of my mods from.

Any comments?

Re: BCSE cant fix it themselves: point reward sys
 

If you haven't had any problems with the mod, then go ahead and proceed with the mod, as you don't have any of the same complaints as others (I think it's often a matter of expectation for what a mod is supposed to do)

Re: BCSE cant fix it themselves: point reward sys
 

Thanks Jon, I am a big fab of BCS and use their points to help subsidise all my mods.

From what I see of the mod in action on their site it is a fantastic for repeat business and customer retention ( like it retains me).

Re: BCSE cant fix it themselves: point reward sys
 

exactly Paul, I'm not saying it's not good or doesn't do what it's supposed to do, I'm just saying the other users are likely not liking it, because they have different expectations of what they expect it to do. that's all :-)

like they say, can't please every one every time ;-)

Re: BCSE cant fix it themselves: point reward sys
 

My biggest issue with the points mod is the cheap customers it attracts. I can't tell you how many e-mails my clients get from customers saying "how come I didn't get points for this" or "I tried to use a discount coupon and I didn't get points" etc, etc. It is a great tool for increasing sales and encouraging repeat business, but it seems to bring out the cheap people en masse. :)

One other thing is that by default it doesn't display the current point allotment very well. Even on the BCS site when you go to check out you have to go back to see how many points you have first, and then do the math to see how many it takes to pay for your order. I usually put in a static page that explains how the whole point system works, and also display the point totals and calculations throughout the checkout process so people can clearly see how many points they have, how many their order will require, etc.

Re: BCSE cant fix it themselves: point reward sys
 

Yes we can fix it. I'm not sure why you say we can't? Most of the time it's an install issue if there are any issues with the reward points. Sometimes its because X-cart has changed too much in their code from *minor* release to *minor* release that we have to change our install instructions. Sometimes it takes us longer to debug it because we're having troubles replicating the problems due to differences in expectations on how it's supposed to work or differences in code between the X-cart versions.

I'm not sure why you are upset with our support as we have replied very promptly(within a few hours to a few business days) every time except for once when we had server issues. We had to wait over 2 months from our last reply for you to tell us it wasn't working when we had completed some tests and it looked like it was. I see we are continuing to help you out with this and we will continue until it is resolved.

We have over 500 people using this module since 2004 with no problems. We do occasionally run into issues because of changes in X-cart that sometimes take a while to debug. Please be patient as we are working to resolve any issues brought to us for any modules ASAP. We do have a staff of over 9 here, but we are all overworked and try to help as quickly as possible and are continuing to hire more, to help even out the work load.

Thank you!

Carrie

Re: BCSE cant fix it themselves: point reward sys
 

About the mod; How it reacts strongly depends on your mix of additions to x-cart I guess. Therefore, dont be alarmed yet. I'ts just that when you do get in trouble, their service is quite bad. They let you wait alot and when they do something, it usually got worse. Thats my experiance at least.

About cheap customers, Dutch folks are all cheap ;)

Re: BCSE cant fix it themselves: point reward sys
 

Below is a bit of code I created to place a Customer Reward Box on the side menu box with three functions:
1. The first button (link) is for the Customer Rewards point Static Page that explains how the reward system works
2. The Second button (link) is for the Customer Referral Page. If the user is not logged in it displays User Must Log In below the link)
3. If the User is logged in it displays the Current Points Balance.
4. If you wanted to be real tricky you could add a "These points = a $xx discount" But thats way out of my scope. Maybe someone can contribute that bit of code using the varable from the rewards point admin

So, now, you have your available points shown on your side menu wherever you in are your cart. Display this in prominant position.



{capture name=menu}
<table border="0" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" width="100%">
<tr><td>Earn Points</td><td><a href="/store/pages.php?pageid=30" title="Coffee Shrine's Customer Reward Points Programme">{include file="buttons/search_head.tpl"}</a>
</td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"><hr class="VertMenuHr" size="1"/></td></tr>
<tr><td>Refer a Friend</td><td><a href="/store/crp_referral.php" title="Refer a Friend and receive Bonus Points">{include file="buttons/search_head.tpl"}</a></td></tr>
{if $login eq "" }
<tr><td colspan="2"><hr class="VertMenuHr" size="1"/></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2>">(User must be logged in)</td></tr>
{else}
{* Points Added*}
<tr><td colspan="2"><hr class="VertMenuHr" size="1"/></td></tr>
<tr>
<td>Points Balance:</td>
<td><b>{$points.total}</b></td>

</tr>
{/if}

{* End Points added*}</table>
{/capture}
{ include file="menu.tpl" dingbats="dingbats_categorie.gif" menu_title=$lng.lbl_reward_points menu_content=$smarty.capture.menu }You can see it in action at the top right side menu of my site www.CoffeeShrine.com.au

Re: BCSE cant fix it themselves: point reward sys
 

Here's a solution for you:
http://forum.x-cart.com/showthread.php?p=217186#post217186

Re: BCSE cant fix it themselves: point reward sys
 

Service is terrible? I've not see where you've given us any feedback and we have been in communication with you very quickly each time except for one time where we had server issues. We waited for 2 months for you to let us know if everything was working as expected and just heard back from you this month from back in March before that. We cannot help if we do not know there is an issue and when we have known, I feel like we've responded promptly. So I'm a bit at a loss why you think service is terrible? It looks like we have done fixes and are now waiting on feedback.

Thank you,

Carrie