tenesha2323

Hi there,

Thank you so much for your speedy response.

So over the last 24hrs we have implemented a video that I found on Youtube which seems to work great with the WP Import All plugin (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgY_IKKrYBw) . It said that we should make all the stock quantities 0 and then import it with the fresh feed to only update the SKU related to the stock quantities which worked great. As soon as we receive the feed from the supplier we update it, we have also now started resyncing it twice a day so that the quantities are more accurate. We have compared the prices and the information from the supplier to what we have showing on the website which is fine. We also do not have a problem with duplicate products. I am actually not able to do anything like this which is why I rely on the developer so heavily. He is really good at what he does, the issue we are now having is from the supplier with the API which is why I am looking for guidance and a solution as this one also has him wondering.

Also we do have SKU’s for all the products however it is hidden to the public as e-commerce is extremely competitive over here and there is a huge company called takealot which will beat us to our prices every time even though we only add a 10% mark-up on our products. If the client googles the SKU, it will just lead them straight to their page which is why we were trying to avoid sharing that.

Now the issue is just with the API from the 1 individual supplier.
The main issue with this API is that when we received the token/link to it. We received all their products which were over 10 000 products. Everything looked great however whilst sourcing images for each item, we notice that there were products that could not be used on our site. For example travel, service, audio visual installations that had some ridiculous amount to them (not too sure how they are able to give a price when each job would be unique but that’s besides the issue) so we decided to remove all of those manually.

Then we started receiving sales which was amazing however they were all from the same supplier ironically (the one with the API). One evening someone placed an order for a projector, it showed 58 units available so the first thing in the morning when the supplier opened, we called to place the order with them however they advised that there was actually none in stock so we assumed that maybe someone just purchased everything and we were too late. A few days later, another customer placed an order for head phones, it said that there was 405 units available, again we called the supplier immediately as we receive an order (it is easy to manage as we are extremely new to the ecommerce industry as we only launched the site late January 2021 which is why we are trying to fix all the kinks we come across ). Anyway, we called the supplier and they again had none available, they advised that they have been out of stock for a while now and not sure why it shows on our side that we have that quantity available. I then manually changed the stock quantity in the back end to reflect 0. This then happened a few more times before we said there is definitely something wrong with the API.

You can imagine how frustrating this is for us and how detrimental it is for a new business that is trying to get their name out there and has to constantly refund the clients especially when we have spent tons on google ads and SEO’s. We are spending more on admin fee’s and banking charges refunding people than actually making anything. We literally put a pause on all of these as we are too scared now to see when someone places an order. Also all that spent on getting a good ranking has gone to waste.

We contacted the supplier several times who insist that it is an issue on our side. They are so unhelpful and blatantly ignoring our phone calls and emails to try and resolve this. The worst part is that we actually do need them as they sell majority of the products that clients want. Every time the supplier is saying that we have the correct API and that out of 100s of their clients we are the only one’s experiencing this issue but when we spoke to someone else in the company who tried to assist us, she also saw what we saw as we picked up on our site that we were selling a Samsung Sound Bar from them for R1. Obviously we know that is instantly incorrect as it also said that there were 14 units available and when we phoned them to ask about it, they said that it is out of stock and was actually a promotion connected to a TV deal or something and that apparently we were not suppose to see that, including the travel, service fees, labour, installations etc. We have refreshed and resynced countless times as that was their solution but those items still appear.

Is it really an issue on our side as it is an API system which should be automatically updating the stock quantities as they sell out or is it their API that is an issue and they just don’t want to assist us with resolving the issue? I am also assuming that the product is not being removed if it becomes discontinued. This why it is so frustrating that it shows that there is stock on our site form certain products however we do not know the true quantity of the item until we call that supplier to find out and 99.9% of the time, it is out of stock. We also we do use separate imports per vender.

Hope this explains the issue better.