Comments
Anything that's not working or needs improvement, please note it here. General comments are also welcome. It would be helpful if you could also provide your browser/computer information. If you would rather discuss in private, please email me at sacalerts1 (at) gmail.com
Tuesday, Jan 31 18:50:00
Terima kasih! Hope you can handle the humidity there better than I can.
Thanks! All should be good now. I have been hiding out in cameron highlands for a week, but now its time to face the humidity again in Thailand - a little rock climbing on Ton Sai. appreciate you looking after tge site! cheers.
Tuesday, Jan 31 14:47:52
live deals still not updating, and fyi, since i live in a time zone 6 hours ahead of EST, at about 6-6:30am for the past several days, live updates have frozen for a while.
See below.
Tuesday, Jan 31 13:06:06
Live deals are not updating anymore :(
This appears to be a faulty hardware with the hosting company. I have called and they are investigating. For now I made a temp fix to show the live deals, but they will not auto-update. You will need to use refresh. I abroad right now and will be riding a bus across Malaysia all day, but will update as soon as I have internet. Thanks and sorry for the inconvenience.
Saturday, Jan 21 12:58:35
Wish List for Whiskey Militia doesn't seem to update, it lists items from "2011-10-14"
Ooops. Good eye! I have fixed the problem. Let me know if you have anymore issues. Thanks for using/maintaining SAC Alerts!
Saturday, Dec 10 13:48:22
How does one stop participating aside from choosing the "no alert" option?
"No Alerts" will disable any sms or email communications from the website. If you want your account deleted, email me here: sacalerts1 [at] gmail.com with the email address linked to your SAC Alerts account. Thanks.
Thursday, Dec 1 09:27:28
It would be quite cool if you had text alerts by percent off the retail price (say, anything discounted more than 85 or 90%) in addition to dollar deals.
Wednesday, Nov 30 14:24:01
your site has tied up my msn account. cannot read or retrieve or send emails. need help
I am not sure I understand. You cannot use your email account because of SAC Alerts? Can you email me and be more specific sacalerts1 @ gmail. thanks!
Tuesday, Nov 29 06:48:48
The Live Deals have stopped updating. However Past Deals is working just fine.
Live Deals are back up. The hosting service rebooted the server last night and for some reason the live deals daemon was not restarted. I will look into it to make sure there is no downtime if the server is rebooted again. Thanks for your help.
Update: I found the reason Live Deals was not restarted and fixed the problem. It should not go down on a server reboot again.
Saturday, Nov 12 13:25:55
I just wanted to say thank you! I have been keeping tabs on Bonktown both for myself and others, and it was frustrating when I would miss items I was waiting for if I wasn't available to check it for 30 minutes. Your service seems to be both accurate and prompt. Thank you so much! It is saving me a lot of time and frustration.
You're welcome! Thank you for your kind words. They are few and far between on this message board. I relate to your frustrations and they were the spark that created this endeavor. The website is going on two and a half years and has more traffic than ever. Yes! Thanks for using sacalerts and let me know if there's anything I can do to improve the service.
Monday, Nov 7 17:01:43
the wish list is stuck on 10-14-11
I have resolved this problem. Wish list has been fixed and wish list alerts are being dispatched. Thank you for pointing this out. I unintentionally broke it while applying some site updates
Thursday, Oct 27 07:23:28
I am seeing the same problem mentioned below (Monday Oct 3rd 16:14:22) regarding multiple alerts on the Chrome Extension. I see it for bonktown and steep and cheap extensions. It happens almost all day long, every day since I have installed them (3 days now). I am also running Win XP and Chrome 14.
I cannot seem to replicate this problem. Has it resolved itself? I believe frequent updates are caused by the backcountry.com data feeds being out of synchronization. Much also depends on syncing your time with the websites time. Make sure your clock is syncing with an online service.
Sunday, Oct 16 10:51:53
The app is not updating on my iphone (iphone4)
I was not able to replicate this issue. The mobile website as well and the standard tracker are both currently working. Let me know if you experience the problem again. Thanks.
Wednesday, Oct 12 09:33:27
Your Windows Phone 7 app is broken. You need to update it due to the Mango update. Please Fix!!! Thanks!
I have patched the bug and resubmitted to Marketplace on 10/12/2011. The update should be approved and published within a few days.
Monday, Oct 3 16:14:22
The chrome extension pops up multiple alerts at once (one correct and another for some other item). It will also pop up multiple times for the same item during the course of its availability. I'm having this issue on Chrome 14 running on Win XP.
I think this issue is caused by an error in backcountry.com's data feed. Sometimes they will start alternating between two items every couple of seconds, this causes the extension to think that a new item has been listed. Luckily, I've only seen this happen a handful of times over the years.
Thursday, Sep 29 10:40:46
Nice concept here... but none of my text alerts work, both keyword and wishlist. I'll re-verify my #, but any suggestions? Also, what is the correct time frame for constant alerts? i.e. 12am start and 12am end, or 12am/11pm? TIA!
I believe 12 to 12 should work just fine. The text messages are dispatched, but it is up to your carrier whether they are delivered or not. High volume keywords like arc'teryx are usually dropped by the networks as spam. The emails always go through, though they may be classified as junk at first. If there is anyway to tie new email alerts to your phone, this is the most reliable method. Sorry for the troubles and thanks for using sac alerts. Text messages may come through sporadically as well. Most users with issues seem to be on Verizon. I use ATT and most get through.
Sunday, Sep 25 15:29:38
I have had some keywords on recent SAC items that were not alerted. It was for some of the fly fishing gear in the kayak accessories section of dept. of goods. As well as some of the items with the word "down" in them.
Wednesday, Aug 24 20:05:48
Past Deals history is not working properly. It only shows back a few hours for a given DOD property (e.g., SAC). And the SAC plug-in extension hasn't updated for me today. Using Chrome browser on Windows 7. I really appreciate all aspects of SAC Alerts and hope you are able to restore functioning to its previous high quality!
Wednesday, Aug 17 03:19:14
Live Deals is not updating. Need to free up more disk space?
I wish disk space was the problem. Hardware failure on the server. When it was reimaged, the firewall configuration was reset. Took me a while before I could even remotely login to look at the problem. But it's all fixed! Once again, thanks for the heads up. Travelling right now, so this message board is crucial for knowing what's going on with the website.
Monday, Aug 8 21:42:08
i love you sacalerts! love, gwen
let's make babies.
Thursday, Jul 28 19:23:46
It was working great until today. The extensions haven't been able to fetch the deals since early this morning
The product feeds provided by backcountry.com malfunctioned yesterday resulting in the extension being unable to fetch the current deal. All should be fixed now.
Thursday, Jul 28 14:54:28
I'd love to use this extension, but unfortunately it doesn't work for me. My Chrome version is 12.0.742.122 m, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. Even though I have internet connection and restarted my browser, I still receive this error when I click on the SAC extension icon: 'Can't fetch the current deal. Please check your internet connection or try restarting your browser.' Ditto for the Chainlove extension as well. Any help would be great!
Wednesday, Jul 20 12:20:01
You Windows Phone app is 42 seconds behind the website when showing deals. I tried to purchase and it had already closed one deal and moved on to another. :'(
Wednesday, Jul 6 20:10:19
Why do all of my sites show up as My Site? http://screencast.com/t/BwtLwQfEnl This is what my website profiles look like http://screencast.com/t/kJhNHboOrKU
Monday, Jul 4 04:23:51
Awesome site! The history used to show the previous prices on SAC and now it doesn't. I really miss that feature!
Friday, May 6 13:32:53
I noticed a few Wright & McGill items have come up on SAC, but they don't show on sacalerts in the past deals section, nor do they show up with a search of the past deals. I wanted to check on the history of the Wright & McGill spey fly rod and they also just had a fly reel up. Is it an issue with the ampersand(&) in the name? Other than that, thanks for the site!!!
Saturday, Apr 30 01:18:22
Is there a version of the Chrome browser add-on in the works for Firefox? I really would like to use the add-on and the one-click checkout would be awesome. Chrome will not function properly on my computer, no matter how many adjustments or fixes I've tried. This being the case, I can't use the Chrome add-on :( Thank You For Your Hard Work!!!
I wish I had better news, but I have tried to make a Firefox extension and it is beyond my technical expertise. It actually is quite complicated. I can't port the extension to Safari if people are interested, so I hope you use that. Otherwise, there's not much I can do. Sorry.
Monday, Apr 18 10:36:45
What?!? A Windows Phone app?!? You sold out to Microsoft?!? What did they do to buy you over? Give you a HTML t-shirt or something??? What will we see next? An IE web accelerator plugin???
IE has add-ons? Wow. Wish somebody made an add-on for retaining the url you were typing as IE was starting up. Windows Phone 7 is actually very cool and most importantly, very easy to develop on.
Monday, Apr 18 04:37:53
Live deals stopped updating about an hour ago.
It is a billing issue on the server. I have called tech support and the server should be back up by 9:30 CST
Thursday, Apr 14 00:22:05
not getting any text alerts to verified sprint number.
Sunday, Apr 3 16:22:23
Can't verify my phone number (Verizon). It says message sent but my phone isn't getting anything even after hitting resend.
Monday, Mar 14 16:04:19
Live Deals are not updating. Did the logs filled up the server again?
Good guess! ...but no. Looks like the hosting company rebooted the server and killed a bunch of background processes that run the alert/tracking system. No worries though, all is well. And thank you for the quick heads up
Saturday, Jan 15 12:44:36
Live Deals page is not updating for all ODAT sites.
Thanks for the heads up. Everything is fixed. Server logs overflowed again. This website is getting too popular for it's own good. Seriously...
Friday, Jan 14 05:53:05
Haha I second the comment from yesterday. Now there isn't a dedicated winter sport site (let alone 2!), and that's lame.
Pretty soon SAC Alerts will be obsolete.
Thursday, Jan 13 17:00:41
administrator:
first off, clean the topless nymphet comments off of here.
secondly, tramdock died. this is the saddest day since the loss of brociety.
thirdified, loni says hi.
Nymphetes have been removed. Global warming have put brociety and tramdock out of business. hi loni.
Thursday, Jan 13 16:53:12
Tramdock died. Guess it needs to be removed from SAC Alerts.
FML. R.I.P.
Thursday, Dec 9 15:33:18
I haven't received a SMS alert in about a month, but items have been posted that are both on my keywords and wishlists. Why is this? I rechecked my settings and all is right there, a few friends on SACforums have said they aren't getting them either. I love your site, I want for it to work again!
Hey, I apologize for the troubles. Everything is still working for me. I think dollar alerts basically crash the server everything, since in needs to send out like 2000 emails, so I understand if that's not working. If it's just regular items that you're not getting texts for, then can you do a test for me and reverify your number and see if you get a text for that. If that doesn't work, then there might be bigger issues. email me at sacalerts1_at_gmail.com to take this offline
Wednesday, Dec 8 20:06:37
What happened to the historical prices?
You're right, they appear to be missing. Ughhh, this site is falling apart. I will get to it by 2011.
Thursday, Dec 2 10:59:28
yo admin dude. clean up these crap posts and answer my comment! :)
Monday, Nov 22 09:33:40
tough call. i am SUPER fast on my own since i've written local scripts for my side. i really do get most of the DD's i try for. but, its your call. im a bit of a libertarian too so the free market rules. maybe hold of till the new year :)
Thursday, Nov 18 09:50:27
hmmm, buy from the ext. I like it. On the sites if you just hit the buy button it will pop up a selector. Maybe you could just get us that far, it would shave precious time off.
I have implemented this a feature in the new version of the extension where you see all the sizes and when you click one, it automatically adds it to your cart, selects the cheapest shipping option and brings you to the checkout screen (assuming you're logged in), to type in your password and confirm the order...but I am having a moral dilemma. Once I release this into the wild, it will nullify any advantage you might get, because all sacalerts users will have it, but maybe that's okay. Thoughts?
Wednesday, Nov 17 14:42:57
SUGGESTION: a great idea would be to add a button to "Add to cart" on both the chrome extension and the chrome popup/alert. This would be ideal for those super deals that only have 2 available.
This is a great idea. I always imagined displaying all the sizes in the extension and one click puts it in the cart for you ready to check out. I played with the SAC code and couldn't get it to work. Some hidden magic going on when you add stuff to the cart, but I feel much smarter now than a year ago, so I'll give it another try.
Wednesday, Nov 17 12:25:24
actually if you could swap sac and tram I'd REALLY appreciate it. That way WM and sac would be next to each other. The two BC bigboys.
Gotta keep the alphabetical order. There's just no other way. For now...
Wednesday, Nov 17 12:22:30
I do understand the aspect ratio thing, so I FORGIVE YOU!!! Anyways I have scored SO MANY INSANE deals w/your help that I can find a way to rise above it. I have spent 8k or so through here w your affiliate links. I PAY YOUR SALARY BUDDY ---joke-- Bye
When I started the website, I thought I had a business plan. Then I found out the backcountry.com only pays a one time $5 fee for new registered users on the ODAT websites. Now I have a website of SAC fanatics that probably had an account before I ever made this site. FML. I am really glad so many people find it useful and it basically runs itself, so it's here to stay.
Tuesday, Nov 16 20:03:45
Thanks for updating, but the new order is weird. Any way we can throw SaC as a double wide on top and keep the other 4 how they were? Whatever though, thanks for keeping the site
I have restored the original order and find it much easier to follow. If you want me to restore the 2 column order, then you had to click on the ads that were there :). Otherwise, it's bad use of prime real estate and most people have wide screen monitors these days, anyways. Just my 2 cents worth...
Tuesday, Nov 16 15:43:33
glad you dumped bro, but pls put 'em back in the orig order. i cant take it. i get dizzy, feel suicidal. maybe not, but the old way was better!
Hope you're still there...I have restored the order. I myself found it very distressing.
Thursday, Nov 11 12:05:43
Area there any issue with the SAC website and the mobile app for iphone? I cant see any images on my SAC app and the website wont pull up until timing out... i have restarted and tried two other PC's and a MAC computer...
Sunday, Nov 7 06:49:31
All the sites are not updating since early thing morning.
Thanks for the heads up. There is a bug in the code that I have not fixed since last year, that breaks the system during daylight savings time. Everything should be working now.
Thursday, Nov 4 10:41:37
My desktop alert suddenly stopped working today, no reason known and Windows 7 won't tell me. SAC is not able to help on this and don't know the issue with 7 or Chrome. Thoughts?
Appears to be working for me. Are you still experiencing problems? If yes, email me at sacalerts1 at gmail.com. Thanks
Sunday, Oct 3 10:07:15
Live Deals! page is messed up after refreshing itself. Sites are showing updating... and stay that way.
Thanks for alerting me of this problem. I frequently go days without checking SAC Alerts (it's all automated), so it's these bug reports that alert me of these issues. You've saved the day!
Thursday, Sep 16 00:27:34
Loving the frequent reminder of our collective mortality that is the non-existent offer of a Burton Jeremy Snowboard for $233.93. Rhetorical questions: What happens to your Facebook page when you get hit by a truck? Does it remain forever as a digital-snapshot monument to your person, as you were at the time of death? I hope you keep the Brociety section up for a while. We are all Brociety, we burn brightly, then perish.
Thursday, Sep 2 07:34:42
Hey just FYI, Brociety is shut down now, in case you want to reorganize the layout. Thanks for the good site
Saturday, Aug 7 22:10:34
`is it broken?! its been stuck on the same things for two days now.... :(
Fixed. The sacalerts server gets rebooted by the hosting company periodically, at which point some scripts need to be restarted manually. Usually, I'm unaware of this until somebody files a bug or sends me an email, so thank you for helping get sacalerts working again.
Tuesday, Jul 20 19:17:53
I am running windows 7 and have uninstalled the SAC desktop alert from the programs section in the control panel. The SAC alert continues to pop up. How can I uninstall the program?
Wednesday, Jul 14 11:28:39
browser re-direct to buddytrackers.us is still occurring
The problem is now solved. Here is what happened: When I started sacalerts.com a little over a year ago, I wanted to make the tracker update very fast (15s). With 1000 users on the site each refreshing every 15s, the server ran a little sluggish. To fix this problem I mirrored the tracker content on another one of my servers: buddytracker.us. That domain expired a few days ago and broke the system. I have since redirected directly to the server IP and all is good in the world. Thanks for the heads up everybody.
Wednesday, Jul 14 09:31:00
My browser keeps getting redirected from sacalerts to buddytracker.us. Highly annoying, and makes sacalerts useless.
Wednesday, Jul 14 05:14:34
Seems the site domain is expired... Continuously redirects traffic to buddytracker.us . Please keep your great site working! Thanks!
Tuesday, Jul 13 07:40:17
My browser keeps getting redirected from sacalerts to buddytracker.us. Highly annoying, and makes sacalerts useless.
Wednesday, Jun 30 16:29:29
It would be cool if there was an option to have a sound play when a new item appeared just like on the individual sites.
Tuesday, Jun 29 14:31:01
sms messages aren't being sent to my phone but i'm getting emails. i'm on verizon.
Tuesday, May 11 06:38:30
It would be cool if you could set a keyword for any of the sites. not a big deal, but makes managing the keywords list easier. Also, the mobile version of the site kinda sucks, and that's when it does work.
Tuesday, Apr 20 07:05:52
Past Deals are not showing for any items past 11:00 PM last night. In another problem possibly related to this, I did not get an e-mail nor an SMS for an item that came up this morning.
As far as I can tell, this is a glitch with the Steep and Cheap RSS feeds which provide the information used to populate the past items list. When they fixed their issue, SAC Alerts starting recording the items again. Sorry for the inconvenience this cause and your missed alert, but it was outside of our control.
Thursday, Feb 25 12:33:19
For some reason it won't let me select "SMS only" or "SMS + Email" I've put my number in, but it still won't let me pick.
You need to click the Verify link when you enter your phone number. This will send a message to your phone giving you an activation code, that you will then enter to prove that you indeed own this phone.
Friday, Feb 19 11:11:15
By control panel, you mean my account on Steep and Cheap? If I go there, then to "alerts," I still don't see a way to stop the desktop alerts. I found instructions to uninstall at http://www.steepandcheap.com/steepcheap/help/228/Alert-Tools.html#desktop, but they don't work because I can't find that program in the list.
SAC Alerts does not install anything on your computer. It is a web only service, so there is nothing to uninstall.
Wednesday, Feb 17 10:33:46
I want to uninstall the sac alerts, but I can't find it in my control panel or on the C drive. I'm running Firefox in Windows XP. Thanks for any ideas.
If you wish to discontinue receiving alerts from SAC Alerts, simply log in to your control panel, go the the Settings page and select Alert Delivery Method: None
Monday, Feb 1 08:39:55
How do I add an alert for Norrøna? I had one but didn't get an alert for the jacket up recently. I think the 'ø' is messing things up.
Wednesday, Jan 27 16:55:32
How long after I add something to my Wish List or Keywords will it start sending me alerts? I added arc'teryx and patagonia to my keywords and two things have been posted today that I haven't received an alert about.
Alerts start instantaneously. Make sure you have alert start and end time set (12am to 12am will be 24 hours a day), your alert delivery method and gender preferences. Let me know if you still have problems. Sometimes SMS gets delayed because of carrier network traffic, but emails should always arrive.
Wednesday, Jan 27 12:17:11
Are $1 items still being posted? I haven't seen any lately.
Dollar deals are discontinued, but there are still several 95%+ off deals daily. I am hoping to put in an option that will alert you if an item is more than a percent specified by the user (ex. > 98% off)
Wednesday, Jan 27 10:49:29
I cannot get any keywords to save. Every time I add one it does not save it. What Do I need to do?
When you add a new keyword, a 'Save Changes' option should appear under the 'Add Keyword' button. Just click it and it should save. If not, make sure you have javascript enabled. If you are still having problems, drop me an email and let me know what browser/operating system you are using.
Tuesday, Jan 26 06:58:45
Somethings up with the notifications. No message for any of the arc'teryx items or my wish list last night. Email or text. Mine is set to notify me no matter the time. Just letting you know so hopefully other people don't get upset, thanks for your site though it has worked wonders for me in the past!
Thanks for the heads up. Looking into it right now. I still seem to be getting alerts. Is it just the arc'teryx that wasn't sending an alert, or are you not getting any alerts all together. Email me at sacalerts1 [at] gmail.com. Thanks.
Update: If you have not received alerts for the past few days, it was caused by an error in the code which I tracked down on 1/26 around 6PM PST. Everything should be working fine now. Thank you to everyone who emailed information necessary for debugging this problem.
Sunday, Jan 24 14:24:49
Main live deals page is broken. Showing same stuff since this morning. If you go to each site individually, you'll see that a different item is being offered.
Fixed! Log files got a little out of control
Friday, Jan 22 16:44:54
Ill try the "X-person" thing, but "MarmotCrib Tent 2 Person 3 Season & Footprint" came up again, and again did not send a txt. Im not really complaining, just trying to help you better this awesome site!
Friday, Jan 22 10:52:57
Are you sure? Cause this is the second time I have caught a tent on SAC with the word TENT in the description, which is one of my keywords, and I havent got an alert. ;-)
Ahhh! I see. The keywords are only matched in the product title, so if it was the GoLite Shangri-La 6+ Nest, then you would not get an alert because the word tent is not in the title. I like to use 3-person, 2-person, etc as keywords, but even those would miss the GoLite. You can specify specific tents on your wishlist and it will alert you if they are listed again. Sorry for the inconvenience, but matching words in the description would have too many false negatives and would significantly slow the alert system down.
Thursday, Jan 21 20:59:52
Loving SACalerts, now i can finally leave my computer! (I know. Pathetic, right?) But how do I ensure that I do not get logged out of SACalerts during the down time? Thats the whole idea, that I can walk away and still receive TXTs. How long is the inactivity timer?
You don't need to be logged on to receive alerts. You only need to enable them on your settings page and then feel free to log out. You will keep receiving alerts as your items are listed. If you want to discontinue the alerts, simply go to the settings page and set Alert delivery method: None
Sunday, Jan 17 09:00:15
Sorry I missed this in the small print, but can you have a wishlist AND some keywords, or is it just one or the other?
You can have both with unlimited number of keywords and wish list items. Sorry for the confusion.
Monday, Dec 28 20:39:43
Love the site! However, in the keywords section it would be great it you allowed the user to separate the keywords by commas instead of having to create a new entry per keyword.
Tuesday, Dec 8 07:28:23
How about adding how many sold for each item? Example: 33 were listed on Tuesday, December 8th at 9:02 am. 29 sold. OR 33 were listed (29 sold) on Tuesday, December 8th at 9:02 am.
Monday, Dec 7 07:30:41
I can't get the 'Click a row...' to work when searching past deals. Something flashes on the screen, then disappears.
What browser are you using? Drop me an email at sacalerts1 [at] gmail.com. Thanks for testing.
Monday, Nov 30 17:13:42
Mr Sacalerts, it would be nice if there I could search your database of past deals.
Search is now enabled on past items. Let me know if there are bugs.
Tuesday, Nov 24 14:30:09
re: mantras - Consider it done. Actually I've got 2 pair of King Salmon's now. Interested? Kato
Saturday, Nov 21 17:37:17
Thanks for adding FIDO (eh!) and the note for the Hotmail fix (e.g. trusted list).
Wednesday, Nov 18 19:47:10
Please add FIDO (cousin to Rogers in Canada) to cell phone verification.
Added Fido. Let me know if it works, eh?
Wednesday, Nov 18 19:46:35
Cannot create an account via Hotmail. I never receive a confirmation. I've already looked/set my junk filters.
I've had another person report a problem with hotmail. She told me that her settings would delete her junk mail automatically and once she turned that off she could retrieve the email. Maybe add @sacalerts.com to your trusted list? If you still can't, email me at sacalerts1 [at] gmail.com and I'll manually confirm your account. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Tuesday, Nov 17 12:19:50
Mr. Sacalert,
Your past deals time listed is not updating. This caused me to miss out on the $1 Outdoor Research Jacket. It was even in my size.
Kato
If you want to see that OR jacket, you'll have to send me some love on here Kato. But I'll try to get it in the mail to you this weekend. Consider it your wedding gift. Hit me back with some Mantras when I tie the knot.
Monday, Nov 16 14:48:31
The Power Stretch Fleece was a result of an Email alert received on my BlackBerry. Sorry for the late reply.
All the Backcountry websites seem to be down now :-( Maybe I'll get something done haha.
Sweet. I was actually talking to my buddy who works at ATT and he said the text messages are lowest priority in the network. Data gets sent first, so I think email alerts over a data plan is the fastest way to go.
Tuesday, Nov 10 10:34:04
Picked up the Marmot Power Stretch Fleece - $1 due to your alert. Thanks!
Very nice! Email or text message alert?
Sunday, Nov 8 23:35:38
got my Dakine bag today and am totally stoked, thanks SACalerts
Thursday, Nov 5 11:56:20
It appears that there is a problem with the live deals page. The deals revert to the previous ones with the text "updating..." instead of a countdown.
The following product would not enter into the database, so the tracker did not recognize there was an update. I think I have solved the issue and all items should be appropriately logged. Let me know if you see the tracker error out while updating again in the future. Thanks.
Wednesday, Nov 4 06:41:26
Just wanted to comment on how the site flows. I'm impressed! I'd like to comment on on thing, however. In the past items list, it says how long it took for an item to sell out, but this doesn't always seem accurate. For example, on brociety there were approx. 90 items left when time -30 min- ran out. In the past items menu, it had for that particular item "sold out in 0:03!!". Not sure about the discrepancy?
What the item sold out means is that the listing ended before the listed time (I assumed this would only happen if an item sold out), however, the websites did something funny this morning where they would list an item for a couple of seconds, then change the item, then flip it again over and over, so the history is actually a true representation of what was going on on the website. I haven't seen this before, but it might undermine the alert system as each item switch triggers an alert.
Tuesday, Nov 3 11:14:27
Obviously, the TITLE tag needs fixing (JUNK) on the Past Items page. Awesome features, though. VERY nice. Thanks for your work.
Title is fixed and the Past Items are now live. I will integrate the alerts as soon as I consolidate my various databases. You will be able to specify alerts for a specific size soon. Giddy up!
Monday, Nov 2 18:48:33
The new item history looks fantastic. Very useful. Nice upgrade!
Sunday, Nov 1 22:35:51
heh my girlfriend has a Verizon phone so I've been using her for that! But so far Rogers has been anything from 1-2 minute delay from the item start time, which isn't terrible. It was good enough for me to snag an Alpha SV large today :D been waiting 3 weeks for that.. soooo happy
Could you add Telus to the list as well? I have a couple friends asking. Thanks for everything!
You got it buddy! It's in there right now. Hope the delivery times are faster. Let me know if they need anything else. And you better put something on your Wish List for the gf after using up all her text messages.
Sunday, Nov 1 10:20:37
I appreciate your quick response to this issue. I will continue to be a loyal SAC Alerts user!
Friday, Oct 30 08:24:06
How about a super secret part of the website that automatically makes a purchase for you. Then you'd *never* miss a deal you want! haha
I got the Marmot Fleece - $1 this morning. Unfortunately, I was on the order processing page before I got the email alert. Could have been my phone company though.
Originally, I was dreaming of putting a feature in where you just text back "buy" when you get an alert while you're out enjoying the great outdoors, and the purchase is made for you. Then I realized the liabilities behind holding financial data and I didn't want to put a big bulls-eye on sacalerts.com back.
I think in the end, the dollar alerts will only be useful for Whiskey Militia, Tramdock, Bonktown, (the less trafficked sites in general) or for a random late night item on SAC when you're not competing with 12000 people and milliseconds count.
Thursday, Oct 29 19:54:08
Hi, I was told by IT that Steep and Cheap,Tramdock etc ping our system alot. Is there anyway to back that down so I can follow your sites at work? Thanks, Tom
Tom, I am not really sure what your IT department is referring to. The way my website works, it doesn't ping SAC, Tramdock, etc. I pull the info down to my server and then the Live Deals only pings my own website for updates not the ODAT sites. My webpages do pull images from the ODAT sites, but this only happens when a new item is listed or you hit refresh. Maybe somebody else in your office is sitting on SAC?
Thursday, Oct 29 15:25:54
heh my friend already asked to try em, but if they don't fit I'll let ya know :)
Rogers (Fido), Telus (Koodo), and Bell (Solo) are the three major ones, with their subsidiary companies in bracket.
Thanks a bunch!
I tossed Bell and Rogers in there because someone else wanted Bell at one point. Let me know the delivery time when you validate your number, I have heard Rogers email to SMS can be notoriously slow. I don't know how you went so long without SMS, the best part is not having to be in front of your computer screen and still knowing you won't miss a deal.
Thursday, Oct 29 14:48:17
My 'trick' is to use the 'Live Deals!' section to see when an item is almost done, then go to the site and hit F5 like crazy until the new item is up. If it is between 10am and 3pm PST, you may luck out on a dollar deal. I snagged a pair of $138 climbing shoes for a buck.. although I don't climb, and it was size 9.5 whereas I am 10.5 lol. Buy first, look at what you bought after :p
p.s. any chance you will be providing text alerts for canadian providers (Rogers) in the near future?
If you send me those shoes...just kidding, but not. I'll buy them off of you if you're trying to get rid of them. I will put Rogers in tonight, look for it in the Settings tomorrow morning. Any other big cell providers you use up there?
Thursday, Oct 29 14:25:52
would you be your own first user? because on the SAC forum you said you finally got a deal yesterday. make things clear, ted pitrowski or whoever you are
I think you're talking about the Cleansnipe guy (IskiPow) that said he gets dollar alerts for every item. I just got a little heated because he was pretending to be a third party promoting his own website and bashing SAC Alerts (you can reread the posts, it's all there). I apologize for my actions. Let's just leave it in the past and you're free to choose my alert service or Cleansnipe's, or both and see which is faster. And I'm not sure who the first user to score a $1 was, I was just referring to the entry below.
Thursday, Oct 29 13:49:59
1 Analog Payton Pant - Men's
Platoon, 28 $1.00 $1.00
Economy (10-15 Days) $6.51 $6.51
muwaaahaaahaaaaaa THX
YES!!! It works! But I still think it needs a little more work before it's fast enough for SAC. Back to work tonight...
PS. email or text message? who's your service provider?
Thursday, Oct 29 09:21:14
Is there enough time to go from the sac alert page to the item selling for a dollar? I haven't been able to snag one yet. Frustrating because I've been watching it constantly. Is the dollar menu is over this month???
Probably not. If you're watching the Live Deals, I update my database with the latest product every 5 seconds, however, your browser refreshes the items every 15 seconds (this is in order to be kind to my server, having 500 people ping it every second would kill it). Therefore, the maximum possible time that you would wait is around 20 seconds after the item (I might retrive it to the database up to 5 seconds late, then you can wait a maximum of 15 seconds for it to appear) is listed. I might bump the refresh rate up to 10 seconds and watch my server catch fire in a little bit, so if the Live Deals start acting up, let me know. Okay, math class is over.
Not sure when dollar deals end, Backcountry said "when all left overs are gone."
Thursday, Oct 29 06:21:17
wow, that was fast!! the $1 sunglasses were already gone when I got to SAC.
Took about 26 seconds from dispatch to delivery to my phone. Alert went out at 06:19:05 PST
Thursday, Oct 29 05:49:37
thanks for setting this site up! i use to to keep track of which site is almost sold out of an item, and when the timers have almost run down. when it gets close i open that page and monitor it directly from the s&c website or w/m website. i've gotten two dollar deals so far.
Nice! If we only didn't have to work so hard...
Thursday, Oct 29 05:36:20
The only way I've been able to win $1 items is by watching SAC all day long...I've been lucky enough to win about 8 items so far, but in general, items are gone in less than 30 seconds and I've never even been able to get to the site in time when I get the e-mail.
I rewrote the mailer daemon last night so the alerts get dispatched within 5 seconds. It used to be around a minute before. Hopefully you'll notice the improvement in alert delivery speed, though it might still be too slow for $1 items. Don't worry, I still have a few more optimizations up my sleeve...
Thursday, Oct 29 05:14:19
If you want a $1 item then you have to stay loggin in all day and keep watching. I thought it was impossible for the first week, and then i won 2 in 1 day!!!!!!
Agreed. I think the only thing these $1 alerts will be good for are items that are listed in the middle of the night or on a site other than SAC because they sellout slower. Steep and cheap just has too many serial buyers on it.
Friday, Oct 16 17:21:34
text message verification to tmobile doesnt work. tried yesterday and today
Unfortunately, there is not much I can do about this issue. I send the alerts through email to a providers sms gateway, which sends these emails to your cellphones as text messages. Sometimes these gateways become delayed, fail or just don't seem to work. This issue eventually resolves, but text messages will either be delayed or lost. I can work on a system which will alert you of delays, but I cannot resolve them. That's up to your service provider.
Wednesday, Oct 14 22:19:50
None of the 'Add to cart for 40% off' links seem to work. They all say they are not valid discounts once you put the product in your cart.
I will have to get in touch with the backcountry.com people to answer this issue, but I have also noticed that the coupon doesn't work for items that sell between 50 and 60 percent off on SAC.
Wednesday, Oct 7 11:02:10
The live deals haven't updated in about a half hour.
Sorry guys, unbelievable server load last couple of days and my hosting company won't upgrade the kernel memory needed to keep it running. Moving to better hosting soon, but for now my sincere apologizes. It will be resolved when the server is upgraded. Thanks for being patient.(Also bumped the refresh rate on the tracker from 15 to 60 seconds temporarily to ease server load)
Tuesday, Sep 22 02:57:35
Had bodyfit260 as a keyword and last night it appeared but no alert sent, is there a discrepancy with keywords that have numbers?
The alert should have gone out. Two things that might have gone wrong: the item was listed during a time when you have alerts disabled (check your settings). If you only receive alerts through text message, there are intermittent service outages (beyond our control) with the service providers (lately with ATT) so your text message might have been dropped. Hope this helps and sorry you missed your item.
Tuesday, Sep 8 19:27:46
If I check the "only men's gear notification" under settings, will I still be notified of "unisex" items such as a backpack or tent?
Yes. You are always notified of unisex items. Gender preference only refers to gender specific products.
Thursday, Sep 3 15:23:49
the verification to att doesn't work
Sometimes AT&T text messages are delayed by your provider. Wait an hour or so, and try verifying your phone number again. Email me if you still have trouble.
Thursday, Aug 27 21:26:22
I want a "not" keyword! A way to exclude words from my notifications. eg. I want rock climbing gear, so my keyword is "rock", but I get more notifications for "rock sleeping bag" than for proper rock gear.
There is now an option to stop future unwanted alerts. The alert email contains a link that allows you to opt-out of future alerts for a particular item.
Sunday, Aug 23 19:49:32
I have the same problems with adding in a keyword with IE7 and Chrome. Nothing happens when I click on it. I am a new user and have nothing in my keyword list.
This problem should now be fixed. Never updating the website right before leaving to climb for the weekend. Sorry about the delay guys. Email me if you're still experiencing issues...
Friday, Aug 21 09:52:28
Cannot add a keyword. Link does nothing. Tried it in IE7 and Chrome.
Are you still experiencing this problem? The added keyword textfield now appears on top of the list to provide access without needing to scroll to the end of the list. I highlighted it for easier identification.
Friday, Aug 7 09:50:39
I see the wrong (and too high) prices, both on the wishlist and for current deals. So a shovel is displayed as $17, when I click on it, it is really $12, etc.
I had assumed that everytime an item is relisted the price would be the same so I only updated the Qty in the database, but I think SAC might vary the prices too (which is weird). I am now updating prices as well. Let me know if the issue has not been resolved.
Sunday, Jul 26 17:10:30
when you put in DC (as in the brand) as a keyword it doesn't alert you when a DC product comes up
Good catch! I checked the code and for some reason keywords had to be at least 3 characters long. I changed this to a minimum length of 2. DC should work now.
Friday, Jul 24 04:44:09
Anyway to remove keywords?
To remove a keyword, simply delete the keyword text in the text box and click "Save Changes". This should delete the keyword from the list.
Thursday, Jul 23 15:38:11
Minor mail server issues. Alerts around 3PM PST today were delayed approximately 30 minutes.
Wednesday, Jul 22 04:39:14
Can't seem to add an email address or modify the email address associated with the account
Because the email needs to be validated to ensure we don't solicit unwanted mail, you are unable to change the email address. It uniquely identifies your account. But I don't see why multiple email addresses shouldn't be allowed, as long as they're verified. For now you can create another account with your second email address
Tuesday, Jul 21 12:09:43
never mind, I'm an idiot
I'm guessing you found the current deals link in the nav after you log in. I should probably just make this available on the main page as well, so you don't have to log in to preview current deals.
Tuesday, Jul 21 12:05:31
It would be sweet if you could show all the items for sale at once.
Tuesday, Jul 21 11:26:50
Could you filter products by gender? I don't care to receive emails about men's products.
Done. Set your gender preference on your Settings page when you log in and no longer receive unwanted gear alerts for the opposite gender.
Tuesday, Jul 21 05:05:02
I am not receiving an e-mail to confirm my account.
This might take a while or it might end up in your spam filter, so check that too. Drop me an email if it never comes and I'll hook you up.
Monday, Jul 20 13:41:31
I would like to see a delete account option in case I want to reregister or remove my data from the system.
Monday, Jul 20 13:40:58
Text message alerts going to T-mobile users are sometimes delayed for long periods of time.