Happy New Year! Here is another thread for submitting your comments, feedbacks and suggestions to the OzBargain website. No guarantee that we'll ever respond let alone implementing those suggestions, but send them in regardless.
Comments / Feedback / Suggestions Thread 2021
scotty on 06/01/2021 - 20:44
closed Comments
Is there a way to be notified when a particular item goes on sale? EG; I'm in the market for a fridge, if this particular fridge model goes on sale and is posted as a deal, i get a notification?
You can use search alert — be more specific like including the model number.
[ Suggestion ]
To enhance the competition side of the site, I believe a ‘mark as follow up’ button (along with seen / entered) would be a great addition for things like daily entry competitions etc.
Interesting suggestion. I've often used the reminder function and selected the next day or if weekly the next week.
Ahh that's a great alternative, thanks for letting me know about that!
Yes, but if it's a daily comp then it does require you putting a reminder daily. We'll discuss internally.
slight necroing cause I'm reading through if my suggestion was made.
I have a firefox add-on on called "simple browsing schedule" that lets you make schedules for groups of websites to automatically open.
honestly not the best UI and usability but works well, any daily comps I enter I Just add to a daily schedule I have that auto opens at 7pm or makes a html list on startup if it's not running of "catchup" links
also have it setup for monthly comps (quiliton), weekly comps and freebies (epic) and some webcomics I read that don't have RSS
there may be better ones out there and I only got this one as the previous one I was using wasn't updated for the new add-on system a few years back.
Please see site update - reminders set on daily-entry comps will now notify user daily until closing date.
Thank you for adding that, perfect!
Would OzBargain be interested in creating a 'Reviews' section in the forums where people can post detailed reviews and their experience of popular items that get posted on OzB?
Similar voting process to indicate the usefulness of the reviews and also other buyers can post their comments to discuss products.
I find a lot of people asking about product experience in deal posts and it would be nice to have it in one place rather than trawling through the history of deal posts.
I'm not sure OzBargain wants to get into the review game. I vaguely recall but maybe wrong a post from mods about not wanting to get involved from conversations with ProductReview.
Anyway if you go products page there are summaries of reviews from Amazon and ProductReview - ratings out of five stars and number of reviews with links to individual reviews on the respective websites.
See https://www.ozbargain.com.au/product/eneloop for an example.
Can you filter by $ amount in the search function when searching for deals?
[Site suggestion]
1) Put all replies by other users at the very top of the notifications alert with a line separator for the subscribed deals under the separator
Often times the replies can get drowned out or pushed down by newer notifications deals which makes it harder to find the replies when it is shown amongst the other deals notifications..So something like this would make it much easier for us to see user replies..
e.g.NOTIFICATION ICON
user X reply
user Y reply———————SEPARATOR——————
subscribed deal
subscribed deal
subscribed deal2) Second suggestion is an option in settings that let us
group notifications by the store we subscribed to
e.g.
ALDI
Amazon Global Store
eBay Australia
Epic GamesCurrently if we have a some store subscription to some major stores e.g. ebay, amazon etc..
the notifications can get out of hand and show like 200+ notifications within a day or 2 days etc..
this can get out of hand and the notifications pretty much become somewhat useless since we would only be able to see the last 10 or so deals
and the rest has been buried deep down in the long list of many deals from many different stores we subscribed to..
This means most of the time we just clicked marked as read rather than bothering scroll down the long list of notificationsEven notifications dropdown will only show about 8 notifications..etc..
and when after you click on any of the notifications , it does not show or add any newer unread notifications in the quick down list ..If we can choose have notification grouping by store
at least when we look through the notifications list we can at least find the deals in a particular store we want to see quicker/easierCurrently the notification list is very disorganized mess when we have like a few stores subscribe too.
Notification grouping by store is similar to how windows 10 also groups notification by app etc..
It just makes it more organized and easier to read/manage when looking through notificationsHow much work would it be to have the site switch between the existing light/dark theme based on browser/OS theme awareness via prefers-color-scheme by default?
Examples of other sites doing this:
We actually had that originally but caught too many people by surprise so we revert back to toggle based settings.
what is your thoughts on my notification suggestions above?
put all user replies above a line separator and all deals below it.
This makes it more easier to find the user replies that are mixed in with the deals in the notifications dropdown etcgroup notifications by stores subscribed to.
this makes it easier to manage/read and is more organized when looking at the notifications.
If you have a some stores sub to e.g. ebay, amazon.. notifications can balloon really quickly to like 200+ within 1 or 2 days..
Even windows 10 groups their notifications by apps etc.. rather than just displaying everything in one long list
With the way notifications are implemented in the backend at the moment, it's not going to be trivial to implement. Moreover the majority of users don't subscribe to lots of stores thus complicated notification groups are actually making the interface more complicated than necessary.
@scotty: So is it possible for you to put the user replies in notifications above a line separator and all deals below that line separator?
Currently it is harder to see user replies since it is mix in with the deals, user replies should be put up at the very top of the notifications.In regards to notifications bloat..
you don't need to be subscribed to lots of stores.. just subscribe to two big stores e.g. ebay and amazon that get lots of deals posted regularly..
Within 1 or 2 days, notifications bloat from those two subscribed stores could reach up to 100 to 200 notifications..
You can test this yourself.Not sure what you can do about this issue, maybe you can put settings to allow us set a limit number of notifications alerts number per store can be allowed and the rest is archived etc.
Right now getting alerted that there is 100 or 200 notifications is pretty meaningless for most people
since I don't think people would bother going through 100 to 200 notifications…Also if you look at your own phone notifications or windows 10 notifications, many of them are grouped by the same app and group per day because getting a long list without grouping is very disorganized and makes it harder to read or find what you want to see.
So I think to fix this notification bloat, you can do somethings like
-have a setting users can set to limit how many notifications can be allowed per store
-group notifications by store and group by date (like how phones group notifications by app and date)
Can we please ban resale ticket sites? I see these sites using misleading information such as "authorised ticket on-seller" which is a complete lie. Venues holding events only have one authorised seller (being Ticketek, Ticketmaster ect).
Known scalping sites that should be banned are;
- Ticketmaster Resale
- Viagogo
- TicketBlaster
These scummy sites even purchase Google ad space to get top results when unknown sport/concert event goers try and purchase tickets who Google their event and click the top link being an ad not knowing that they are purchasing from a scaplers website.
Google "guns n roses" and you'll see the top link being an ad from a scapler.
Would be just awesome to have a dark mode toggle for OzB
Thank you..A bit too dark i think.. A greyish tone like this typing text box would be better suited
Would be great if it was possible to hide deals that have "Lattitude Pay" or "LattitudePay" etc in deal title. The existing Hide functionality doesn't allow this, as Lattutde Pay is not a Related Store.
Examples:
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/618391
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/618369
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/618384Also, it is not clear what "Hide NSFW deals" is.
How To: Personalise your OzBargain front page
Part 1: Customising your front page
Title Tags[LatitudePay] should be added and then drag the slider all the way to the left (less).
Thanks. Unfortunately, this doesn't work in cases when more than one keyword is in [ ] brackets in title, e.g. https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/618364 - [LatitudePay, Little Birdie] Philips Airfryer XXL HD9650/93 $389 (+ $50 Philips Cashback & $50 Store Credit) @ The Good Guys
Merged from Sort OzBargain Search Results by Price?
Would be a handy feature when searching out deals with specific keyword to have the results sorted by price or even a price range.
Has this been considered or in the works / possible?I'm not sure how much value that would bring. There are usually only one or two active deals at a time. I am not sure if you would care to see historically low prices displayed first if they are no longer available.
Many deals can be active depending on search query. For example I was searching for 'speakers' but only wanting cheap desktop or pc speakers. In this case there are many pages of unexpired deals with the word 'speakers' https://www.ozbargain.com.au/search/node/speakers?s=t&t=b
Now sometimes these are labeled 'multimedia speakers' instead of desktop / pc or just 'speakers' so finding finding the right search term can be hit and miss, time consuming.
Things would get complicated because the OP would have to add a price per listing. What happens if there are multiple deals per listing?
It would only be useful for commonly searched for items tbh.
Not possible because we don't store prices as separate values in the database and many deals posted on ozbargain has many $x.xx's in the title (not just for the item itself but also for things like shipping costs and prices expressed in multiple currencies)
Oh well no great loss. Just a thought :)
It's a simple regex query to pull out prices from titles. And as far as multiple prices on the title, that can be easily be solved by defaulting to the highest one. There may be some that break the rule somehow, but you know what they say: perfection is the enemy of progress.
Merged from Bargains Near Me
Whenever I go shopping (for groceries or otherwise), I have a peek at OzB for the latest deals at the stores I'm already going to. It'd be great if the site (or the app) had a filter (like the ones for New Deals or Popular Deals) for Deals Near Me. I guess for that we'd have to share our location, and for the site/app to compare that against a table of physical store locations (lat/longs, I guess). Alternatively, instead of sharing one's GPS location, the site/app could also pick up one registered to the user's profile.
This has been asked for before. I guess they decided not to do it
Did you seriously report a forum post as duplicate?? Honestly…
That wasn't me
@Quantumcat: Ah, ok. No worries then. I tried searching for the previous post, to no avail. If it's something that gets suggested often, I guess it's an improvement in high demand.
I think the top navbar (i.e. from Deals to notification bell) text colour should be light. IMO it looks better and is more consistent with the sidebar headers on the right, where it is light on orange, regardless of theme.
I also think the orange needs to be either darker or desaturated further in dark mode. Install the Dark Reader browser extension and compare it with the auto generated dark theme. I think the darker shade of orange from Dark Reader is a lot more pleasant to look at and less eye strainy.
Maybe even make the default text colour everywhere else (i.e. on a dark background, not orange headers) to be a very light shade of grey to further reduce contrast and eye strain in dark mode?
Would it be possible to make grid mode an option for all deal views (i.e. new, expiring soon, basically any of the links under deals from the navbar), not just the front page? Also, why is grid mode not available at all to logged out users? Is setting preferences via cookies not an option?
You mentioned here 8 years ago that the grid view might eventually become the default. Do you plan to do this soon or is there additional work to be done?
Suggest highlighting OP in post comments. There are already highlighted Moderator, Association, Representative in comment. So it is reasonable to highlight OP and it's also easy to implement.
I am pretty sure this comment is highlighted. Notice that light-grey gradient background…
Some people are expecting a small tag next to the username although we are highlighting the OP's (and current user's) comment for many years already, which is already achieving what the parent commenter has requested.
Sorry, I meant like the orange "Moderator" title to the left of your user name.
since many comps are doing referral links these days, would it be possible to setup a Referral entry button under the go to comp button?
after people mark as entered they can add their referral, so the button tries to even out the entries.
this would help boost referal entries and would also allow people who entered without using someone's referral (either as the got the comp in an email or didn't see the chain) to add theirs without disadvantaging others.It would be probably be too difficult and time consuming for a moderator to setup numerous short term referral stores for every competition posted. Would having the comments show newest first instead of oldest first be more helpful?
Fair enough on the moderator overhead, I was honestly thinking of an automated/coded solution but not sure about the backend.
Being able to change the comment sorting would solve that.Just to update.
We discussed the comment sorting and it may be a bit confusing to have the entire site be sorted by oldest and then competitions by newest comment. An automated system for referral is best but there really isn't an automated way to set one up as you have to have the template specifically in the system and ensure that people post the correct links in.
I guess replying to the previous referral link comment with your own referral link comment is probably the easiest. Given the hoops compers have to jump through to enter competitions, this is probably the least time consuming part. Certainly if there are any other ideas especially if other sites have implemented then we are happy to take a look.
And imo, OP's shouldn't be allowed their referral link in the deal description, and should only be in the comments
Is there any way to subscribe to a product?
ie
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/product/iphone-se-2020If I subscribe to a search, I also get a lot of miscellaneous crud
Due to the way subscription events are triggered, we don't have a solution for subscribing to products at the moment.
For now the easiest way would be using an RSS reader to track the product page, or user search alert with the product name as keywords.
Can Search Alerts be moved out of the Events tab and into its own tab? I always have a hard time finding the Search Alerts section because the "Events" title doesn't really accurately describe it.
Regarding the 'sticky buttons' at the bottom of a deal post that navigate through new comments:
the count indicator should be visible within the panel without having to expand the ellipsis to see how many new comments there are.
the prev / next arrow buttons should be stateful and consistent…
- disabled if there is nothing to navigate between
- currently only 'next' does a wrap-around whilst 'previous' just becomes unresponsive when you reach the beginning
- if wrap-around is desired, the icon should indicate we've reached beginning / end and will be wrapped.
once "Mark as Read" is called, the navigation should be updated accordingly and not keep jumping through comments that are no longer 'marked'.
When using the search function on the mobile site, votes for deals are not shown… even when filtering for "Type: Deals".
This gets quite annoying when you're out shopping and want to know if some product is really "on sale" or not, by checking for high voted deals on ozb.As a workaround, I can switch to desktop site, however the annoyance becomes worse!
If I've already run a search from the mobile site, e.g. https://www.ozbargain.com.au/search/node/lego
- when using mobile Chrome's "Desktop site" menu option, it refreshes the page as desktop view, but to https://www.ozbargain.com.au/search/node/ … so my search results are lost and I have to type it in again.
- if I hit the "Full Site" link in the page footer, it's a hit and miss… sometimes the search is preserved as desktop site; other times it takes me to the ozb home page and remains in mobile site!
I've tested on two different Androids… not sure if anyone else has experienced, or can replicate this?
Yep this has always been the case and one of my annoyances. Thanks for bringing it up.
Can we have a "Exclude expired" tick box on Popular Deals page (https://www.ozbargain.com.au/deals/popular) mobile version?
I just noticed that's already been implemented. Thank you!
(Suggestion for competition posting requirements)
Why isn’t it procedure for all of these random company gift card comps that are posted to state what the company deals with in the title, ie. “women’s fashion” or “fitness” etc.
Not every person knows every brand/company and has any clue what kind of product or service the gift card is for by the title and therefore has to click into the comp just to find out if it’s worth the time which in turn is a waste of time if not interested in the products or services of said company.
Just a heads up, the bar at the bottom is inaccessible when scrolling up on a page or when the search bar is shown (as seen in picture) on iOS 15 Safari. Picture
A few of us seem to be experiencing a bug where the time next to our comments in deals it says Clear on 50 min to go and under Comments in my profile it says 51 min to go.
My deals page seems to have turned to s*it lol, as nothing appears in chronological order. Is scotty's clock broken? :)
Thanks, it is being worked on now. Some nodes/comments had an incorrect timestamp (1 hour in the future), the cause of the issue is already fixed. Admins are just looking now at fixing the timestamps on the incorrect nodes/comments already posted.
All fixed now.
Time warp.
I think hamza23 set the timezone to Sol. The time continuum has been resolved back to our earth time line.
Other than that, at least it wasn't a Fastly outage!
Turned out one of our VPS has system time one hour in the future, which we suspect that was caused by that VPS live-migrated to a different host with a wrong hardware time at around 3:33pm AEST, and that killed ntpd. The system time for that VPS has been fixed, and we are working on fixing the timestamp of some of the posts & comments.
Normally system time is always a few minutes late when it's not set correctly and rebooted. So here I was thinking we were having our own Back to the future moment with hamza saying we've gone 1 hour into the future.
Error 502
Bad gatewayError 520
Web server is returning an unknown errorWhose playing with the web server?!
I've noticed there is zero accountability from some users who post 'these are fake' type comments.
Examples from the recent Grundys Shoe x RM Williams thread: https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/629089#comment-10569275
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/629089#comment-10569334The comments were vague in nature, with no evidence to substantiate them. The posters did not follow up either when questioned.
The retailer in question is a brick and mortar store, located in the same city as RM Williams. And they've been around for 150 years. Just seems implausible.
We're talking libel and defamation here. There should be a mechanism that if a comment is questionable, that it gets unpublished until evidence & clarity is provided.
Those cases were against the platform (Whirlpool) and it's owner. It doesn't mean a comment itself isn't libel or defamation.
It doesn't mean a comment itself isn't libel or defamation.
Which in itself requires stupid levels of proof to provide. It's why sites like Product Review are full of shills for positive and negative reviews.
Mods will remove comments for being accusatory when necessary, but I don't believe it's their job to require someone to provide receipts etc. Use common-sense and do your own research
Nope.
Job provider's on the Centrelink/Human Services/Service Australia site has NO comments probably because of this exact high level of proof case.
All reviews even if biased give some level of signal.
It would be great to have totally unbiased reviews but we live in the real world.
No
(Suggestion/feature request)
The competition section has been absolutely booming lately with so many low (monetary) value comps being posted almost daily.
Finding and entering comps is incredibly time consuming even without having to sift through tonnes that you have no interest in and are barely worth the time to enter.
For some of us I mean obviously not everyone - you do you, boo. :-)
So I was wondering if we could please have separate sections created for sorting comps into their prize values such as a low value section for prizes worth under $100 AUD, medium value for $100-500 and high value for anything over $500 with all of them having their own respective RSS feeds.
This is just one example of how the sorting/naming could be done but anything similar would be extremely helpful.
This sorting would only be in reference to the top/first prize's value and not the total prize pool as that could make it too complicated but yeh, it would be great for people to only need to look through the list of comps they personally find enough value in to spend the time, ya know?
Appreciate all you guys do and look forward to reading any thoughts on the matter.
Hi HeelTaker,
Finding and entering comps is incredibly time consuming even without having to sift through tonnes that you have no interest in and are barely worth the time to enter.
Have you considered using the front page to view competitions, rather than viewing all competitions? This only shows 'higher quality' competitions that have received a certain amount of + votes and entries.
You can mark them as seen if you aren't interested in them (under the thumbnail) or mark them as entered if you have entered them, to ensure when you visit the front page next time, any new competitions that you have not seen or entered will be obvious. Some comps might take a few days to hit the front page but this way you will not miss them.
Thanks
Thanks for the suggestion but I only engage with the listings on OzB through RSS which is why I clarified if this new sorting system were to be implemented, every section would need its own RSS feed.
All good, I will just continue sifting until hopefully something is done about it or someone comes up with a better solution than mine.
I thought we had 48 hours to edit a comment unless replied to? My comment wasn't replied to.
FAQ:
How can I edit my comment?
A comment can be edited using the edit button, unless (1) it's been more than 60 minutes since you made the comment or (2) another member has replied to your comment. If you are no longer able to edit your comment, you may request removal using the report button.
What about some google adsense $$$ going to deal posters like on youtube the video posters get a share of the profit if they get so many views and subscribers. Might make better sense than how it is now with Scotty just blowing all the adsense $$$ on pokies and massages.
Something similar has been brought up before.
But it was for logged-in user to also see an advertisement and a percentage going back to development fund for ozbargain.
Mate I didn't vote you down.
The reason for your negative votes is you are offending and not respecting the hard work that the paid workers/employers including Scotty have done for the site.
It is very trolling your comment.
The underlying or core message is sound though.
On competitions, do / could we get notifications on prize announcement day along with the information on where to check?
(if you mark that you entered)
Suggestion / Feature request:
In the Forums, can we please get an additional option under "subscribe" for something like: "Send me Notifications when OP replies to the thread"?
Once in a while there are some posts where we're all waiting to get an update from OP, so I subscribe to these threads, but am constantly getting notifications of other users having a conversation in the thread.
Thanks
This would be a great feature. I kept checking back on that one where OP got scammed out of 100k with the hacked conveyencer. A notification when OP came back to the thread would have been handy.
Transitioning to a different, maybe better business model
What does Scotty want? What does the management want?
Is there is a way to donate money or in kind gifts if ozbargain management doesn't want commission on private transactions so as not to appear to have conflicts of interest.
At the moment I'm thinking that ozbargain is quite beholden to googles interest or advertiser's interest instead of ozbargain members interest.
Transitioning to a donation business model would remove that conflict of interest. Unfortunately few people are willing to donate although Wikimedia and others do survive but they have a larger population base.
If the product or service is free than you are the product.
The conversation media site has been running since 2011 under a donation based model.
More research has to be done.
Donation based model is less lucrative but maybe more influential.
I am ambivalent.
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Merged from Idea - There Should Be an Option to Remind You When Deal That Starts
Idea - There Should Be an Option to Remind You When Deal That Starts
I for one have missed out on a few deals simply because I forgot about them
There is: click the "reminder" button. It's under "Bookmark"
whoops never saw it
breaking TOS of Twitter
Would you say this is breaking the TOS of twitter by asking for follows?
From https://www.ozbargain.com.au/comment/10730300/redir
5 Friends to Tag. :)
If you tag @ozbargainbuzz, happy to reply if needed.
It's tagging, not following…
Ok good point.
Still gray though?
Maybe hide the "top ten search alerts" in the transparency report from the actual search, that way there won't be about 5K emails going out each month notifying people that their search term has popped up in the popular search terms.
[Enhancement] There is a setting for getting us subscribed (or not) to posts as soon as we comment on them. How about making that also valid for voting? Or perhaps adding a link or button for each post entry on post indices (search results or front page) to subscribe to their comments?
This may seem an odd way to navigate information for others, but some of us like to get a bird's eye view before deep diving into each single post. Just marking the ones of interest for subscription is a way of reminding us to go back to it when there's active discussion on it (which is also a good indicator of relevance and bargainess).