Spencer-Brookes Designs review for SC Product Options
Oct. 11, 2018
On the surface, this app seemed perfect for our needs. We have almost 1500 products on our website, which grows daily - 95% of which require some form of customisation. Until recently, we had always used the free Infinite Options app. Which was perfect for most of our needs - however with more new products, came more new variants and options required. Including the need for colour swatches, and adding additional costs for add-ons. Unfortunately the free app wasn't built for this, so we were directed to the BOLD Product Options app by Shopify as an all-in-one alternative. After testing the app on a series of products, and with some of our account customers, we found that we required the premium plan for the specific option sets that we required. Whilst expensive, the feedback from our customers during our initial trial period was very positive, so we decided to keep it, and spent the next two weeks migrating all of our options over to BOLD. It was then that we started to find the problems. The first issue was that products kept "forgetting" their options. We initially thought that perhaps we had accidentally missed the product off during the migration. But it started happening more and more, and then we were finding that the same products that we had re-added the options to, and checked to ensure they were definitely working the previous day, suddenly had lost their options again overnight! When we questioned this with the customer support, all we received were screenshots stating that it's working now.. Well of course it is, we went in and re-added it already whilst waiting for your reply! The question to you was WHY was it happening?! To which, we still haven't received an answer for. The next issue came when our shop team started to process the orders that had been placed with using the new options... What a MESS! When you log into the Orders admin panel, and view an order, for every option that you have set up, the app creates FOUR lines underneath the product! So when you have a product that has say, three different options to choose from, you will have twelve lines of text underneath the product in the order screen! When we questioned this with BOLD, the reply we got was "The way our app sends the information to Shopify, is like that. The item lines will go to the order page this way". I'm sorry, but the FREE alternative app manages to only add ONE line of text per option used, i.e. the actual option itself. And manages to hide all of the system information in the background - so why can't BOLD? This makes reviewing orders in the admin panel extremely difficult, as there are so many lines of random strings of text and numbers below each product that you have to sift through just to see what your customer has ordered. The next mess was found when attempting to print the customer invoices... Our average customer purchases around twenty items at a time. Each item with at least one variant/option that needs to be selected - sometimes upto ten options. So if the app is adding four lines of text per option used, and the customer has ordered twenty plus products, you can imagine how long the invoices were!! Not to mention the fact that if you use any options where there is a price increase, the app adds the cost as if it's a new product! We offer engraving for an extra 50p on the majority of our products. So as an example, our customer orders twenty items, each with at least two options, that's eight lines of text underneath each product, plus a further twenty lines of "Add Personalisation - 50p" piled together at the top of the invoice!! They're not even listed underneath the product that it relates to! Again, we questioned this with BOLD, and were provided a link to some code that we could use to remove the additional lines in the Order Printer app... The resulting "invoice" was the most unprofessional looking invoice that I had ever seen! It looked like I had quickly copied and pasted the customer's order from my screen into Excel, and pressed print. It was awful. I then spent the next 30mins playing around with the code in a vain attempt create a more professional looking invoice... Some of my changes worked. Basically, adding a header and footer to the invoice. However the way that they have setup the table, you cannot add/remove/move any of the elements shown. So we are now stuck with showing "Quantity x1 £2.50, Price £2.50". Why we cannot just show "1" followed by the line price, I have no idea! This also doesn't help when trying to quickly review an order in the admin panel - so you HAVE to go into the Order Printer, and print the invoice just to get a cleaner view of what your customer has ordered. Another couple of emails have been sent to BOLD requesting better support. But so far no response. And don't even bother with their live chat! Everytime I've tried so far, with ANY question, they just tell me that they have to submit a support ticket.. Which takes around 48-72hrs to look into. Not exactly helpful when you're trying to process customer orders at that moment! Considering how expensive, and how heavily marketed and well-reviewed this app is, I would have expected a much better service both from the app itself, and the developers when a problem occurs. Will be uninstalling this app as soon as we've finished testing one of the alternatives!
