Magento 1.9 – Product Stock Alert Sent Only Once Without Unsubscribing

alertemailmagento-1.9productstock

Why the Product Stock Alert / Notification is sent only once even when customer won't unsubscribe from product's alert?

Example situation:
Customer subscribe to receive notification about Product A and Product B.

Both comes into stock, he receives email alert as it should be.

Now product A is going out of stock again.

After a week Product A comes back to in stock.

Theoretically – customer should receive notification – he didn't unsubscribe from that product's alert.

While in the real world if the customer wants the notification he has to subscribe to the product again – why?

Considering that the table product_alert_stock has a column called send_count – which's counting the emails sent but only if the customer subscribes second time.

If this is a feature not a bug, what's the point of Unsubscribing from specific product alert?

P.S. I know about: Why there is a unsubscribe from product in a product stock alert e-mail? but this not straight answer to my question.

Best Answer

In E-commerce business,product stock subscription one of subscription where customer will get once time notification on once and it is totally differ from newsletter subscription.

In magento,a custom stock notification is maintain by field status of table product_alert_stoct.

When a customer will subscribe a product for stock notification,it value becomes 0 that mean it mail is not yet sended .

Whenever that product stock is come and mail sended it value become 1 that means and customer will automatically unsubscripted from this product stock list.

If same product becomes out of stock and same customer will again subscribe for stock notification then it status value becomes to 0 and send_count value increase to 2 .

And when magento is fire out of stock notification mail it takes those records of the table product_alert_stock whose column value status is 0 and product status is in stock

Related Solutions

Magento – How to Set Up Instant Stock Update Email

I think the best way to solve your problem is setting the sending frequency higher. The sending frequency can be set from the backend (under System | Configuration | Catalog | Catalog | Product Alerts Run Settings), but only to once a day, once a week or once a month.

Now, if you look in Mage_Adminhtml_Model_System_Config_Backend_Product_Alert_Cron, you'll see that that's where the cron expression gets built and saved into the database in core_config_data.

You could modify this behaviour and create an extension that modifies the available dropdown values in the backend. You should add rewrites for Mage_Adminhtml_Model_System_Config_Source_Cron_Frequency to add the options and Mage_Adminhtml_Model_System_Config_Backend_Product_Alert_Cron to build the corresponding cron expressions.

A quick way to change the behaviour, is to edit the record with path crontab/jobs/catalog_product_alert/schedule/cron_expr in the table core_config_data. Most probably you'll find a record in the table with a value like 0 1 * * * (of not, enable product alerts in the backend, change the running time and save the section). You could edit it to match your needs, for instance 0 * * * * to send the alerts every hour. Beware that if you save the settings for the Catalog | Catalog section again in the backend, the custom settings you saved in the database are lost so you should only use this as a temporary solution.

Magento – How to see a list of products that customers have asked to be alerted on

You can show the products alerts statistics in admin for all customers using collection like

protected function _prepareCollection()
{
    $productsTable = Mage::getSingleton('core/resource')->getTableName('catalog/product');
    $c = Mage::getModel('productalert/stock')->getCollection();
    $c->getSelect()
        ->columns(array('cnt' => 'count(*)', 'last_d'=>'MAX(add_date)', 'first_d'=>'MIN(add_date)'))
        ->joinInner(array('e'=> $productsTable), 'e.entity_id = product_id', array('sku'))
        ->where('send_count=0')
        ->group(array('website_id', 'product_id'))
    ;

    $this->setCollection($c);
    return parent::_prepareCollection();
}

It's form the free alerts extension.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Magento – How to Set Up Instant Stock Update Email

Magento – How to see a list of products that customers have asked to be alerted on

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