Light at the end of the tunnel

This is the stuff my nightmares are made of. Repetitive tasks.. done dozens and dozens of times over and over. Click click click, drag, click, enter, tab, repeat until hands cramp.

This is where the errors creep in. The tiny mistakes that at best, slip by unnoticed in a group of vendors done right.. at worst that one tiny error has been repeated 104 times and I have to fix them all, one by one.

As far as I can tell, ALL SL vending systems suffer similar issues. Whether it's HippoVend or Caspervend, or Jevn or even the SL Marketplace.. setting up large numbers of listings in one sitting is beyond tedious. All the systems have their problems... lack of ability to do search and replace on a single setting across all vendors, lack of global settings for things like profit shares, or whether to allow the customers to redeem gift cards at the vendor, or whatever feature.

Some things, you really do have to go in and edit every single listing for every single vendor, one at a time.

I've been through that several times today. While I was thankfully able to devise ways to shorten the time spent, I couldn't avoid having to edit all the vendors, several times.. and even re-packing the vendors a second time when I noticed a last-minute oversight.

But they're done. In the boxes, loaded and prepped. I've contacted a couple of affiliate locations where I've noticed the most delivery issues with the old vendors, and I've asked them if they'd like to test the new ones in their locations for a week or so.

I don't expect problems, but if they occur, I want to have only a small cluster of affiliates affected, so I can easily replace them. If things are still running smoothly on the new system by next week at this time, I'll send out the vendor pack to everyone.

If any of you WOULD like to be part of the pilot program, and test the new vendors, drop me an IM inworld!

Meanwhile, I sorely need a break. (and my "CTRL-V" fingers do too!).