Issues reporting shops on MFI site.

Does anyone else who shops for MFI have problems loading their shop results?

I seems that whenever I am putting in my info from certain cell phone shops, I get a "time out error" at least 4-5 times and have to resign in and start over.

Anyone else experience this?

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Save after each page, then go on. This happens to me, though infrequently. I just do this as a rule to deal with losing less info.

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“Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling."
~Gilbert K. Chesterton

Oh I do save, I learned that after a few reports with them. It's just frustrating and time consuming to have to keep logging back in, go to the submit report page, click the report, click on view summary, ERROR page, sign back in.

I've been working on one for almost an hour, still don't have it done because I keep getting a time out error.

Are you on dial up? Or does your timezone and time of entry conflict with their systems shutdown daily? I have to time my reporting around the latter, since my zone in HI and theirs are so very different.

I have dial up, but I wonder if it does have something to do with the times I input them as it does not happen during the day.

I have been on satellite, wireless and now DSL with them and never experienced a problem with them on uploads and reports--especially since I learned to reduce my CPI size down to about 150KB.

Flash Wrote:
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> especially since I learned to reduce my CPI size down to about 150KB.

I always reduce my picture size some so they load, but it's not even the pictures I'm having the trouble with. It's just the report pages. Submitting one page and going to the next.

That does sound like a dial up issue. Back in the day . . . I found it was essential to keep some activity going to keep the dial up ISP from deciding the idle time was too long. But if you are not having trouble with other companies then it may very readily be a MFI specific issue. Have you tried using a different browser for your reports to see if that holds better?

Activity typing into a browser window, for whatever reason, is often seen by the network as no activity, thus activating time out errors. Maybe try having another window open with some ongoing clicking and see if that helps.

dee shops Wrote:
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> Activity typing into a browser window, for
> whatever reason, is often seen by the network as
> no activity, thus activating time out errors.
> Maybe try having another window open with some
> ongoing clicking and see if that helps.

My reaction as well. I usually use a weather map in motion, which seems to satisfy the criteria of keeping a connection alive. Of course I don't know how much that will slow a dialup. Obviously you don't want just a whole lot going on to steal the already small bandwidth.

I always have three tabs open so there is always some sort of activity going on on my computer. So far it has just been MFI, but it most likely does have something to do with the dial up.

But you need to have an activity that the network recognizes, not just the computer. That is why Flash suggested the weather map.

Or anything that is constantly updating. If you have a brokerage account that offers "streaming quotes", etc. that works great to keep the connection live.

It seems that on 'Violation', a few people reported problems with their site this weekend. Your problem may just be their problem, Lisa, but they will never let you know it; it will always be YOUR fault. Everything there always is the fault of the shopper. :-(

dee shops Wrote:
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> But you need to have an activity that the network
> recognizes, not just the computer. That is why
> Flash suggested the weather map.

Ahh, okay. Unfortunately with dial up though, if I had a map, I wouldn't get anything to load. *really hates dial up!!*

Speaking as a web application developer, most sites will have their own timeout times defined where if the request takes longer they terminate it and kill the connection. This is to prevent some user from hogging the network bandwidth for extended periods of time. If your dial-up is really slow and MFI timeout threshold is low, you might just keep getting these errors no matter what you do

Well they only seem to happen late at night. Last night it took 5 hours to input two shops reports. I had a third, but it was 4:45 AM and I had to get to bed.

Now this morning I am inputing those shop results and I have not had an error message yet. It is only at around midnight when it happens.

It may indeed be the site instead of you. Did you note on the front page anything listed for 'system maintenance'? Some companies post warnings about that. But of course late night and wee smalls of the morning are when most systems are backed up, maintained and upgraded to cause as little inconvenience to users as possible.

I had a similar issue with a Prophet site last night. I had a hard time getting in to start with and couldn't get the report to save part finished. Needless to say it would not submit either. Suddenly the system 'blinked' and my report was gone. Used the back button and found it still existed there but would not submit, so opened a second window with the now empty form in place and copied and pasted text from one to the other. PITA, but it did submit.

I had this real strange thing happen. I was reporting a bank shop. I put the summary in word and used the copy and paste feature. Although I only did this once, when transferrring to the MS site, the same summary came out ten times. This never happened before.

That is a bit bizarre.

I've also had odd things happen with copy/pasted text from Word. MFI and others. I've had to go through my pasted narrative and add or delete spaces, or change the case. Something obviously can happen in the transfer.

mfi does that to me too... i dont know if its cause my wireless connection is crappy or not... oh well... long as ya get paid...

shopping north west PA and south west ny

I frequently encounter issues when reporting, but it happens due to the time their system shuts down for maintenance every day and my time zone specifically. I have not encountered any issues due to those stated here. Every time I have gotten issues that have interfered with my reporting, I have written the help desk to report it. I ALWAYS got a nice "I'm sorry," email back. However, I have usually gotten a nasty one from QA in those same circumstances chastising me for my lack of "performance." I ALWAYS send a copy of my mail and the response from "help" and that ends it for me. I still do not love them, and I pick and choose what I will do for them, as they are so shopper unfriendly...but I do pick up certain jobs for them on a regular basis, as fill ins...

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