NEW ONLINE IW TITLES BROKEN SINCE JUNE 28: In-Store IW Works. Online IW Does Not.

[Rex Strother]

Another week of no online IW working! I guess its dead... so sad

To be accurate - titles given IW status before June 28, 2019 still work online. It's only every title with IW rights SINCE then that doesn't work (but do work in-store)

Oh, and add BOOKSMART now proven to work in-store for Instawatch, but not online.

[gamescan]

Just tried a new order on Walmart.com for a bunch of titles that should be IW and they weren't recognized.

[Rex Strother]

APOCALYPSE NOW (FINAL CUT) - now confirmed as working in-store and not working online for Instawatch.

[Rex Strother]

THE BANANA SPLITS MOVIE - now confirmed as working in-store and not working online for Instawatch. Another week of new IW titles not working online.

[Chedwiggen]

As is there's really no point in ordering from Walmart.com when it comes to newer releases. Hopefully Vudu will add more Disc+Digital titles. Here's hoping X-Men Dark Phoenix is added to Disc+Digital.

[Rex Strother]

PROJECT ITHACA ... confirmed as working instore - does not work online.

[Rex Strother]

THE COMMAND and A DOG'S JOURNEY ... confirmed as working instore - neither work online.

[Rex Strother]

BRIGHTBURN, BATMAN: FAMILY MATTERS and THE HUSTLE are now confirmed to issue IW via in-store purchase. They do not give IW via online puchase.

[Rex Strother]

That doesn't explain why Shazam fails, but some titles released after Shazam work.

SHAZAM works - it went IW eligible in the first week of June (before the 6/28 issue set in)

It's only IW from a particular disc, however - this is the only UPC in the system that works for IW for that title (link below)

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Shazam-Walmart-Exclusive-Blu-ray-DVD-Digital-Funko-Pocket-Pop/450737366

The issue is that NO disc, no UPC works for online purchase ... on any title given IW rights after 6/28. In-store works for those IW titles given rights after 6/28 - online does not - no matter the UPC or version you try online.

The problem has occurred before (see Comment #45) and Vudu fixed it then. We hope they'll fix it again.

[gamescan]

Definitely not random - it just seems to have been a particular date when new online IW being added by Vudu, failed to get the "online" IW button pressed (as you put it). Somewhere around 6/28 (that's when folks started noticing the issue) - any new IW added at Vudu-Walmart stopped worked online and still worked in-store.

Old online IW titles still work - but if the title was given IW rights after June 28 (ish), it only works in-store. Clearly there's some difference between the two or they'd both be working (in-store and online)

As in my post above - this issue came up before and got fixed back then (see link in post #45.)

That doesn't explain why Shazam fails, but some titles released after Shazam work.

I'm wondering if this is a failure on the Walmart side to properly send the title information over to Vudu. If it is, everything may look fine on Vudu's side, and the only way to test would be for someone to attempt a purchase of every new title from Walmart.

Maybe we should start up a thread for "Instawatch works/doesn't work online for X titles." I wonder if that would help FelipeF and the team track down the root cause?

Ultimately, getting Instawatch working reliably is good for Vudu as it saves the company time and money in reduced customer support calls. Assuming Vudu has similar costs to other companies, a typical CS contact to resolve an Instawatch problem (requires phone contact with a Tier 1 agent to generate a ticket, Tier 1 agent has to validate ticket, then escalate to a Tier 3 agent, Tier 3 agent has to validate, and then manually add the titles to an account) is easily costing Vudu around $100 for each resolution.

Getting Instawatch to work "instantly" with no user intervention would be a cost saver overall.

[Rex Strother]

If the trouble isn't based on release dates ... [p]erhaps a procedure changed after a certain date, or the person who pressed the magic "online" button quit and nobody remembered that task existed anymore. (Losing institutional knowledge is a real thing.) Whatever the cause, it's almost certainly not random.

Definitely not random - it just seems to have been a particular date when new online IW being added by Vudu, failed to get the "online" IW button pressed (as you put it). Somewhere around 6/28 (that's when folks started noticing the issue) - any new IW added at Vudu-Walmart stopped worked online and still worked in-store.

Old online IW titles still work - but if the title was given IW rights after June 28 (ish), it only works in-store. Clearly there's some difference between the two or they'd both be working (in-store and online)

As in my post above - this issue came up before and got fixed back then (see link in post #45.)

[Rex Strother]

FelipeF

FYI - this issue occurred before - when online IW purchases failed to deliver the IW codes (but in-store kept working)

This thread was about it - and after a couple weeks, the issue got fixed. Maybe someone could figure out what they did then, and do it again.

https://forum.vudu.com/forum/vudu/ge...ut-a-month-now

[B2Net]

Did some posts disappear from this thread. I thought it was here that someone mentioned rescanning receipts. I asked if that works. I have a notification of a response but no thread associated to that response. I wondered if it was this thread.

[bestquality]

If the trouble isn't based on release dates, maybe it's based on when information was added or when discs became preorderable at Walmart. Perhaps a procedure changed after a certain date, or the person who pressed the magic "online" button quit and nobody remembered that task even existed anymore. (Losing institutional knowledge is a real thing.) Whatever the cause, it's almost certainly not random.

[gamescan]

No it's not random.. online IW stopped working for new releases starting with Shazam

Alita came out after Shazam.