Ovi reports not working?

[indome]

What burningplatform says is absolutely correct. Without the breakdown reports, we will not know about our actual sales, returns, the actual amount Nokia has paid us and the amount still pending. Nokia doesn't even care to fix these things, 6 months for a reporting problem is way too much.

[CaCO3]

The last time I got money from the OVI store was in January. Since then I earned several 100 € according toi the report function. But I never got any money sent nor an invoice or ANYTHING else.

Even more frustrating, every time i change something on my apps, i.e. just a new description, it get failed in the QA process. And once it passed, it will fail out of a sudden after some weeks with new explanations....
For some of my apps I gave up and now only distribute them from my website

[burningplatform]

jetrix74,

No offence intended, but I guess it is because of majority of publishers having such a low expectations as you that Nokia does not care to fix any bugs and resolve any issues. If thousands of publishers demanded that Nokia respects its own rules and provides what the Ovi store agreement guarantees publishers, they would HAVE TO finally take care about it.

I really cannot understand why so few publishers are concerned about such important issues as e.g. the searching by keyword function not functioning in the Ovi store, at least in case of N9 (MeeGo Harmattan) content. NONE of the keywords I entered for my applications can find it, which has DIRECT impact on sales, simply because people CAN'T FIND my application. I've noticed that I get sales almost only after I tweet about my apps or let people know about my apps' existence in some other way. Otherwise, sales drop to very low levels, as people simply cannot see my application in that OCEAN of "AppWizard"-based RSS cr*p and if they attempt to search for apps of this kind, they don't get it among the results. I reported the problem twice, and each time I was told that they are aware of it and working on fixing it. Months have passed, the issue is still there.

And the same thing for breakdown reports, invoices, etc. Don't people really care to be properly informed about their revenue, when they can expect the next payment, etc.? Without the breakdown report, one can know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about when he will be paid and how much, which (correct me if I'm wrong) is one of the most important things, and basically what one is an Ovi store publisher for. And the reality is that even though the estimated revenue is now FIVE TIMES the minimum threshold to get paid, I have NEVER received any payment from Nokia, nor any kind of document (be it invoice, breakdown report or whatever else) indicating what is the actual revenue. I know NOTHING about returns, refunds, I know nothing about the reasons why I am not getting any payments even though my revenue shown by online reporting exceeds the payment threshold by five times.

Emailing Publisher Support is plainly a WASTE OF TIME. If I ask them about the reasons why *I* am not getting any payments, instead of information relating to MY SPECIFIC CASE, I only get from them a general QUOTE from the Publisher Guide saying that it's PROBABLY due to the actual revenue being lower than the payment threshold.

Come on, guys, it's YOUR MONEY. Be more demanding! They sell your apps, your property, for which they get their 30% chunk. It's not that they do you a favor - they get paid BY YOU to do that PROPERLY. And therefore they are OBLIGED to follow the rules, especially that it is THEIR OWN RULES. This partnership has to be MUTUAL. If you fail to follow any rule as a publisher, they will unpublish your app, or even close your account. At the same time, for half a year now, they've been failing to provide the most basic and the most important functions of the store.

Even the online reports appearing randomly in Chinese, probably a one-line fix, hasn't been done for months.

All that I expect is what is guaranteed in the Ovi store publisher agreement. NOTHING ELSE. Therefore I am really surprised that some people say that they do not need to be properly informed about their sales, revenue, and paid timely, or that they do not care that searching by keywords doesn't work (at least for MeeGo) which causes that we sell 10x less than if people could normally find our applications among tens of thousands of RSS-feeds filling up the Ovi store.

When creating my publisher account, I agreed that Nokia takes 30% of my sales for selling my apps, properly informing me about the sales, and sending payments to me on schedule. So far, I got no breakdown reports, no invoices, no payments, which means that Nokia does not do anything which I pay them the 30% commission for, and - for now - they actually keep 100% of my revenue as I have never been paid (despite online reporting showing 5x the payment threshold) and they refuse to inform me why it is so.

[jetrix74]

@burningplatform, non taken but I have not low expectations for Nokia store. As well no offence intended but could it be that there are no more complaints because developers have noticed that the store is being updated regularly (for example the reacent review related update), showing that despite the difficult times Nokia is improving the store and that the developers who have been complaining about not getting their money, have gotten their money as agreed, but of course only after Nokia has received the payments.

[burningplatform]

could it be that there are no more complaints because developers have noticed that the store is being updated regularly (for example the reacent review related update), showing that despite the difficult times Nokia is improving the store and that the developers who have been complaining about not getting their money, have gotten their money as agreed, but of course only after Nokia has received the payments.

"Despite difficult times?" I can't see any connection between Nokia's low profits due to people not willing to buy Nokia's Windows Phones (and Nokia not willing to sell MeeGo phones that people are willing to buy, or launch the Meltemi platform that people would surely love, too - and all that just to support Microsoft) and how pathetically they run their app store. Two different things. On the contrary, I think that if they were running the software store properly, they would be earning more money, so their situation could be better.

Once again, what kind of issue it must have been that sending out the breakdown reports (which WORKED JUST FINE until the end of 2011) suddenly broke down and couldn't be fixed for over SIX MONTHS now? We're not talking about a wholly new functionality to be implemented from scratch, we're talking about a fully implemented feature that worked fine over years, and suddenly stopped, six months ago. Please don't tell me that "difficult situation" makes them unable to fix a couple of lines of code on their servers for half a year now....

Or the online reporting pages switching to Chinese every now and then. How difficult to fix it can be? Correcting one IF.....THEN condition?

Or searching by keywords, which also used to work until early 2012 and then stopped?

You said that they updated the store when it comes to reviews.... so they apparently have the resources to do it. Yet for some reason they do less important things, and apparently AVOID resuming the functionality of breakdown reports, invoicing, timely payments, etc, which are the most important things. So maybe we should ask WHY it is so.

Let's be serious. We're not talking about unimportant things. It's about the FINANCIAL stuff, the CORE functionality of a software store. And the situation is that at the moment NOTHING except for the online reporting works, and also the online reporting gets broken at least once a month (last time for almost a week between May 23rd and May 30th or so), which makes it quite unreliable, too, and besides that it only provides very basic and general information.

Nokia is not my wife, so I don't have to understand their "difficult times". For a publisher it is a BUSINESS PARTNER that keeps 30% of every sale, and therefore it is obliged to do certain things. And ALL I NEED is that they regularly inform me about my sales, just the way THEIR OWN RULES describe it.

I really don't get it why should I be happy if:
- my applications can't be found in the store as NONE of the keywords I set up for them can find them. Because of this I simply sell much less
- since I became a publisher I haven't received a single breakdown report. I can't know what is my actual revenue, what are the returns and refunds, when will I be paid (in a month? in half a year?) and how much
- my estimated revenue is 5x the minimum threshold to get paid, but I never got any payment, and I can't know why
- hundreds of copies of my applications have been sold and I have never received ANY kind of document, message, email, whatever stating my sales and my revenue. NOTHING. If the online reporting suddenly stopped working (which isn't so unlikely, considering that everything else already stopped working) I (and every other publisher) would be left with ABSOLUTELY NO PROOF OF ANY SALES
- emailing Publisher Support and asking them why I get no payments and when I can expect them results in a quote from the Publisher Guide that "one of the reasons may be that your actual revenue is lower than the minimum amount", which of course says absolutely nothing about what the actual revenue is; apparently they haven't even checked it
- it already happened twice that even the online reporting stopped working for almost a week. And after it started working again, no one even bothered to issue any kind of information assuring that sales from that period were properly recorded - that period of time remained BLANK on the online reporting diagrams

Is this REALLY how an app store ran by such as company as Nokia should work like? "Difficult times"? With this approach to making business I am affraid that their times will never get any better.

And are the times really that difficult if Mr. Stephen Elop has said at least three times in the last two months in official statements and press releases that "Nokia's financial position remains very strong"? Or isn't he telling the truth? But if so, why is it me who has to help save Nokia with my revenue, by accepting delayed payments and no reporting? I'm not even their shareholder. I need the revenue for my personal expenses, mainly for the maintenance costs of my websites. I had to ask my websites' visitors for donations because of not receiving any payments from Nokia. Does Nokia care about my "difficult times"?

P.S. TWO WEEKS ago, "Nokia Ron" (Nokia Developer Administrator) wrote in this thread that he "makes sure that someone from the Nokia Store looks into this and responds". Let's see if they manage to do it before Christmas.

[Nemanya]

Hi burningplatform,

My name is Nemanya and I'm a Publisher Support Specialist. I apologize that it's taken so long for me to respond. I also apologize for the issues that you have experienced with the Nokia Store, your frustration is justified.

From reading your posts I have identified several problems I can help you with immediately. I can look into why you haven't received an invoice and I can tell you what your Actual revenue is. I can also look into the issue with keyword searches for your content in the store and the reports showing in Chinese. Please send me a private message with your company name, email address and item numbers for any content you’re experiencing problems with.

Restoring the breakdown reports has been a priority since they have gone down but it has been challenging. Based on the latest update we’re hoping to have them back very soon, possibly next week.

Please let me know if I have missed any issues or if you have other questions.

[cdutly]

Nokia and somebody in this thread should know that what burningplatform have said is what most of the developers are suffering from. You have to stand on the developers side to really care about what we need. Not spending too much time here to quibble.


@Nemanya, as a developer in China, I really wish you could investigate why the operator billing is so unstable in China that users cannot buy any paid app very often. (http://www.developer.nokia.com/Commu...hina-Mainland-!!!)

[pixsta]

Is anyone again experiencing wrong reports? Mine are very low since 2-3 days (-50% in downloads -60 to -70% in estimated revenue).

[Maveric]

Hi pixsta,

Thanks for notifying us. I will inform and check this out immediately - me or somebody else will post an update here asap.

Best,
Marko

[bjakuja]

Yeah, that is mine case to, reports are suddenly dropped by 70% in past two days

[cotonet]

Exactly the same here.

[juanmpmp]

The same here. The reports dropped by 60% in past two days

[cotonet]

More and more it appears to me that this is a global problem (not only China), and this is one of the main reason for low sales.

I've had customers contact me to say they wanted to buy the app but couldn't.

I'm from Portugal and the operator billing was failing at least on the larger operator.

[DreadDog]

And I have the same problem.

[vladestCh]

reports are dropped but the reason is obvious, I think