CPC search engine is shite and general ramble

[Bill Wright]

Search for freezer alarm; nowt Search for fridge alarm: several products intended for freezer use.

I'd given up so I had a look on Amazon. But then thought to try 'fridge' on CPC. Ended up buying three from CPC for less than two would have cost from Amazon.

Oh and I've bought two 17Ah gel batteries for Medium Bug because no-one seems to have stock of the SLA ones except Farnell and they want twenty quid over the odds. I'm hoping the gel ones will be OK.

Medium Bug by the way is a Pride Go Go Elite Traveller scooter. The batteries supplied were clearly not the best available, and they have dropped from a theoretical 17Ah/15Ah to 9Ah/5Ah in a year of light use. The other issue was the fact that the machine would stop on slight hills due to the thermal cut-out operating. It was rated at 15A. I've replaced it with a 20A one. I complained to Pride about the poor performance on hills and they just f***ed me off.

[Richard]

Bad mileage from one of those yoda thinks that a light year is not.

[Woody]

[snip]

You're not the only one that finds the CPC search engine a problem (he said being polite.) It seems that it cannot do partial or contextual searches and will only look exactly for what is entered. If your perception of what an item is does not agree with what they have decided to call it then the search will fail - usually giving you a list of totally unrelated items.

Makes you wonder how much trade they are loosing as a result of something that could be easily fixed? Mind you, the Farnell site is not much better!

[Harry Bloomfield]

Bill Wright submitted this idea :

Instead of the site's search engine, try Google's 'search this site' engine.

[Indy Jess John]

You have done a good job of putting us off buying a Pride scooter, but if that is their customer care standard they deserve it.

It is probably too late because you have already bought, but you don't have to stick with 17Ah. What is important is the physical dimensions and the connectors. If you can find those in a 20Ah or 22Ah size you get a bit more reserve in something that will still fit and work. The charger will cope, it will just charge for a bit longer to get to full charge.

It is a different application entirely, but when I bought a UPS with a dud battery from a charity shop two years ago, I replaced the dud with a Yuasa one

and it seems to be a make with a good reputation. How it compares on price, I don't know. Their website is worth a look if you ever need another though.

Jim

[Jethro_uk]

IME (or IMHO) all search engines are s**te, and getting shiter. And until they are unshite, all this talk of "AI" is just that: a load of old bollocks.

From a plain google search (that is a google search that Google *hasn't* "interpreted" for you - look carefully) through to Amazons "filters", it's getting harder and harder to sort the wheat from the chaff.

The main problem is not being able to understand (or implement) exclusion terms - so when you try and remove certain results the moronic thing actually includes them. And then keyword matching in general - so looking for (say) an "iPhone case" will return the millions of results with "iPhone" in them.

Then there's the filters. Generally, I'm interested in a feature or a property of the *item*. I care not which vendor it's from, what colour it is, etc etc.

[Brian Gaff]

Obviously you have the wrong kind of hills then. How dare you! Brian

[Theo]

My general approach with CPC/Farnell/Onecall is to put in a vague search term. Once the results come up, look at what categories they're in. Then go to the category direct, without the search term present, and skim through the results (usually sorted by price, giving up when I get to 'too expensive').

I find the parametric search is a lot better than just textual search. If I want a USB A to USB C cable, I can use parametric search to refine the list in the cables section to those with USB A on one end and USB C on the other. (This is not just due to not trusting the search algorithm, but it also filters out other legitimate things with those terms in that I don't want - hubs, adaptors, etc)

OTOH I find Amazon utterly useless because they persist in showing me items that don't contain the search term I asked for. If I search for '32gb usb', don't show me 16GB ones. The 'most relevant' results - those which pay Amazon the most - are usually OK, but it falls apart when you sort by price.

Theo

[Bob Eager]

The probklem I find with the parametric search is that some items don't have the parameters in the database. So, by saying I want (say) a USB C cable, I eliminate some perfectly good USB C cables where no one bothered to add USB C to the parameters (that's probably a bad example, but you get the idea).

[spuorgelgoog]

But those are the 16GB ones labelled 16GB, not the 16GB ones labelled 32GB, so they are what you'd get anyway :-)

Owain

[Woody]

The thing that annoys me about Amazonia is that you might find the same thing several times under very slightly different names and wildly variant prices even from the same supplier.

If you want iPhone case put it inside full quotes - it should then only search for that full phrase. It has been standard search engine practice for decades - but I suppose Amazon is probably the odd one out - still!

[Jethro_uk]

If Google can't find what you *wanted*, it sneakily removes the quotes (that *you* put there) and serves up a list o's**te.

Wilkos search function is similarly dishonest in that if it can't find what you typed, it sneakily changes what you typed to something it *does* have, and shows you that.

But I have been pointing out for years that Google is getting more and more broken by the month. An inevitable fact when the rate of data being added grows exponentially with no way of archiving the old stuff.

Keyword matching was pretty "f*ck me !!!!" when it first appeared with Google, Yahoo, Magellan, Alta Vista et al. But as the mass of data grows, it becomes painfully apparent that it's in no way intelligent.

AI still can't understand language. And most of the time it can't even do a good impression.

[Richard]

You have made the mistake of believing that the service is there to benefit you.

[Bill Wright]

We have two other Pride scooters and they are both very good. The Go Go Elite Traveller appears to be built to a price. It sells for about £650, about half the cost of Pride's Go Chair, which is comparable in terms of size.

Can't find anything above 17/18A that will fit. In fact a good 17A pair is fine for the application: plenty of range.

Bill

[Bill Wright]

That was pretty much what they said.

Bill

[Dave Liquorice]

I don't like of cable ends. "End 1 - USB A" "End 2 - USB C", won't find cables entered as "End 1 - USB C" "End 2 - USB A"...

It works reasonably weel otherwise, provided the parameter you want to filter on is available. Normally is on PCP/Farnell/RS etc but not "retail" sites that seem to choose useless parameters.

[Dave Liquorice]

The physical size and capacity of SLAs are pretty much tied together. You might be able to get +/- 1 at a push 2 Ahr difference in capacity in the nominal "17 AHr" sized battery but that's all.

Yuasa do have a good reputation but I've also been happy with Camdenboss.

Value Power Systems have always had the best price for 7 AHr SLAs when I've needed them (last time was Mar 2014)

[Bill Wright]

I ordered two Camdenboss gel BT02862 17Ah. They sent one as ordered and a Camdenboss 12V 18Ah AGM battery. This battery is type BES120180, and it says on it, ?VRLA Lead Acid AGM Battery? but in the CPC catalogue BES120180 refers to a gel battery ?specifically designed for storing power generated by solar panels.?

Bill

[Indy Jess John]

I have seen this type of error before. It normally indicates incorrect stowage.

Your order would have bee sent to the warehouse as "two from bay XYZ" and that is what you got. Unfortunately someone had put a wrong one in the bay. They should change it for you.

Jim

[Bill Wright]

When I rang them I suggested that this might have happened and asked that someone checks the actual replacement item before dispatch. We'll see what arrives and when.

Bill