The Google distance calculation has been broken since at least yesterday morning. Is there an ETA as to when it will be fixed? Our web site is essentially broken until this gets fixed.
Hi Frank,
Have you raised a ticket on this, please?
The feature hasn’t had any updates recently.
What exactly is happening, please? It’s not generating charges? Is it showing any errors?
This is the first report we have received on it.
Regards,
Donogh
We were notified by a customer yesterday.
I reported it yesterday morning. Ticket #140598
My initial ticket: "We have shipping method set up in all three of our stores based on Google distances. Those calculations are not working today at all. The shipping method for “Home Delivery - Home Delivery” will not show up no matter the customer’s distance from our stores. This problem is happening across all three stores.
1 day ago, on Friday, 23rd February, 2018, 15:32 UTC"
"Paulina Wilińska of NitroSell Limited said:
Hello Frank,
thank you for reporting the issue. I have investigated the matter and it turns out that we have not changed anything recently in our integration with GOOGLE as far as calculating distance is concerned, so there it must have been some update on Google API’s side. I’ll report it to our development team and I’ll keep you posted.
Thank you,
Paulina
22 hours ago, on Friday, 23rd February, 2018, 18:53 UTC"
Our web sites are primarily for local deliveries. We haven’t received a single order since this problem started.
Okay, thank you.
Would it be feasible to put up some “placeholder” shipping rates in the meantime, the prices for which could be adjusted at fulfilment?
In the meantime, we’ll take a look at the logs. Bear with me please.
Hi Frank,
This is currently working for me:
I’m using zip code 27560-9691 for Morrisville, NC
Can you provide example addresses for which it is nonfunctional please?
Regards,
Donogh
Hi Frank,
I have had another member of my team check this on another store, and it’s working for all of their tests.
We do record errors in our logs if Google’s API is returning an error. However, that would not catch a condition where they are returning an incorrect value, or a zero. That is the only plausible explanation I can offer; as Paulina correctly mentioned, we have not made an update to this feature in quite some time, and the stores are on a server-side version (early adopters’) that does not see frequent updates (unlike alpha and beta).
We would be happy to review this further if you could provide some examples of where it’s going wrong.
Regards,
Donogh
Donogh, thanks for the response. You saw it “working” on our sites because I had disabled the calculate by distance shipping yesterday, when it was obvious this wasn’t going to be a quick fix.
I just tested it, and it is working again. The outage was from at least 8:49 AM EST yesterday until at least 4:43 PM EST yesterday (when I tested it last and then finally disabled the calculate by distance on our sites).
I’d be more than happy to pay for a more reliable service that would plug-in to replace Google Maps. Not only have we seen this previously, but the distance changes as per time of day, since the Google result is the route via the shortest time to drive there at the time the query is done. We have customers who get different delivery charges based on the time of day they place their order with us.
Hi Frank,
One of our developers actually re-enabled it for testing earlier today.
When it comes to the Google API, I’m afraid we are at their mercy if their service becomes unreliable.
I did a little research just now and it doesn’t seem like there are not many alternative services available for distance:
- MapQuest has its own Distance API: https://developer.mapquest.com/documentation/directions-api
- TravelTime – it’s focused on actual travel times, though maybe the start time could be always set to midnight: TravelTime API Documentation | Isochrone | Distance Matrix | Directions
- There is also an open source solution called Project OSRM; however there is no commercial offering, which means it would require its own hosting environment, with all the management overheads and costs that come with that
(We are happy to review any. However, it’s not possible to make guarantees when it comes to third-party services.)
Can I ask if it’s feasible to work out lists of post codes instead? Is it a series of concentric circles on a map, for which it might be possible to generate all zip codes bounded between circles? Or is it more complicated than that?
Donogh
Unfortunately, I don’t have any experience with other mapping services.
There are a few others out there. Whether they’re more reliable than Google, I don’t know:
Open Street Map: https://www.openstreetmap.org
Bing Maps: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/maps/choose-your-bing-maps-api
Mapquest: http://developer.mapquest.com/
We currently use another Bing API for image search in PAM, and it appears to be very reliable, which is probably a consequence of it being a paid service.
Franclin, could you add “investigate Bing API as replacement for/supplement to Google Distance”, please? @franclin_foping
You can include this:
- It would be a two-step process: geocode the addresses, then calculate distance
- Geocoding is here: Find a Location by Address - Bing Maps | Microsoft Docs
- Distance calc is here: Calculate a Distance Matrix - Bing Maps | Microsoft Docs
- Best to use the REST request / response options and the synchronous version of the Route Distance Matrix
- Please have the dev assigned to this task ask me for the credentials we use for PAM
Thanks,
Donogh
Somehow I missed your earlier post on the same day I posted mine last.
No, zip codes, at least for our business don’t work. We’re doing local delivery in a dense metropolitan market, so we need to be able to distances down to a mile or two at most.
Has there been any progress on implementing a different API? Apparently, Google Maps has had more outages this past week or so, as we’re having regular customers report that they can’t choose home delivery with us sporadically, and our sales are also down significantly over the past few weeks as a result.
Again, we’d be more than happy to pay for a mapping service that provided reliable results.
Hello Frank,
the support team opened up a ticket on your behalf where you can track the implementation process of replacement for/supplement to Google Distance used in shipping.
Kind regards,
Paulina
I did see that, thank you!
FYI, this issue is currently happening. Google Maps calculations are not working. I got a report that they weren’t working yesterday, as well, but I wasn’t able to verify that one.
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Google Maps integration is failing much more frequently. We’re seeing a failure at least once a day, now. (It’s down now, and has been down since yesterday, at least).
Unfortunately, Bing the Bing integration still doesn’t work on our sites, either.
Does Nitrosell have any other options for local delivery options? We are currently not able to accept any orders. This isn’t good.
Hi Frank,
The dev team is actively working on the Bing integration. They’ve narrowed it down to an issue with the Locations API endpoint — it seems to be returning valid responses but not providing coordinates for shipping addresses. It might need to run through a USPS postal address verification step first.
In any case, @franclin_foping will provide an update as soon as an update has been deployed.
(We have no idea why the Google Maps API is misbehaving.)
Regards,
Donogh
Thanks for the update. I’ve switched all of our sites to use “Bing Integration” so that hopefully, they’ll work once Nitrosell gets it figured out, and I’ve left an ugly message in our shipping panel for the time being.
Hi @frank
We released a fix for this issue yesterday afternoon. Google deprecated API calls not including a key. Our Bing integration should also be working now. The fix is available on our alpha and beta branches and will be made available to Early Adopters today.
Please let us know if we can be of further assistance.
Kindest regards,
Franclin