Over the past week or so I’ve received distressed emails from community members all reporting the same thing: “Roxy, my wishlist is gone!” Assuming it was a mistake I urged everyone not to panic. It’s probably a database error I said, sure to clear up in a day or two.
Now a week later I’m getting more emails about the same issue. One reader reached out to customer service, who confirmed that Anthropologie is in fact going through customer wishlists and deleting any that are more than 100 items. Since this is coming from CS and not Anthropologie directly (via email or some other channel) I take it with a grain of salt. I hope it’s not true!
To defend them, I can see why Anthropologie would want to kill wishlists that are too big. (Like, ahem, mine.) It’s a lot of data to store and I can only imagine what their db tables and logs look like. Depending on how their application is architected it could be hard and expensive to scale to support all that information as their user database grows. Plus I don’t know about you but my wishlist is slow as molasses on a hot day. It takes about 3 minutes to load on average, which in web time is like having 28k dial up. Impatient me grows impatient.
If they are in fact doing this on purpose, I don’t really think this is an issue where Anthropologie is trying to stop anyone from scoring popbacks or similar. It’s strictly a technical move and most likely done by the development team, with or without consulting anyone in the client services department.
Wiping wishlists with no warning is just cruel. I have the items there because I intend to buy them! Someday. Maybe. My wishlist to purchase conversion is probably around 5%, which is lower than my cart to purchase ratio but higher than my product page to purchase ratio. I hardly ever buy just one wishlist item at a time — it’s normally higher spend totals than my non-wishlist orders. Admittedly I have some items that are a couple of years old in my wishlist but occasionally those items do pop back! Isn’t the goal to sell those items? How does Anthro expect them to move if no one knows they’re available to buy?
The mischievous me promises that if wishlists over 100 items are going away, I’m just going to make four or five wishlists. But really, I hope Anthropologie just institutes this going forward, locks current oversized wishlists without deleting them, and lets us keep them. Because if I lose mine I am going to be very upset.
Is your wishlist OK? (As of this writing both of mine remain intact despite being over 100 items each.) What do you think of the 100 item limit?
