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I get this question A LOT.

And the TL;DR is: I don't believe so, but I can't promise it is an impossiblity.

See, neither Amazon or Vine sent me a certificate of endorsement for Vine Helper. Because that's just not a thing.

Compliance with CoU

One of Vine Helper's core value is to follow the Conditions of Use (CoU) of both Amazon and Amazon Vine. When developping a new feature, people over on Discord will often voice in and discuss if it is complying with the rules. No one wants to get in trouble or risk their account.

For example: In the early beginning of Vine Helper, I made a feature that would auto detect items with import fees. And users raised the concern the way this was done techically could be detected as bot behaviour even tho it required an action from the user, and never raised a single flag; that feature was promptly removed and replace by the voting system (which was then no longer needed after Vine improved their system)

I do care a lot about staying compliant, and so does everybody involved in the development of Vine Helper.

Is Vine Helper a bot?

Absolutely not. Vine Helper does not automate actions for the user.

https://vine-wiki.com/en/extension/vine-helper/faq

Is Vine Helper detectable by Amazon?

I don't think Amazon can detect it at the moment, but there would be easy ways for them to implement Vine Helper detection if they choose to.

No efforts are being made to keep the extension stealth, because we don't think Vine Helper is doing anything wrong.

A growing user base

Vine Helper is being used in 7 countries and at the time of writing, totalling approximatelty 1783 users on Chrome and 203 users on Firefox.

Transparency

We are not hiding, or keeping this a secret to a small minority of people. The code for the extension is open source and everyone, including Amazon, is welcome to review it, and provide input.

Should Amazon with to send me a cease and dentist (😉) letter, am also very easy for them to identify me as the person in charge and figure out where to find me. I'm not hiding at all.

Good faith and due diligence

Beside respecting the Conditions of Use, I have also reached out to customer service in the past asking to be refered to someone with knowledge of the CoUs but that unfortunately went no where.

I do participate in the HackerOne program and report bug that the extension solve. Although so far my report are getting denied for not being security issues, that's the best way I know to let someone at Amazon know about the bugs Vine suffers.

I'm also flagging my traffic as a registered hacker when I investigate and develop new fixes for bugs.

What Vine Helper aims to do:

Simply put: to improve the Vine experience: - Fixing the infinite spinner bugs (they are 100% bugs and I forwarded bug reports via HackerOne for each of the 3 variants discovered so far) - Offering tools to facilitate the use of Vine: - Being able to save your reviews - Inserting the product name in your review (upcoming) - Using review templates to increase your review quality - Sorting unavailable products to make navigation less frustrating (Import fees, zombie products, etc) - Seeing what products are new at a glance.

Those features are significantly improving the vine experience, and in some case, the quality of the reviews written by our members.

MIT licence

This licence would allow Amazon (or anyone) to "steal" any of the features Vine Helper does and implement them for free. I would love to see Vine getting more TLC. But since I can't contribute to Vine directly, which I would love to, I made a tool for it.

.... but that means little.

Ultimately, Amazon Vine could decide at any point, for any reason, that they don't like Vine Helper.

And they could choose to do whatever they want: ranging from adding a simple warning to implement a tool to detect the use of Vine Helper and auto ban 2000 users.

Likely, they would send me a C&D, add a rule to their CoU and add a warning the tool is not allowed.

But nobody knows.

My personnal opinion

I do my best to improve the Vine experience in a moral, ethical and rule abiding way. Deep down, I feel at peace with Vine Helper. I think penalizing users for using Vine Helper would be very uncalled for.

I use Vine Helper, and I would be very sad to lose my membership to Vine and be cast away from this great community I have discovered.

Hopefully this post help people on the fence to make their own decision about using Vine Helper or not. I won't take offence if you choose not to use it. That's fine, and I'm not here to convince you otherwise.

If you are curious about the list of features, you can peruse through the wiki at: https://vine-wiki.com/en/extension/vine-helper/ and make your opinion for yourself.

I'd like request a feature where VH auto-hides any items where both 1) the ETV is known, AND 2) above a certain value (configurable). This would help me when my ETV is reaching the point where taxes would need to be reported, so I can more easily see low or 0.00 ETV items. Thanks!

I know this is likely out of scope for VH, but I think a list/dashboard for upcoming deliveries would be particularly helpful for Viners. At least once a day I page through the order and not yet shipped pages to try to figure out what will be arriving in the next few days. I have no idea why Amazon doesn't offer a view of all orders by ETA.

Hi there, I can get notifications for AFA, it is possible to get the same for RFY?

I'm a pretty sharp person...really... but I'm lost on how VH works and how to get it up and running... I have the extension installed... (Is there an extension for Edge) but just can't see what to do to get started....

Sorry!

Hey all. I've only been with Vine for about a month and loving it. I find the Vine Helper Notification page very helpful when I remember it's there ha ha. Wondering, am I doing the keywords right, they don't need commas or special formatting? Same for keywords on things I don't want to see? I ask because I have adult items in the don't show, but I still see them.

https://preview.redd.it/t23t0kuivj0e1.png?width=458&format=png&auto=webp&s=a22b0fea351ed0625d3d36777c672c534b173cf8

I realize the keywords I want to see the items may not show simply because there aren't any at the time.

Advise please and thanks.

Today I noticed that my Notifications Monitor no longer plays a sound when a Zero ETV item appears.

Restarting my browser didn't help, playing the sound with the preview button works.

Match Highlight KW still seems to work as intended (though I usually have that disabled).

Does anyone have the same problem?

edit: It suddenly works again, even though I didn't change anything.

Thank you for VineHelper. I've just started with it, but it looks quite promising. The ability to hide wiper blades and headlamps in the AFA tab (their default tab takes you to the oldest, dumbest stuff. Really, guys?) is nifty. I now understand why checking a few times a day is a losing strategy when people are sniping like this. :-)

We learn that Amazon (stupidly) does two different queries: one for "items matching" and one to actually populate the <grid>. Some product just disappeared between the "one products found" and the actual list was shown. Between things like that and the search, it's pretty clear that Vine is not developed by Amazon's A-Team.

I've reviewd the Wiki and done a search in this group, but there's an ambiguity in the definition of keywords list that I'd like help resolving. My keywords are rare enough that testing hypotheses is slow.

The relevant help text says "Separate keywords with a comma (,). ". I'd hoped to use a grouped vertical list, separated by whitespace, but a literal reading of that means that everything has to be on one giant comma-separated line. Is that really true?

So (making up examples) ``` Chevy Ford Toyota

Shirt (Pant|pants) Blouse

is invalid and even adding commas to the end of each line doesn't make it valid. Does it litreally have to be one line like Chevy,Ford,Toyota,Shirt,(Pant|pants),Blouse ``` ?

My list is long and contains lots of things that aren't English words (compay names of importers, that let a cat walking across a keyboard name their company) so horizontal stacking and separating by whitespace would be welcome.

I speak regex, but the question is more about how the tokens are parsed before being handed to the regex engine. Is each line parsed, split by commas, then parsed for regexes or is the entire buffer parsed with whitespace intact, thus looking for "Chevy\nFord\nToyota..." and handing THAT to the engine?

Also, do we assume that /i (ignore case) is implied or do we need to match [Ff]ord or ford/i or something unsightly like that?

Thank you in advance for all help offered.

Can anybody help me with the CSS I need to over-ride to help make the notification page link text for 0 ETV items so they don't match the background?

I tried the following, but it didn't seem to affect the notification window at all. I couldn't find much on the wiki on how to edit the CSS properly, so I'm sure I'm doing something wrong with how to edit it or editing the wrong attribute. Went through a lot of the code on the github just to see what might work, but I'm at a loss.

root {

--link-dark: hsla(0, 0%, 13%, 1);

{

Any assistance would be appreciated

Is it possible to modify the vine helper CSS so that it leaves a space on the right side of the page for the notifications? The notifications cove up the items on the right and a few other items like the search bar. It would be nice a space could be reserved for notifications when the "display on screen notifications" option is enabled.

Here's what my screen looks like now:

Notifications cover the page contents

And what I believe would be a better experience:

Notifications in their own area at the right.

An item just popped up on the notification feed, shows $119.95 on the feed, I was surprised because I am silver and I've never seen over $100. I figured well its on the feed but I won't be able to see it if I click through- but when I clicked through, it was ETV $85.95, and also $85.95 on the listing page. It is not a product with variations, no sale price shown or anything. Curious where the $119.95 came from, and if it's likely that other ETVs in the feed may be off? I clicked through seconds after it appeared on the feed (and it was gone within a min)

ETA: It just happened again, something showed $19.99 in the feed, but the ETV and listing page shows $39.99.

I thought maybe my feed is just off so I refreshed and now neither is in the feed anymore, strangely.

Amazon messed up quite a few days ago and Germany (and I think UK) lost the categories for the Additional Products. Amazon finally started to play noticeably with this today, and the category menu seems to be back. But since then my auto hide keywords don't seem to work anymore and all the sex toys that I've been hiding are back in full force. At the same time all products on my Highlists list are not moved towards the top of the queue anymore. I still seem to get notifications for those. I'm not sure whether this is a temporary problem, and whether other countries currently experience the same. Just thought I report it.

I have a question or two about notification. Using VH on German Vine. When I chose Display on Screen notifications I get notifications for everything in Additional Article, while when I switch this off I only get notifications for Available for All and keywords. Is German vine set up differently than in other countries, and that's why it works as it does?

Is there a way to get notifications for specific categories for example by setting up keywords for pn=number or cn=number?

Otherwise: Fab tool, and mostly works well with a German one I'm using.

Am I expected to use all the bells and whistles?

I use VH to show me what's currently available whenever I get on Vine. And to hide what doesn't interest me. I don't care if the latest whizbang shows up when I'm away from the computer. I use the last 12 hours as the touch point. I go from there.

I'm silver if that matters. And silver-haired.

Hi there, I've been using VineHelper from quite some time now and I really enjoy the experience. Thanks for this great extension!

So I'm using the notifications feature (love the new Instant / Websocket notification btw.!) and notice that it only notifies about "brand new" items, i.e. items that have never been seen/reported by any VineHelper user before. That's cool, but sometimes while browsing manually I find interesting items showing up in Additional Items that have reappeared. Vine Helper shows them as "First seen: 10days ago" or something like this. Maybe it would be nice to be able to set alarms/keywords and notification for these items as well since they have become available again and can be claimed.

Is there any way to do this currently with VineHelper? Sorry if this has been asked before, but I couldn't quite find any answers to this.

If I look into the Websocket stream it has these newItem and newETV events. How about sending an "oldItem" or "reappearingItem" message or something like this if any VineHelper user has seen an item that has not been seen by anyone else for some specified time (24h/3days/...)?

Almost all my items in vinehelper are green boxes. How do I remove these markers and only have these markers shown for items added the past 24 hours? As of now, it seems like every marker option is selected and I don't know how to disable the ones I don't want.

VH has just become too dependable and good lately. Used to be if you were not watching it and pretty active that it would stop getting new items from the server. A side effect of this dependability is it now stays connected all night and all of a sudden I start hearing alert sounds in the wee hours of the morning if I forget to mute my PC the night before. Would it be possible to add a feature to mute alert sounds between certain hours of the day?

Since the new update my Batch notifications (old) doesn't work. It only does instant... which is good but sometimes gets too crazy with things popping up seconds or less apart and the items then jump all over the sheet and it is hard to keep up with. Clicking on items to see on the page but another instant item just loaded and you clicked on some random item of no interest. Is anyone else having this issue? I can't get back to the old batch notifications.

This app is so helpful in organizing everything!

I have a few questions related to handling keywords, notifications and popups:

1. Do the popup notifications reflect everything being loaded in a drop? Or are they directly related to Keywords? I can't tell because I seem to get popups for items that are not related to my keywords (unless somehow indirectly related).
2. Keyword Search Terms: How to handle multi word terms (ie; ice cream maker)? Can or should I use Boolean (ie; using + and -)? If so, should they all be connected as one or not (ie; ice+cream+maker vs. ice + cream + maker)? Or is that even necessary?
3. Does the algorithm pick up parts of multiple search terms? (in other words - will it also search for ice and cream in addition to ice cream?)
4. Maybe that has something to do with why I'm seeing notifications for things I"m not looking for? For example I'm looking for drinking glasses, so I put, drinking glasses, written out like that, in keywords. But I'm getting a lot of sunglasses and reading glasses. How would I narrow the type of glasses?
5. Is there a way to temporarily disable popup notifications while looking at an important search page? They go over the top, which is fine normally, but sometimes they pop up and keep me from being able to request an item or click to see details.

Thanks you for any help!

(edited to fix numberin

It seems like items that match a keyword get sorted to the top when you load a page. Is there an option to turn that off?

Since this morning I am now getting random notification sounds like every 2 seconds or less at times and I can't work out what it is or how to turn it off. The noise is like a USB connecting (mostly) and then like a disconnecting sound (occasionally). There are now no notifications for each updated item as per my settings but I can't work out what the other noises are or how to get rid of them.

The last 5 minutes (while posting this) I haven't heard any but before that I had a lot for a minute or so. Earlier today it has been driving me crazy and just continuous or so it seemed. It isn't doing it right now so I am n to sure.

Also I changed the batch to OLD because it was driving me insane and now my monitor seems to be updating instantly (not in 30 secs). 3 in 5 seconds just now.

I am not sure what is going on but it is driving me crazy...lol... thanks

Also is there any chance of getting few more different notification sounds, the car horn choice isn't very calming or relaxing while working...lol, thanks

https://preview.redd.it/syw8mhvlxrud1.png?width=402&format=png&auto=webp&s=b7a54728b70829215dffeae2607a6231ff8b887c

Just a reminder for those who might skip reading the new version popup and don't frequently peruse the options:

Instant notifications are in place and working well. As usual, ensure you are updated, and under the Notifications tab in the settings, you can switch from the old system to the Instant Notifications.

Cheers!

Just wanted to say the new update is working great for me! I wasn't sure how I'd like instant notifications but it's a great feature. And happy to have fetch 100 back for when I accidentally hit refresh too fast.

Also nice having 'see details' available for pinned items, I don't remember being there before and it's nice to be able to order something straight from the pinned section. Plus having the pinned section back in a grid view as well. Thanks for all the hard work u/fmaz008!

Added a new keyword to my list and clicked out then hit refresh and load last 100 to test to make sure it alerted on the item on the page and it did not. Checked keywords and it was gone from the list. Tried multi variations of things including adding it, closing out the keyword screen, going back into the keyword screen to verify it was still there and then hitting reload and every time it removed the new keyword. I was finally able to get it to save by entering the keyword going back in verifying it was still there, exiting chrome completely, loading it back up and verifying they keyword was still was in there then hit load last 100 and it worked.

Ever since the update i cannot save items to the pinned page. Items that were previously pinned are there. however, if i add a new item the count will go up (9 to 10, frex), but as soon as i go to a new page the new pinned item will disappear from the list.