Fri 4/15/2011

I have my church's podcast listed in the itunes store.  It can be easily found by searching for our pastor's rather unique name - "digiamberardino".  But lately I have observed that it list tracks that are over a year old. Also, when I click on subscribe I get an error message that says "the item is not available in the US store".  The directions for removing the feed or updating the it seem to be out of date and unusable,  I tried to submit the feed again but got a message that it was already listed.

The feed tests fine in feedvalidator.  It also work fine when manually added to iTunes.  Why won't iTunes update this feed and fix the link.

Sat 4/16/2011 10:57 AM

Hello Paul,

Thank you for taking the time to contact us. I understand that to fix the feed for your podcast. I am glad you brought this to my attention and I do appreciate how important it is to you to have this issue quickly addressed. My name is John and I am glad for the opportunity to take care of this for you.

If you are the publisher of this podcast, you can update your podcast by changing the data in your RSS feed. Here's a link to a web page that contains the extended podcasting RSS specification for iTunes:

http://www.apple.com/itunes/whatson/podcasts/specs.html

This document also describes how you can block your podcast from iTunes, if you need to.

This article contains all things podcast related:

Making a podcast

http://www.apple.com/itunes/podcasts/specs.html

Paul, I trust that the steps outlined above will help in resolving your issue, but let me know please if I can be of further assistance. I hope you continue to enjoy shopping at the iTunes Store and thank you for your support. Take care.

Sincerely,

John

iTunes Store Customer Support

Sun 4/17/2011 11:15 AM

Hello again,

I wanted to send a quick note to see if you are still experiencing any difficulties with the iTunes Store. Resolving your issue is important to me, so please don't hesitate to reply if you need any further assistance.

Sincerely,

John

iTunes Store Customer Support

Sun 4/17/2011 11:59 PM

John,

Thank you for following up.  I am still having a problem with my podcast listing not working.  The link for it is http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/saint-pauls-umc-brick-nj-podcast/id121997475.  Clicking on this link produces a message that says that my podcast is not available in the US store.  Based on the release date of its ITS listings it appears that it stopped updating in Dec-2009 but I was unaware it was broken until now.  ITS does not even display the "report a concern" link for my podcast so I had to email support directly.  Also, attempts to resubmit are rejected.  I have gone through all the Itunes podcast help FAQs and found no answers that can solve the problem.

The current address to access the podcast is http://www.stpaulsbrick.org/podcast.  It validates with feedvalidator.org and also works when added to iTunes using the advanced method.

I have gone through my website access logs with a fine tooth comb for hits to urls that were trying to find the podcast.  I used 301 redirection on all of them so they are now forced to go to http://www.stpaulsbrick.org/podcast. But after doing that the ITS link still does not work.  I believe the ITS link is corrupted and is not even producing a hit that my web host service can log.  I have read through a week's worth of logs and can find nothing that looks like ITS trying to update my podcast listing.  If ITS is not visiting my site, then I cannot redirect it to the correct link.

Please either delete my podcast listing so I may resubmit it or fix its link so it goes to http://www.stpaulsbrick.org/podcast from now on.

Thank You,

-Paul Cavanagh

Mon 4/18/2011 10:28 AM

Hello Paul,

Thank you for your reply. John again here.

I am sorry to hear the suggested steps did not help and you are unable to correct the RSS link for your podcast.

I consulted on your issue and have been advised that using this link should resolve your issue:

http://www.apple.com/itunes/podcasts/specs.html

If you are still unable to correct the issue by removing and re-adding the link, and reset the category and allow it to be published in the counties you are wanting to publish in, let me know please.

If the issue persists, we could reset the feed if you if you can provide the link. Paul, I trust that the steps outlined above will help in resolving your issue, but let me know please if I can be of further assistance. I hope you continue to enjoy shopping at the iTunes Store and thank you for your support. Take care.

Sincerely,

John

iTunes Store Customer Support

Mon 4/18/2011 10:36 AM

I've already followed the directions at http://www.apple.com/itunes/podcasts/specs.html and it did not solve the problem.

Please reset the feed to http://www.stpaulsbrick.org/podcast.

-Paul

Mon 4/18/2011 11:28 AM

Hello Paul,

Thank you for your reply. John again here.

The issue seems to be that the feed "http://www.stpaulsbrick.org/podcast." is not a valid feed.

The following may help.

If you are resubmitting a podcast for review, the iTunes Store may detect the submission as a duplicate and generate an error message stating that the feed has already been submitted. You can follow these steps to resubmit the podcast:

1) Change the title and link fields of the RSS feed to something other than what they are now.

2) Resubmit the podcast feed via iTunes.

3) Once you have successfully submitted the podcast, you can change the title and link fields back to what they were.

There are several less common reasons iTunes might have displayed this error:

- The podcast's RSS feed was not available.

- The podcast's RSS feed timed out.

- The podcast's RSS feed could not be validated.

If you are the podcaster, make sure your podcast is available on the Internet. Your podcast's RSS feed also should conform to the iTunes extended podcast RSS specification.

http://www.apple.com/itunes/whatson/podcasts/specs.html

If you're still having trouble, consider consulting the Apple Discussions forums, which have a wealth of information about specific issues. Click Producing Podcasts in the Pro Applications: Audio area of this page:

http://discussions.apple.com

Also, if you require more assistance, you may wish to call our AppleCare technical support team. They can be reached at 1-800-275-2273.

Paul, ensuring this matter is resolved for you is important to me. If technical support advises you that there's something more we can do from the iTunes Store Customer Support side of things, I'll be happy to assist. If you need to reach me again, simply reply to this email. Thank you for your valued support of the iTunes Store and take care.

Sincerely,

John

iTunes Store Customer Support

Tue 4/19/2011 6:59 PM

You included the period at the end of my sentence with my podcast link.  That's why it didn't work. The link should have been entered as:

http://www.stpaulsbrick.org/podcast

Just in case the current listing had the period in its link I have coded the "podcast." link to redirect to "podcast"

But I did as you suggested I made a minor change to my podcast's title (replaced "Saint" with "St.") and resubmitted it to ITS.  It was accepted and is now awaiting review.

Wed 4/20/2011 10:27 PM

 John,

My resubmitted podcast was approved.  Now iTunes has two listings for my podcast, one the works and one that doesn't.  Please remove the bad one.  The bad entry's ID number is 121997475.  Thank You,

-Paul

Thu 4/21/2011 9:50 AM

Hello Paul,

Thank you for your reply. John again here.

I am glad to hear you were able to resubmit your podcast.

I do not have access to removing your old podcast, but I have steps that will allow you to do that,

Removing a podcast from the iTunes Store

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=iWeb/3.0/en/6871.html

Paul, I hope this helps but let me know please if I can be of further assistance with this issue. Take care.

Sincerely,

John

iTunes Store Customer Support

Fri 4/22/2011 11:01 PM

The link you sent only shows how to delete a podcast with the Mac iWeb software.  I am a PC user and have no access to a Mac with iWeb.  How can I delete the redundant podcast listing using a PC?

Sat 4/23/2011 8:48 AM

 Hello Paul,

Thank you for your reply. John again here.

I have an article that will provide specific steps for removing a podcast:

Removing a podcast from the iTunes Store

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=iWeb/3.0/en/6871.html

Also, this in an excerpt from the all inclusive article:

Making a Podcast

http://www.apple.com/itunes/podcasts/specs.html

Removing or Blocking Your Feed.

If you are no longer creating a podcast and you want it removed from iTS, you should:

Log into iTS.

Find and select your podcast.

Click on Report a Concern under the Links heading on the far left.

Select "Remove a Podcast" from the Choose a Reason menu.

Explain why you want the podcast removed.

In most cases, we will remove the podcast from iTS, especially if we find that the podcast is no longer available at the feed URL.

If you want to remove your feed temporarily, you can use the <iTunes:block> tag described in the iTunes RSS Tags section below.

Paul, I trust that the steps outlined above will help in resolving your issue, but let me know please if I can be of further assistance. I hope you continue to enjoy shopping at the iTunes Store and thank you for your support. Take care.

Sincerely,

John

iTunes Store Customer Support

Sun 4/24/2011 12:17 AM

 John,

I guess my last reply was unclear.  The 6871.html article is of no help to me because I am a PC user not a Mac user.  The 6871.html is only good for Mac users who can run the iWeb application. 

Also,  the directions to use iTunes, iTS, and "report a concern" are also useless because when I select the broken podcast entry the "report a concern" link never appears, instead I get the error message that its "not available in the US Store".  If I could have gotten to the "report a concern" link I would never had to directly contact itunesupport in the first place with this problem.

If there is no way for a PC user to delete a broken iTS listing such as mine then someone at Itunes support must be able to delete it, after all they disabled it in the first place.  I found an email from removals@apple.com sent to me back on 1/20/2010 that told me the podcast was being removed for a problem with the feed and that I could resubmit it once I fixed and tested the feed.  The problem was fixed that very day but it was impossible to resubmit because the feed wasn't really removed, it was just a broken listing in the iTS. I did not realize the listing was broken until recently and after exhausting all options listed in the iTunes direction pages I turned to iTunes support to fix something that should be simple for support to do. 

So please forward this request to someone who has the power to remove the bad entry.  The bad entry's ID number is 121997475 and is listed under the name "Saint Paul's UMC - Brick, NJ Podcast".

-Paul

Sun 4/24/2011 9:10 AM

Hello Paul,

Thank you for your reply. John again here.

I am sorry you are still unable to remove the faulty  feed.

I have consulted on your issue and our tech support team reiterates we are unable to remove the feed. They did provide steps that they assure me will work for both, Mac and PC users.

This link shows how you can go about getting the feed removed:

http://www.apple.com/itunes/podcasts/specs.html#removing

This process is through iTunes Store so it is good for both Mac and PC users.

Paul, I trust that the steps outlined above will help in resolving your issue, but let me know please if I can be of further assistance. I hope you continue to enjoy shopping at the iTunes Store and thank you for your support. Take care.

Sincerely,

John

iTunes Store Customer Support

Sun 4/24/2011 12:09 PM

John,

This is getting tiresome.  I have been through all of these directions a hundred times and they are useless for this situation.  These instructions ask me to put the block tag in my feed but that will never ever work because itunes is not even looking at the feed.  I have looked through my daily access logs from my web hosting service and I can say with absolute certainty that Itunes stopped reading this feed on 1/20/2010 and has not read the url since for the bad listing.  If it had, the problem would have fixed iteself long ago because the feed is good. There is no change I can make on my end that will help if iTMS doesn't try to read the feed.

Last week, when I resubmitted and created the redundant listing with a sightly changed title, itunes  started to read the feed for the new listing and is producing numerous log entries in my daily log files.  But it is still not reading it for the old listing.  

How is it possible that you can't turn it back on so it can at least read the feed?  The idea that Apple does not have control over the iTunes Store is ridiculous.  If it would just start reading the feed again I could probably fix this problem without having to contact support.

Sun 4/24/2011 1:04 PM

Hello Paul,

Thank you for your reply. John again here.

I am sorry this issue is proving so frustrating for you.

I believe I have found a tech agent who will be able to help remove the faulty link.

To proceed, I would ask that you provide the following information:

Customer's Name:  Paul Cavanagh -  and the name of the podcast producer

Customer's Email Address: your email address is pcavanagh@xxxxxxxxx.xxx and the email address of the podcast producer

Summary of what you need us to do:

Podcast Name:

Podcast Feed URL:

Podcast's iTunes Store URL:

With that we should be able to get this issue resolved.

Paul, I look forward to your reply. Take care.

Sincerely,

John

iTunes Store Customer Support

Sun 4/24/2011 10:08 PM

Hi Paul,

121997475 has been removed and your current show appears to be up-to-date. It can be found here:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/st-pauls-umc-brick-nj-podcast/id433046291

Regards,

-Jim

Sun 4/24/2011 11:29 PM

Jim,

Thanks for trying but I still have both the good and the bad podcast showing up in a power search for "paul's umc brick".  I have attached a screen shot from 4/24/2011 11:24 PM EST as evidence.  Also attached is the pop up for attempting to subscribe to the one on the left "Saint Paul's UMC - Brick, NJ Podcast".

-Paul

Mon 4/25/2011 2:55 PM

Hi Paul,

We're having a hard time duplicating your screenshot, so it might have been an indexing lag. Are you still seeing the removed show?

-Jim

Mon 4/25/2011 6:08 PM

Great! The bad listing has gone away. When I checked this morning it was still there. I guess it took a day for the server's cache to clear.

Thank You.

-Paul