Amazon has a new feature called "Amazon Customers Vote". It started out each week customers voted on the deal of the week. Now they have extended it to every two weeks. The last sale was for a Xbox 360 at $100 vs. the usual price of $299. Quanity of 1000. Amazon spelled it all out, explained the process, and even gave tips on the best way to get one of the limited quanity.
Alas, not everyone was happy. On Amazon's Forum for Customers Vote, people complained. And Amazon let them without any censoring.
Based on what I read on the forums, here is what I think happened. News got out about the deal. All over. Thousands, if not millions, were ready to go at the exact time the sale started. Both Amazon and the customers had no clue what would happen. They sold out in 29 seconds. It brought the whole site down for 15 minutes.
And people were pissed. Here are a few quotes from a post on the forum.
That was total crap, I can't believe how unfair that was
You would think they would at least offer the next 10,000 users a lesser discount or something. But no, it was just "Sorry you are SOL." And you know, I didn't even GET a "Sorry."
I live on the east coast at a small city and got mine. People dont understand that there was enormous ungodly amount of people knew about this. This was posted via forums, amazon, gamer websites, even cnn, msnbc, and foxnews reported on this on tv. CNN is still reporting the deal as we speak 2 hrs after it ended. No matter how good the servers are, +2 million or more hitting the site at the same time, all of them refreshing every 2 sec does put damper on the servers at exactly the same time, oh yeah, its thanksgiving so EVERYONE is off. I think this was a good marketing, just didnt have enough xbox360 to go around. It sent millions to its website with least amount of money for advertisemnt. It wont be fair since only 1,000 was offered. Life is not fair, soon people will complain about the time the contest is offered because most people will be working at 11am next week.
This was worse than standing in line because no matter how early you starting sitting at your computer waiting for time, it all came down to getting a connection. Horrible system.
I'm just arguing in favor of Amazon - they didn't have to offer this deal, but they did, and I agree, there were problems with it. I think both the customers and Amazon learned a lesson here, and I think things will change in the future. All i'm saying is that people need to stop getting so angry about it and just move on with life, its not the end of the world and people need to stop this "boycott Amazon" mentality just because they weren't one of the lucky ones to win an Xbox. Lets be thankful that Amazon made this deal available to us in the first place
It's so stupid. I made sure to cancel all my plans and stay home for this offer. At exactly 1:58 I tried to access the page, in one tab... one time only, and it didn't load until 2:06. My friend said he tried at 1:59 exactly, and it didn't load until 2:10. I really thought that I was gonna be able to play a game system next year, but I guess no luck of that now. I read some forum that stated that most of the people who got one lived in the West. So Thanks amazon for having such a wonderful and fair system.
You guys can blame the servers all you want, but even if they had more servers with more capacity, it would not have helped much.
It took a while to load but I did eventually get through, and I live in the midwest. It could have just been luck, but I think Amazon did the best they could. Even if the servers didn't lag, you have to consider how many thousands of people were waiting to get one of only 1 thousand, so they would have been gone in a split second anyway.
Mostly a bunch of whiners on the rest of the posts.
Since this offer was on the internet, people have viewed it differently than a special at a brick and mortar store. How is this any different than the computer stores selling 25 eMachines for $25? First come, first serve, no rain checks. You know you got to get there before the store opens, before everyone else, and be willing to push your way in. And what if tons of people have the same idea? Now you have a traffic jam. The server overload at Amazon is just like a traffic overload on our roads. You can only fit so many cars on it and keep the flow going.
I don't understand the whining, but I really don't understand people wanting to report Amazon to the Better Business Bureau, refusing to do any more business with them, or filing a lawsuit. Jeez, people!!!!
12/3: Update here.
