ps2...buy.com....sheer madness...

MrBakaSan

Member
Oct 9, 2000
52
0
0
heh...I decide to log on at home for once....(this rarely happens) and I come and see that a discussion about buy.com's selling of ps2's sparked a nearly 300 post long thread and I'm thinking...sheessh...now what...


so...after skimming the posts...let me clarify a few things..

1) No, they didn't go out at the stroke of midnight EST...there was a glitch (don't know the details yet, won't know till I go into the office in the morning) in rolling it live...from what I was able to get over the phone in a conversation with a friend, sounds like our cache servers decided to take a puke last night for a bit..

2) THERE WAS NO CONSPIRACY BY ME OR ANY OF MY COLLEAGUES TO PUT IT IN THE BUSINESS STORE. That link merely said business in it. Look at the URL originally posted...it had to of have had something like this in the URL... "loc=XXXXX" where XXXXX is some arbitrary number... well...that number isn't so arbitrary.. it controls what breadcrumb trail links we leave, what links are in the side nav, and most importantly, what CONTENT IS DISPLAYED... you can switch the blue and green *almost* for any URL in our site by going business or retail in the URL (i.e. www.us.buy.com/retail/department.asp?loc=273 is the same page as www.us.buy.com/business/department.asp?loc=273). They just look different.

WHY someone posted here w/ the URL as a business product beats me. If people hit up the URL w/ the retail path instead, woulda been the identical page.. or at least *should* have been. perhaps this situation occured BECAUSE there was some server glitch this evening.. all I know is I got a call around 9:30 pm or so from a relieved coworker that the systems were finally up and for sale... (that's PST).

3) Future DOTD for ps2s... this I cannot confirm or deny. I simply do not know. buy.com had an initial allotment of 250. We sold those tonight. As I posted before however, we got another rush batch of 100 or so sent to our office (not our warehouse, so they couldn't be part of the initial sale).. The rumor's i've heard is that some will be part of some promotion (DOTD? contest? giveaway? I do not know...I don't work in marketing) or perhaps they could just be driven over by some employee to the warehouse and then put up for sale.. anyone saying look for it as a DOTD has information that I'm unaware of.

To everyone who got a PS2 from us tonight...thanks for the business and I'm sure the games manager appreciates the business. I'm personally saddened that Sony USA forced us to bundle everything like that, but c'est la vie I guess.

To all those who didn't get one yet, my apologies even though there really wasn't anything I could do to help ya guys out.. blame Sony for the shortage..

don't kill the messenger, just tellin' it as it is man....

---

This is not a Hot Deal. Please post this in the Moderator sponsored ~~~~ Brag & Moan ~~~~ thread.

Thank you,
 

Unsickle

Golden Member
Feb 1, 2000
1,016
0
0
I noticed that the bundled items are actually registered as coupon codes with your system. Interesting way to prevent buying multiple items.
 

MrBakaSan

Member
Oct 9, 2000
52
0
0
muhwahwahwahwa...
talked to one of my buds who was around when we launched but wasn't involved with it all...

apparently sooooo many people started persistently hitting the site around the time midnight rolled around that a couple web servers and one of the databases got whacked...slowing down the process of propagating the live link to all the web servers (we have dozens of web servers)...

.....now comes my speculation...again, I'm at home..won't know details till I go to work..

***UNSUBSTANTIATED CONJECTURE BEGINS NOW***
so if web (and/or database boxes) were down..that means the flow of the live HTML was uneven, rather than all boxes essentially instantly getting the same code at the same time.. so...it then becomes a game of chance whether the particular webserver that fed your HTTP request infact had the live HTML yet.. (we have a border setup so that all hits to buy.com domain is load balanced across all our web boxes).. I don't even know how many boxes we have now (been adding more for holidayS)..but that means that the chances of getting a properly running box was X (number of boxes NOT brought down by zealous PS2 fans) over approximately 32 or so...

mental note....next time put video game system launches onto dedicated machines.........
 

MrBakaSan

Member
Oct 9, 2000
52
0
0
unsickle...

VERY observant of you...
s'why one of my coworkers was frantically coding literally 2 hours before ps2 launch time to get the bundling all working properly..

doing it as a coupon just worked out well that way...
no multiple purchases...
allows for a required sku to be also already in the basket..
allows triggering to occur...i.e. i pop this "bundle" sku in and suddenly it decides to just "give" me all these new "coupons" in my basket... (usually done when you sign up for an account...but in this case we made a new trigger....joe buyer just bought a spanking new ps2)

plus the whole free shipping on all ps2 things...


anyhow...i got my ps2 (heh...I'm an IT guy..I had an advantage.. ) ordered...but I'm still VERY happy sitting at home playing my Samba De Amigo on Dreamcast with my new red maracas that came in the mail today...
 

MrBakaSan

Member
Oct 9, 2000
52
0
0
okay...i'm rather bitter now about people who keep saying that I somehow dicked them over by "putting" the ps2 in the business store...

no, someone in this forum happened to use that URL to link to the ps2 bundle...

the way our site work you can build a LOT of different url paths to the same product...you can make ANY item LOOK like a deal of the day...you can make ANY item LOOK like a business product page...

but looks can be deceiving..

the source of this concept that the ps2 was in the f'n business store was because someone happened to link it that way here....NOT because I wanted to hide them for my buddies. >_<

anyhow...that's it...have had enough for tonight..no way all the masses can be appeased...back to playing my Samba de Amigo.
 

hkssupra69

Golden Member
Jan 31, 2000
1,990
0
76
hey mrbakasan, don't even trip about any of the comments. Most of the people are babies anyway and they need to gripe about it cuz they're not the first ones on the block to get it. They don't realize that its not the end of the world and they probably have better things to do than to be gaming anyway. You're a good guy, don't let that stuff get to ya.
 

SLEEPER5555

Golden Member
Aug 16, 2000
1,597
0
0
just want to make sure, but i did not say anything like that to you MrBakasan if you thought i was sayin that sorry, i wasn't.

So what is todays DOTD???
 

MrBakaSan

Member
Oct 9, 2000
52
0
0
www4ASearchcom
naw, I speak not of you...although you seem to have been one of the lucky ones who got a system...congrats on that...

I'm referring more to posts by some dude..forgot his name now.. nick starts w/ a n... anyhow, his posts seemed to insinuate I had some scheme to hide the ps2's...

believe me, anyone who knows me knows that that'd be the last thing I'd do... that'd piss off customers...pissed off customers mean suddenly marketing and management get crazy ideas in their head...management getting crazy ideas in their head means that wild goose chases of projects start to get hatched....wild goose chase projects means more work for me, half of which I feel are hairbrained and go against every other thing we're doing.....that I or some poor coworker of mine spends weeks building....till management finally sees the light and abandons the project..

so heh...no, I would never conspire in such ways.....
 
Oct 26, 2000
36
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0
99% of the time they would offer up a page that said it wasn't available -- and people understood that as fair for a high demand item and kept trying. But once the item became &quot;available&quot; for a &quot;lucky&quot; customer the process did not allow a reasonable amount of time for purchasing the bundle that was in their cart as advertised. Actually behind our backs Buy.com was making the same bundle in our cart available for multiple other customers to purchase. There's a legal term for that I can't remember.

Essentially Buy.com overadvertised then verified thousands of units as being in stock when they knew that they could never fulfill everyone's shopping cart. Instead of having an orderly queue that maxed out at 250 bundles they simply used server magic to seperate the bait PS2 from the rest of the bundles that, if you didn't pay attention, you got stuck with minus the hardware. There's a legal term for that too.

Making only the PS2 disappear from thousands of shopping carts when checking out was no more difficult programming wise than preventing thousands of people from putting the same box it in their cart simultaneously. Would it have hurt to give an excited customer a few seconds to check out before warning him the session would time out and the bundle go to the next person in line?

Unfortunately some of the &quot;slowest/most loyal customers&quot; who got screwed were actively filling up their cart with hundreds of dollars worth of additional game purchases thinking they now had one of the systems. Hit and run, see ya later customers were rewarded instead. Buy.com didn't bother with real world business sense though since they're a virtual company.

 

troybarwick

Junior Member
Oct 4, 2000
17
0
0
The fact that the PS2 was unavailable at 12:00 is inexcusable! I set my alarm to awaken me at 11:55 and start trying. I gave up at 12:20. Of course when I checked when I normally get up (4am) they were sold out. No more buy.com for me. I'm sticking with Amazon from now on. If a company says it is going on sale at 12:00, they better be damn sure that the systems are ready. How about doing some testing for a situation like this?
 

SLEEPER5555

Golden Member
Aug 16, 2000
1,597
0
0
thanks Mrbakasan for clerifying i just wanted to make sure we were cool. Actually i was not one who got a PSpoo i was doin other stuff. It is ok i just want a system to Fleabay and i will eventually get one, perhaps a DOTD! but i am totally content with my Dreamcast. I just want a PSpoo to make some $$$$, u know!
 

convex

Banned
May 24, 2000
2,227
0
0
what a bunch of whiney little people we have here. buy didn't charge your card (which is more than can be said for a certain other comapany) so there was no contract and no obligation. now go to egay, whine, and buy one for $500. Be sure to let the people that got one earlier for cheap know how much buy.com sucks
 

scythic

Junior Member
Sep 4, 2000
18
0
0
Well, it doesn't seem like the multiple purchase thing worked, because the same old DOTD glitch worked. I just wanted to thank you, because I got the idea from your earlier posts and this was the first time I actually cared enough to try it.
<BR>
(And before anyone jumps on me, I'm doing this for the right reasons -- to hook up my cow-orkers, not to make the obscene profits!)

Sure beat waiting in line at Target *in the rain!*


 

DieselMan

Platinum Member
Mar 25, 2000
2,270
0
71
MrBakaSan, thank you for clarifying everything. Younger people will always be whining and complaining when they can't get something they were looking forward to (poor little children), but don't let this stop you from informing us with all the information you can come up to; it is truly appreciated here.

troybarwick, if you are such a die-hard game fan, you should have pre-ordered the system months ago, like everyone else! Just accept the fact that you weren't lucky yesterday, and just be patient now. I am sure you will get it soon. Now, let's see if Amazon's servers will be able to handle the &quot;10 minutes of hell&quot; from Anandtech LOL

 

juiio

Golden Member
Feb 28, 2000
1,433
4
81
troybarwick: If you actually read what it said, it said that they'd be for sale &quot;AFTER 12:00 EST&quot;. It did NOT say that they'd be for sale exactly at 12:00.
 

Rio Rebel

Administrator Emeritus<br>Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
5,194
0
0
Did I read that right?

There's actually an employee of Buy.com who *didn't* already know that this site was loaded with Greedy Whining Ferengii?

I thought there was a special section in the Customer Service Handbook called &quot;Beware Anandtech Hot Deals!&quot;

lol
 

RoadRuner

Banned
Oct 4, 2000
765
0
0
i dont understand the big deal. i mean lets pay $300 and have no games to play, you can't even play the burns on the usa Ps2, cause theres no modchip.

silly people.

 
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