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- JavertHolmes, on 10/12/2007, -8/+46Sold out indeed. I have not seen an event this glorious, this stupendous, this magnificent since the day the great and powerful Willy Wonka gave out five golden tickets to his chocolate factory.
"Come, Charlie Bucket, let us refresh the Amazon page on our Commodore-64 and hopefully we land on a version of the page that has the X-Box 360 at a steep discount."
"How will we afford the electricity to power the X-Box 360 once we get it here, though, grandpa Joe?"
"Solar panels, Charlie. Solar panels."
"How will we afford the solar panels after buying the X-Box 360, grandpa Joe?"
"We will sell a PS3 photo on eBay for $800."
"You're the best, grandpa Joe." - Polymira, on 10/12/2007, -1/+36All of the above, for sure.
- mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -2/+32It was 30 seconds because everyone and everything was slowed down to a halt. It would have sold out in literally a fraction of a second if the servers had been cooperating.
..After I failed to receive the $100 offer I reluctantly ended up paying for it at full-price. I blame myself for refreshing too much rather than wait, and for not using multiple tabs and computers in an attempt to connect. Next time.. - doskir, on 10/12/2007, -3/+31some people used the https:// trick they werent overloaded ;) well at least geeks got them
- thejokell, on 10/12/2007, -5/+27I got the same thing and thought I was screwed. However, I kept refreshing after that, and the offer appeared. I think we just saw the page after they had removed the sale time message but before the actual sale went up.
Incidentally, I was able to order one of the systems. Should ship tomorrow! - LordofShadows, on 10/12/2007, -4/+26I saw "wait for 11:00" then refreshed with less than 5 seconds between and got "Next week's items" would have been nice to at least have gotten a sold out message.
- VeryAngryJim, on 10/12/2007, -0/+19Hoping that people would then buy at full price anyway was definitely part of the goal. Think about it, most of the people trying to get the deal were most likely those who planned to buy it this holiday season anyway, Amazon was just trying to steer them towards their site.
- MOJIRA, on 05/17/2008, -0/+18mrASSMAN, don't worry, it wouldn't have helped much
I was on my PC, my laptop, and my mom's laptop. No good anywhere. I tried it with IE and with Firefox. I cleared all my cache and visisted amazon's 360 page several times to make sure IT was cached.
As soon as 2:00 (eastern) rolled around for me I refreshed and the page came up... 12 minutes later. It wasn't meant to be. - saralk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17I wonder what Amazon's business model was with this promotion?
Were they just looking for all the publicity they got with this promotion, or were they hoping that people would buy games and other accessories when they bought their xbox, or were they hoping that people who couldn't buy a 360 at $100 would then buy it full price? - jthoward007, on 10/12/2007, -6/+21Actually, we attempted to "stress" our servers by offering that deal internally days before this was run for the public. However, it was about 100 units I believe.
Servers didn't come down (but then again, Amazon only has a few thousand employees, and not all have access to a computer). So I'm not really sure how effective a test it was.
---no, I didn't get one...some of us were too busy working to sit and refresh the page when the clock struck 2! - schestowitz, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15The publicy stunt...
It reminds me of millionaires who stand on top of a building throwing 1 dollar bills to the mob underneath. - mscman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10@madc0w:
You didn't have to order it. They give you a redemption code and you have 24 hours to place your order.
@anagoge:
If you think he was the only one that went out of his way to try and get one of these, think again. I'm sure many people went through this same ordeal. I left Thanksgiving at my grandparents' house in order to come home to high-speed internet. I was running three computers with multiple tabs to try and get connected. - ChewyBass, on 10/12/2007, -4/+14If the site was interrupted for 15 minutes and it sold out in 29 seconds who bought the $100 Xbox 360, Amazon employees?
- Yorn, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12The reasons why these fail is the same reason why Woot users that get the Bags of Crap first are always on the same network segment as the website they are buying from.
I wouldn't be surprised if you live in CA and are on the same network segment as Amazon. I was waiting, on average, 2 minutes for the page to refresh on my network segment. - griz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6"'We saw dramatically more traffic than what we anticipated,' Amazon spokesman Craig Berman said Friday."
Ok, this comment is just ridiculous. A week ago when I saw this sale posted to Digg, everyone was predicting that Amazon would get slammed and be knocked down for some time. Next time Amazon, check with the Digg crowd. - adml_shake, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9I can't believe people are still bitching about this.
- argh44z, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8Simple: Those who refreshed the page a few minutes before. The response time at :56 or :57 was a few minutes.. there was a sweet spot in there somewhere, while the response time at :00 was about 15 minutes. One of my page refreshes was started at :57, and it came up at the later part of :00. It was already sold out by then.
- SiLeNtHuNtER, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I was there at the site till 11:58, I took around 10 minutes when I got the page "SOLD OUT"!!! It made me so sick :(
- mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7I ended up paying full price.. but not from Amazon.
Buy.com with their Google Checkout -$20 offer is what I went with. ( Thanks Google!! ) - digitalscribe, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6What do you expect with over half a million people all hitting refresh repeatedly on any given site all at the same time, I'd say a 15 minute period of lag time on the site isn't so bad when you compare it to wal-mart.com's 10 hour complete ordering outage on Friday.
- minoss, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4So true. I couldn't even get the page to load.
- djphatjive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+9Microcenter has it for 100 dollar rebate. Get a core for 199 and a premium for 299. Screw amazon.
- thebaron2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@Yorn
I've heard that theory a lot, but I've also read of at least 6 people in the Midwest (3 in Chicagoland area) that got them, plus 3 people that I personally know in the Chicagoland area got them as well.
I think it was just a toss up, although I head that if you used HTTPS:// for their secure server you stood a much better shot.
No luck for me though, although I've already got a 360 and would have used the new one for a gift. - anagoge, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Mohanned, for that amount of effort, you deserve one.
- traherom, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2arg44z is problably right. I refreshed about a minute before and did get the offer page...
I even made it to the confirmation screen, but then the servers completely died. Almost had it. :( - Trunks4191, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4AMAZON IS A JOKE. this is the same stunt that AMEX pulls with their WishList. The odds of getting an item is so slim its redicuoulus. They need to stop using the internet in holding these Contests and find a better way so that everyone has a chance.
- Roedran, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Was less than 10 seconds -- I clocked it from start to finish at 7 on my PC.
- StickyC, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2It does seem like a rather foolish plan on Amazon's part. Let's see, maybe 200 people "walk away" with an awesome price on a 360 and great customer experience while probably on the order of 20,000 or so walk away with "Amazon sucks" (and lets not forget that Amazon's ENTIRE site was down, it was only coincidence that I even found out about the sale beforehand, I'm guessing half of the visitors denied access had no clue why). Whoever in their sales department thought this would be a good idea ("Oh, there's no such thing as bad PR") should be canned.
- Aharoni, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2In the US they're the system is sold as low as $100 and yet in my country it STILL hasn't been officially released.
I mean, come on Microsoft, don't leave us alone with SONY!! - thebaron2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2It was at 1:00 PM Central Standard Time.
durh.... - jammen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2amazon's page started timing out at 12:58pm and you couldn't get the page to refresh for about 15 minutes. i finally got a message that my connection was reset. everybody and their mother knew about that sale, of course those servers got hammered when it was time to for the sale to go live.
- deedas, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I've read users saying they got the sold out message much earlier than 29 seconds. All that Amazon got out of this publicity stunt was bad press, pissed off costumers, unknown amount of money lost, and a maximum of 1000 people happy. Not worth it IMHO.
- hakujin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Did anyone here about the idiot that plans to sue over this sell out, alleging it to be a bait and switch? LOL!
He thinks he negotiated a good deal with his lawyer because he got an hourly rate... real winner this guy. Definitely not the sharpest tool in the shed. - thebaron2, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3You guys should have gone to Microcenter, if they have them near you.
My bud bought one 2 ago because they're offering a $100 rebate on the premium versions. It was in-store only and while supplies lasted, but we called the one near us and they told us they had a few hundred of them so not to worry about it. - Aharoni, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I think the business model here was primarly to get rid of stock (who buys a core system?) and try to leverage it for all the things you mentioned.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2From what I have read in the comments it seems like there were two classes of winners.
1) People who hit refresh at a time BEFORE the sale began and it just happened that their request got there as the sale opened.
2) People who hit refresh right as the sale opened and just, for whatever reason, got lucky.
Personally I hit refresh at about a tenth of a second after 2pm and was not one of the lucky few. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3ermmm. Amazon is headquartered in Seattle, WA in the pacific time zone. You mean you were too busy working than to order one at 11am... liar.
- MaverickCC, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Um...you think everyone who works at Amazon works in WA? I really doubt that's true. It would definitely be foolish of them if that was the case. Either way, maybe refrain from calling someone a liar when you have basically no evidence to support it next time.
- JaytB, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Anybody with even the slightest interest in a gaming console (or every E-bay seller) would be out of their minds not trying to pick-up a system at such a huge discount. So, yes, it would probably be sold at in a fraction of a second. Heck, I even tried to get one although I already own it. No luck though :(
- StephenChow, on 10/12/2007, -5/+6I hope it pursuades them to have another sale like that, only this time with more units.
- djpsyber, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1it's pretty obvious from his later posts that he was just trolling the amazon boards to get people riled up. he did a pretty good job of it too! :)
- BrainsVolpe, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I failed to get one from the Amazon deal too...
So I bought one later that day from the Dell website; 15% off orders of electronics and accessories over $400 means I scored a $485 order (Premium + Wireless Controller + Play and Chargex2) for $412 + tax ($446~)
Should be here this week... :-D - tidal, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1they better fix this sh!t for next time. this was ridiculous. 15minutes I was out.
- Hummer88, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I started trying to access at 10:56 and was only able to refresh once (about 30 seconds before the offer began)...
- Bootes, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I ended up buying one at full price also. I just went to Circuit City though. Buy.com is too slow to ship things, but I plan on getting some games with that discount. :) Circuit City gave a free game of your choice with any console.
- narduk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Interesting source for the story.
- buckykatt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Maybe they were just stress-testing their servers before Christmas.
Next week, they'll try hosting the site on a 286, just for kicks. - kernelhappy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1What I don't understand is that they had to know the onslaught was going to be brutal, so to protect the rest of their site why didn't they set up separate servers on a separate segment dedicated to just this deal. I honestly thought they would have been better equipped than American Express was when they had their debacle.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I did the same as everyone else and started to refresh my 4 tabs in FF at around 11:58 (MST) and at around 11:59, everything just stopped and it wasn't until 12:06 that I saw the what is 5 added to 4 prompt and entered my answer immediately and then waited another 5 minutes to be told I was out of luck. Too bad Amazon couldn't handle it. I guess this saves me $60 a game I don't have to spend now :)
- coreyos, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I hope Amazon does a sale for the 360 Pro as well. Or even better, a bundle.
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