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Amazon Collapses Under Weight of 1,000 Xboxes
theodp writes "Is there such a thing as a BusinessWeek Cover Jinx? Amazon was bitten by the success of its 1,000 Xboxes for $100 promotion, which brought the entire site to its knees for about 15 minutes on Thanksgiving Day. Singing the too-much-traffic blues on Black Friday were Wal-Mart and Disney."
They were selling 1,000 XBox 360s for only $100 a piece. The deal started at exactly 2PM EST, the exact period of time Amazon went down. Entire forums of people were sitting and refreshing the pages. It was pretty easy to gauge what the cause was. :-/
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I had two networks to choose from: Comcast cable modem, and a supposedly "slower" SBC DSL connection. I ended up using the DSL as Amazon went unreachable on the cable modem at 5 till 1 (CST). At 1:00, Amazon was taking 10-20 seconds to load, but it did load. I clicked, answered a simple math question ("what's 18 + 19" IIRC), and it gave me the "you've got it" page.
I'm still shocked I got it, especially since I'm in Chicago, not on the west coast.
So was Amazon selling 1,000 XBOX systems at $100? Or selling a $1,000 XBOX system at $100?
It could be that the only purpose of your life is to serve as a warning to others.
Here's the buyer asking if the contract is binding including an email from the seller.
Ping is blocked by Amazon's firewall.
I haven't been able to get into the Apple Store tonight, it's been down all evening. They had a big one-day sale today, I bought a Bluetooth Mighty Mouse ($11 off, yay!) this afternoon and now I can't back get in to check the order status.
I've never heard of the Apple Store going down under a high load, but it often goes down briefly when product or price changes are made. I figure it didn't go down due to high traffic, but this is a rather long outage, compared to most updates. But still, it should be giving a "down for updates" err msg instead of a generic WebObjects error page.
Except amazon users voted which special they wanted. Sure, the other offers were crap, and didn't have much chance of getting voted for, but then you're suggesting MS paid amazon to have a "potential" sale, which may never happen. Sounds way too tin foil for my tastes.
And I doubt amazon even lost much money. Supposedly MS are now making $70 profit for the premium system, and likely much more for the core system. Seeing how some retailers are dropping $60-$100 off the premium package already (dell.com for instance, once you put it in the shopping cart) I would expect a retail price drop in 3-6 months, probably $360 for the premium (what dell is currently selling it for) and $260 for the core.
A lot of the traffic came from Digg... the $100 XB360 story was on the front page twice. Once when it originally broke, and a reminder on thanksgiving.
-jX
Don't you just love politics? It's like a comedy of errors.
Lots of online retailers have put up items at mistakenly low prices, only to retract later. It's not at all uncommon. They refund your money, and keep the goods.
I forget what the legal defense of this position was, but it seemed airtight. Anyone remember offhand?
The ______ Agenda
You are the first person I have seen claim they got the code. I didn't believe anyone did until now, but that's only because I also was able to make it to the question link...
...but when I answered the question (19 + 6), it turned me down. It was incredibly frustrating, because I was under the impression that I had already received a claim code (this is what the buying tips page said), and it was waiting for me to answer that question.
Screenshots: (1) The question | (2) The denial