Cyber Monday is not a friend of mine
Dec. 1st, 2014 05:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
impySometimes I try and sugarcoat things here because you never know who's lurking or might stumble upon this and I know that not everyone has the same policy I do about what goes on on other sites shouldn't be reasons for banning/whatever on another site.
That said, I think beadoll on AGPT is a fuckwit.
In order to get to this conclusion, let me tell you a story of the biggest clusteruck of a sale AG has ever had online.
I should warn you, it's the time of the month where I break out all the profanity I don't normally use and tonight seems like the perfect time to indulge.
As you should know, today is Cyber Monday. I don't normally bother with CM sales because I have a hard enough time trying to get normal sales to work out for me, let alone ones that involve the online equivilent of a fight over something stupid. That said, I make one exception:
American Girl's CM sale. I've long given up on hoping for anything specific to go on sale as I find that road only brings heartache. However, I am usually content to find myself a couple of things and call it shiny. Some years I find a lot of things and have to weigh the pros and cons of each and other years it's a stretch to hit $20, and if you've ever taken a look at AG's pricing, you'll know that says a lot.
Thing is, there's always a bit of a jam. Every other year it's best to sit there a little before it starts with your account logged in and set to express checkout, with any code already pre-programmed in so you can save time before things start selling out.
Yeah. This year AG decided that even though there's always serious lag issues at the start of the sale, they should totally advertise it on Facebook before it started.
I suspect this was a horribly bad idea.
At eight minutes til 1am EST and the start of the sale, I was alerted to the fact that certain outfits were already sort of marked on sale. They said $14 (or whatever the price was) but they were still full price in cart. HOWEVER, it was likely they'd be part of the sale. So I threw a few in my cart and at three til showtime, I noticed the cart's prices had updated. Also, page one of the sale was up.
I really should have checked out then.
I really, really should have.
Because when the site finally loaded the other 21 pages of the sale, things went to hell immediately. I raced through the pages adding stuff and went to check out.
Checkout required the loading song to be played on an endless loop. Eventually it would error out and you'd try again.
Yeah. Nope. And then it would load and say your stuff wasn't in the cart, so you'd re-add it and repeat the process.
Surprise! Now you've got 5 of one item in your cart and any attempt to get rid of those extras blows your cart to smithereens!
After awhile I decided to hell with it, I was going to keep all five of Kit's Reporter Accessories in my cart and just sell them when they got here.
Yeah, my cart would not load. At all. And when it finally did, fifteen minutes later, everything was gone.
Are.
You.
KIDDING.
ME?
Sooooooooo... I try desperately to get the one and only item I would legtimately cry about missing (Julie's birthday dress) and not even my Kindle can make this thing work. I got at least five different errors. It was kind of impressive, actually.
I restart the computer because Fuck This Shit.
Any attempts to log into my account are met with laughter. Such laughter I cannot begin to describe it all.
Fine. Screw you, AG. I didn't want it anyway.
Which is a lie and AG knew it. I found I could add things pretty easily now, which was a nice surprise. So I rebuilt my cart and kept attempting to check out every couple of minutes and it kept immediately saying, "not yet!"
Eventually I had just about everything I wanted and after a few minutes, I finally got to check out. It was a little after 1am. I spent more than an hour trying to check out.
It took another half an hour after that to make a second order of stuff for Cass.. and one more thing for me. *cough*
All throughout this, there were two things keeping me sane:
1) the great and powerful z.
2) AGPT's outpouring of rage over this. It wasn't just Comcast being awful, it was the site! Hallelujah!
Only one person seemed to stand out. beadoll actually tried to defend AG's crappy handling of a sale they already knew was going to be a massacre. When people rightfully (and rather politely) told her that no, they were entitled to their anger and yes, they'd feel the same way even if things had turned out the way she was suggesting, she tried to backpeddle.
Which might've worked if she hadn't ended with: "would do this again."
I'm sorry, you what? I get that you got what you wanted and for that huzzah! But AG isn't a dinky little company; they should know better how to handle this and the fact that they don't seem to make any improvements is infuriating.
If you're going to keep the site in a crash-prone zone, then don't hawk the sale. If you're going to hawk the sale, make sure your servers don't immediately die.
This happens every big sale... but it was never THIS bad before. This was a new level of hell. I'm not sure, I think it might actually be a level of hell. "You must spend forever ready for a sale with stuff you want, only you are never able to check out."
Sigh. I missed a few things, like Saige's dog, but for the most part, I got really, really lucky once the site let me check out.
Julie's Birthday Dress (This is what I wanted most of all because it's been on my wish list for ages. I was even willing to try and checkout when AG seemed to think I wanted 2-4 of them)
Coconut Fun Outfit (just one, AG, not three. I'd been hoping this would be on sale.)
Cozy Sweater Outfit (I was tempted last week when it showed up via a Google search but I'm glad I waited.)
BT Fresh Picked Sundress (Remember when this came out and I wanted it? Mine!)
Ruthie's PJs (I was pretty surprised to see these show up, actually.)
Kit's Reporter Set (just the one, not the five it kept throwing at me)
Addy's Blue dress (I can't remember if Cass has this or even wants it.)
Gingerbread House Puzzle (I figure it was worth a shot.)
Sports Pants (Simple pants are everyone's friend.)
Kit's Classic Accessories (why yes, I did just buy this for the necklace.)
#2:
Bitty Dragon (The entire reason I made my second order. I'm not even sure Cass likes this, but she loves dragons and she loves BB stuff so... maybe?)
Denver Shirt (For Cass)
Sporty Winter Outfit (I passed this up on a lot of sales and each time regretted it.)
I'm going to hope other sites are better set up. I find it hard to believe they could be much worse. :P
That said, I think beadoll on AGPT is a fuckwit.
In order to get to this conclusion, let me tell you a story of the biggest clusteruck of a sale AG has ever had online.
I should warn you, it's the time of the month where I break out all the profanity I don't normally use and tonight seems like the perfect time to indulge.
As you should know, today is Cyber Monday. I don't normally bother with CM sales because I have a hard enough time trying to get normal sales to work out for me, let alone ones that involve the online equivilent of a fight over something stupid. That said, I make one exception:
American Girl's CM sale. I've long given up on hoping for anything specific to go on sale as I find that road only brings heartache. However, I am usually content to find myself a couple of things and call it shiny. Some years I find a lot of things and have to weigh the pros and cons of each and other years it's a stretch to hit $20, and if you've ever taken a look at AG's pricing, you'll know that says a lot.
Thing is, there's always a bit of a jam. Every other year it's best to sit there a little before it starts with your account logged in and set to express checkout, with any code already pre-programmed in so you can save time before things start selling out.
Yeah. This year AG decided that even though there's always serious lag issues at the start of the sale, they should totally advertise it on Facebook before it started.
I suspect this was a horribly bad idea.
At eight minutes til 1am EST and the start of the sale, I was alerted to the fact that certain outfits were already sort of marked on sale. They said $14 (or whatever the price was) but they were still full price in cart. HOWEVER, it was likely they'd be part of the sale. So I threw a few in my cart and at three til showtime, I noticed the cart's prices had updated. Also, page one of the sale was up.
I really should have checked out then.
I really, really should have.
Because when the site finally loaded the other 21 pages of the sale, things went to hell immediately. I raced through the pages adding stuff and went to check out.
Checkout required the loading song to be played on an endless loop. Eventually it would error out and you'd try again.
Yeah. Nope. And then it would load and say your stuff wasn't in the cart, so you'd re-add it and repeat the process.
Surprise! Now you've got 5 of one item in your cart and any attempt to get rid of those extras blows your cart to smithereens!
After awhile I decided to hell with it, I was going to keep all five of Kit's Reporter Accessories in my cart and just sell them when they got here.
Yeah, my cart would not load. At all. And when it finally did, fifteen minutes later, everything was gone.
Are.
You.
KIDDING.
ME?
Sooooooooo... I try desperately to get the one and only item I would legtimately cry about missing (Julie's birthday dress) and not even my Kindle can make this thing work. I got at least five different errors. It was kind of impressive, actually.
I restart the computer because Fuck This Shit.
Any attempts to log into my account are met with laughter. Such laughter I cannot begin to describe it all.
Fine. Screw you, AG. I didn't want it anyway.
Which is a lie and AG knew it. I found I could add things pretty easily now, which was a nice surprise. So I rebuilt my cart and kept attempting to check out every couple of minutes and it kept immediately saying, "not yet!"
Eventually I had just about everything I wanted and after a few minutes, I finally got to check out. It was a little after 1am. I spent more than an hour trying to check out.
It took another half an hour after that to make a second order of stuff for Cass.. and one more thing for me. *cough*
All throughout this, there were two things keeping me sane:
1) the great and powerful z.
2) AGPT's outpouring of rage over this. It wasn't just Comcast being awful, it was the site! Hallelujah!
Only one person seemed to stand out. beadoll actually tried to defend AG's crappy handling of a sale they already knew was going to be a massacre. When people rightfully (and rather politely) told her that no, they were entitled to their anger and yes, they'd feel the same way even if things had turned out the way she was suggesting, she tried to backpeddle.
Which might've worked if she hadn't ended with: "would do this again."
I'm sorry, you what? I get that you got what you wanted and for that huzzah! But AG isn't a dinky little company; they should know better how to handle this and the fact that they don't seem to make any improvements is infuriating.
If you're going to keep the site in a crash-prone zone, then don't hawk the sale. If you're going to hawk the sale, make sure your servers don't immediately die.
This happens every big sale... but it was never THIS bad before. This was a new level of hell. I'm not sure, I think it might actually be a level of hell. "You must spend forever ready for a sale with stuff you want, only you are never able to check out."
Sigh. I missed a few things, like Saige's dog, but for the most part, I got really, really lucky once the site let me check out.
Julie's Birthday Dress (This is what I wanted most of all because it's been on my wish list for ages. I was even willing to try and checkout when AG seemed to think I wanted 2-4 of them)
Coconut Fun Outfit (just one, AG, not three. I'd been hoping this would be on sale.)
Cozy Sweater Outfit (I was tempted last week when it showed up via a Google search but I'm glad I waited.)
BT Fresh Picked Sundress (Remember when this came out and I wanted it? Mine!)
Ruthie's PJs (I was pretty surprised to see these show up, actually.)
Kit's Reporter Set (just the one, not the five it kept throwing at me)
Addy's Blue dress (I can't remember if Cass has this or even wants it.)
Gingerbread House Puzzle (I figure it was worth a shot.)
Sports Pants (Simple pants are everyone's friend.)
Kit's Classic Accessories (why yes, I did just buy this for the necklace.)
#2:
Bitty Dragon (The entire reason I made my second order. I'm not even sure Cass likes this, but she loves dragons and she loves BB stuff so... maybe?)
Denver Shirt (For Cass)
Sporty Winter Outfit (I passed this up on a lot of sales and each time regretted it.)
I'm going to hope other sites are better set up. I find it hard to believe they could be much worse. :P
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-02 02:19 am (UTC)I'm sure AG didn't want things to immediately go to hell in a handbasket, but I'm failing to find any empathy with them considering this is not their first time at the rodeo. Do they not realize they just make themselves look stupid? And that the only people up at 1 o'clock in the fucking morning on a Monday are the diehards who already know about the sale and are waiting at the ready, as you were?! Sheesh.
Cyber Monday was such a bust this year. Or maybe I just didn't want the most ~popular~ things, IDK.
(Julie's dress is giving me SUCH Dawn vibes, OMG.)
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-02 05:29 am (UTC)And isn't it? That dress has been calling my name for years and I kept talking myself out of it but I was ready to cut someone for it at $14.