An Apology From YoYoExpert
This is a short note of apology. A truly humbling night for us here at YoYoExpert.
You're not alone if you attempted to order the YoYoFactory Mystery Box - and couldn't.
YoYoExpert owns our own high-performance server that is able to handle a sizable workload. However our shopping cart system is off site and hosted by a separate company. Preparations were made, however it would have taken over 6X our current server capacity to handle that amount of traffic that we were experiencing during the Mystery Box release. No one thought this would happen. Even our hosting company said we brought down other websites from the pure demand on their main networking switch & firewall. Yikes.
We have never, never, seen anything like 500-700 page requests per SECOND and that was through the first hour of release and didn't lessen up until 2am.
This is capable of bringing the site down immediately (almost any website). We rebooted the servers many times in an attempt to clear cache and move forward, to no avail. The same intense traffic steadily lasted for about 2 hours straight only letting a trickle of boxes out until they were gone.
The idea here was we were trying to do something special and we tried to make it clear luck would be a large factor; but not a happy moment for you, who tried to order and couldn't because the site was unreactive.
We. Are. So. Sorry.
Please understand that we were doing everything we could in order to keep up with demand. Immediately our hands were somewhat tied server side as we were unable to even log into our own servers so I was on the phone all night. At that point with that many hits coming in, not even our hosting company and cart provider could work on the site.
We are humbled beyond belief that you gave us that kind of attention. And we're upset that our site crashed on you. We worked like insane men without sleep attempting to get things under control... For those who understood and appreciated the problem for what it was, thank you for your patience and your forgiveness.
It's important to know that no one person had any advantage over the other. This was a release of under 300 boxes/bags. no more, no less, first come, first served. And there was a lot of luck involved as we originally explained on both product pages. Never was there a guarantee that everyone would get a box or bag, however we're also frustrated that many of you had to wait for over 2 to 3 hours just to find out the boxes were gone. For that, you have our sincerest apology.
Please accept our explanation and my personal apology. When I started YoYoExpert four years ago I never dreamed to have this kind of support from people around the world and I am again humbled and grateful to all of you every day.
To those who didn't grab one we are still having a great sale today for Black Friday which you can find out about here:
http://yoyoexpert.com/blog/black-friday-is-here-at-yoyoexpert/
Again, thanks for your understanding, patience and support. We really do love you all.
-
André Boulay
National Yo-Yo Master
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