It sounded too good to be true. Amazon.com has a deal where you get to vote on one of four items to go on sale the next week. And, the first week, Xbox 360 for $100! Needless to say, the other three items (a bike, some barbie, and some membership thingy) were all lame, and Xbox got over 80% of the votes.
I had literally just bought a 360, mostly as a hedge in case I did not get this deal. If I got it... I'd probably give my promo code to Kyna if she didn't get hers, or add it to my ebay pile. I slept restlessly all night, constantly checking the clock. Finally got up, put on a robe, and started hitting refresh.
Everything went well until about 10:58am where the servers simply would not give me any kind of connection. This lasted for several minutes, until finally I thought "why not try https"... which I did. And it was instant. But to no avail, by then it was too late and they were sold out.
Lots of people are complaining that it was handled badly - the inability to handle the compulsive refreshers, the limited quantities, the awkward captcha involved. Even talk of BBB complaints. But seriously, I'm not sure what people expected. Even if the servers worked perfectly (and you can't expect they would for a spike this huge), the odds would still be stacked well against you.
So, I go back to my Xbox which I paid far too much for, and play more Geometry Wars. Next week there's a portable DVD player for sale. I doubt they'll be quite as popular....
The lesson: when you're looking for a deal, https can be your friend :D
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