For the second year in a row, Future Shop had trouble handling the initial crush of traffic for its Boxing Day blow-out.
I had trouble getting into the system on December 24 at 8 pm when the sale began, but was able to get in early December 25 to place my order. I actually went back to the site later in the morning to buy some SD memory cards without any trouble. Based on the order numbers, it looks like the website handled about 18,000 orders in 2 and a half hours Christmas morning.
I wasn’t the only person who initially had some problems. Last year’s blog post about Future Shop’s problems attracted a lot of web traffic and even a comment, asking me to update the blog to reflect the recurrence.
This year, Future Shop had a standby web-page, letting people know they are in the queue for the e-commerce engine. On one hand, it is a good sign that consumers are lining up to shop on-line.
On the other hand, it is a shame that one of Canada’s top electronics retailers still isn’t able to keep up with the demand.