Black Tuesday 2013

I just got mine 20 mins ago!

 

only 36 left guys.

 

How do you know that?

 

only 13 left

i tried to add 3000 to my cart.

 

Down to 9. 3 more lucky folks better swoop in.

 

They still don't have everything back up. What is going on?

 

I just purchased 3 bottles in 2 minutes... Like a boss

 

Really? Because when I go to their site, it has nothing for sale other than Reserve memberships

 

You must've gotten the last 3 bottles then. They've removed the beer from the site but still have the same home page. Can't wait to get my bottles!

 

Had to leave my desk after trying most of the afternoon. Somehow able to pull off the order on my phone while running errands. Probably exceeded my data plan at this point

 

I was not able to get my bottles because of the server issues. After refreshing the page what must have been 30-40 times, it triggered an alert and my company blocked the page for being alcohol-related. I tried ordering from my phone for another 1.5 hours but continued to get errors.

Each year they have these issues and they've said that they engaged consultants and conducted stress tests to avoid this exact type of issue. I've successfully ordered online since 2010 and this is by far the worst year as far as technical issues go, based on my experiences.

I'm not too worried about not getting a bottle, as I'm sure I'll get to try the 2013 at some point. It would have been cool to keep my vertical going and have a 5-year tasting next year.

It's just hard to imagine that with server/technical issues every year for this sale, they're still unable (or unwilling) to avoid it. Companies can contract/lease temporary server space and support for this type of event, but my guess is that a proper solution costs more than they're comfortable spending. 364 days from now people will have Black Tuesday fever again, and although they'll remember this happenening, it won't be fresh in their minds and they'll be too focused on buying this great beer and it will once again sell out. With that in mind, why should the Bruery spend more money to fix this "issue"?

 

If you tried on your phone after 1pm you wouldn't have had any issues and it didn't sell out for another 9 hours. It was the first three hours with everyone trying to buy at the same time that crushed them.

I don't know for sure but I don't think they did capacity increases at noon, aside from people slowly gettin their orders and the high traffic demand eventually decreased to a reasonable level.

 

Tell me im wrong, but how about they have a system where starting at a certain time, everyone sends an email saying how many BT's you want. The emails will come in time stamped, and bruery can look at these (FCFS) after the fact, then get back to everyone and get their CC info and do the checkout.

 

Ask the people who didn't get El Catador memberships if they like that plan.

 

Yes. Lots of people claimed to have emailed right at the starting time (which I believe) but their emails didn't come through until hours later. Not a flawless plan, unfortunately.

 

Why didn't you wait until you got home from work to buy one? They didn't sell out until way after you would have been home.

 

I would prefer a lottery system. Everyone enters the weeks leading up, then they run a script to generate winners and contact for # desired and billing info. They key is just to make sure people can't enter multiple times. People that want more than 3 find a way around that either way so best case you make it less of a sure thing and drive people who really want it towards PS or RS membership.

 

While that works for someone like Pelican with Mother of all Storms, I'm guessing the Bruery wouldn't want to do that due to the amount of bottles sold, and the fact that they do have a web store set up (even if it does not work great during a 3-hour period a year).

I think in the past Pelican has only sold 200-240 cases of MoaS to their list and sold them by the case, offering people up to 2 cases, so at most they are dealing with ~240 emails/people to call. I'm not sure how many bottles of BT were sold but if they had 1,000 people on their list to sell to, it would be pretty annoying to call them and do it by hand when they have a site that will handle it all.


While going through 3 different threads and seeing people freak out was entertaining at times, if I were them I'd continue to try and fix the website problem, but wouldn't invest heavily into fixing the problem. Tons of non HS/RS people seem to want them to spend a bunch of money fixing their website so the one time a year they try to buy something from it they can check out in 2 minutes, but they still sold out of it in about 24 hours, and next year it will be the same way. Clearly they are trying to fix the problem with these Stress Tests and while obviously they have not fixed them yet, they told everyone ahead of time with multiple emails, posts, pictures of Bruery turtles, etc.

Glad I'm in the RS and hoping they fix the problems ASAP, but seems like they are trying to fix them and it isn't hurting their business too bad.

 

Thank you Captain Hindsight.

 

If you have an extra 2012, I'll trade you a 2013. I'm missing a 2012 for my vertical.