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Surprises

by Mike Masnick

Mon, Dec 4th 2006 12:32pm





Amazon Cries 'Uncle' On Promotion Traffic

from the so-much-for-that-plan dept

After all that online doorbuster traffic knocked out Amazon.com on Thanksgiving day, it appears that the company is taking a lesson from many brick-and-mortar stores who learned years ago that letting everyone in at once is a bit of a problem, and learned to hand out claim tickets instead. theodp writes that Amazon's way of fixing the problem is to "change the rules to eliminate it. The e-tailer has adopted new don't-visit-us-we'll-email-you-rules to eliminate the get-an-Xbox-for-100-bucks feeding frenzies that brought the site to its knees on Thanksgiving Day and forced it to postpone last week's sale." This really is no different than just giving people in line tickets to get their item at a separate time, just that the tickets will come via email -- and it's a bit surprising Amazon didn't think of this sooner.

9 Comments | Leave a Comment

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  1.  
    identicon
    a man, Dec 4th, 2006 @ 1:22pm

    fuck off Anonymous Coward, you're getting on my tits.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  
    identicon
    Boskone, Dec 4th, 2006 @ 2:08pm

    Can't we all just

    get along ?

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Dec 4th, 2006 @ 2:11pm

    Re:

    huh?

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  4.  
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Dec 4th, 2006 @ 2:26pm

    LOUD NOISES!!!!!

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  5.  
    identicon
    discojohnson, Dec 4th, 2006 @ 2:34pm

    uhm, what?

    ok, so they email me a link to click instead of following the one i saw on every web site. same diff. especially after someone gets the link and posts it somewhere--within minutes it's everywhere else clogging the tubes!

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  6.  
    identicon
    Samuel, Dec 4th, 2006 @ 2:54pm

    Re: uhm, what?

    no....each claim code will, presumably, work only once, so if someone is stupid enough to bother spreading it around, far fewer people will even give it a shot than if it were open to everyone. Therefore, they will have avoided much unprofitable site traffic.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  7.  
    identicon
    gdwntx, Dec 4th, 2006 @ 3:00pm

    Re:

    dude/dudett take fewer/more drugs and get a life

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  8.  
    identicon
    gdwntx, Dec 4th, 2006 @ 3:01pm

    Re:

    nice

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  9.  
    identicon
    Starky, Dec 4th, 2006 @ 4:54pm

    Patent

    Lets see if they try to patent that idea.

    It would be stupid to, but seeing the state that the patent system is in now, I wouldn't be surprised if they tried and succeeded.
    I would bet $100 bucks that they successfully patent it, but for the sake of our ports, I won't.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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