Pathetic Service From CWC Online

[RocknRolla]

I too had an issue on the Sunday after the sale was extended. Sent an email, and had no response.

 

I did nothing more, as I do online shopping so I don't have to phone, and speak to people etc etc etc. May as well go to a brick and mortar shop.

 

Am I pissed off? Not really, as the saving to me on this Black friday, was 100%.

 

The point is to be made (and I am sure it has been) that if hype is created to the extent that CWC did, they better make damn sure their host/sp/server/ITGurus are able to cope with the traffic.

 

S2C had same issue a couple of years ago, and they streamlined their entry process after making such a big booboo.

[dev null]

The thing is that the technology to create queuing for web sessions has been out there for years. I sold it 5 years ago. Just like a call centre it would tell you the servers are busy but can we call you back or you will be online in x minutes...

 

Results is a predictable experience and results in happy customers. Plus a much larger amount of converted carts.

 

BTW - have any of you ever seen the application flow for a website transaction - most of what was timing out was the third party payment gateways which are external services to the websites, so nothing to so with the provider. THis is a seriously complex piece of software to even get one transaction right, never mind thousands. 

 

But this isnt the ambit of the hosting provider - its application layer load balancing, it costs money and everyone doesn't have the traffic to justify it.

 

So every year end we have the same cockup when everyone tries to go online and enter the Argus, Black Friday, tickets for the concerts etc.

 

THis is a really simple problem to solve and if the hosting providers had to stop trying to sell basic services and actually tried to add some value they would also see thta they could scoop a very large percentage of the front end hosting.

 

Rant off.

 

I hate third party payment gateways. It creates just too many problems which must be sorted afterwards when the cr@p hits the fan.

 

My system handles 70 transactions a second, but luckily it is based on stateless sessions and thus non-problematic load balancing.

 

Stateful sessions and long running transactions causes way too much problems. I have some long running transactions (5 - 15 seconds), but manage it via message queuing.

[Grease_Monkey]

A typical techie response to a business problem.

 

There are industries and businesses that cannot afford for their technology to fail, ever. A small, on-line specialist niche retailer in South Africa is not one of them.

 

I know. I have had > ZAR 1bn budgets to ensure that no matter what,   the IT systems operated without degradation and without interruption. The cost of fully redundant, fully fault resistant systems is astronomical and well beyond what is needed by most.

 

So, at some point a BUSINESS decision is taken balancing the operational (and reputational) risk against the cost. That determines the trade-offs that must be made. Scalability is one such trade-off. Do you build and scale the operation (not just the tech) for the one-off Black Friday sales and have 85% of your investment sit idle for the other 364 days of the year, or do you invest to run your business profitably and deal with the inevitable fall-out when you have last Friday's volumes?

 

I know everybody with some IT knowledge could promise them the a solution that will handle the black Friday volumes. I know that nobody could do so without pushing up their cost which needs to be passed on to the consumer.

 

I am sure most (reasonable) people (without anger management issues) would rather have consistently lower prices than a seamless transaction once a year.

 

ps. I feel zip for CWC. I have only used the on-line store once and it was OK. This is a general comment.

 

 

Spot on.

[Fox3]

I reckon Hynek and Lakata are due for an Epic win in 2017...

[lerouc]

There are people here comparing a marketing campaign to web hosting. Like seriously?

Cloud2m seems to be the host while RW is the designer.

 

Let's assume that I was wrong in my approach. There are still 2 things CWC should work on:

 

1. Never ever tell a customer to go shop somewhere else

 

2. Don't use reseller or shared website hosting if you market your site to be the best online cycle shop in SA. Cloud2m is basically a reseller using Hetzner servers. How many other websites are using the same resources as CWC? They should get their own server if they wish to do a big sale,so that they would be able to handle the traffic.

 

Also remember these guys at the shop are bike mechanics and not technical people (technical in the sense of IT and related fields) so because you (us, we) are from a technical back ground does not mean they are.

 

A lot of these shops fall victim to IT guys selling them some BS about hosting, designing etc. Not saying it happened here im just saying its our daily jobs not theirs. And it might actually be acceptable for them if their website crash one day out of the year. Its a very good up time percentage. Now for them to go spend a couple of grand per month for dedicated hosting instead of R50 for shared linux hosting might not be feasible.

 

There was an article on mybroadband where they spoke to raru's guys about black friday and they did everything in their power to keep their site up and running, they had a 2 minute downtime or something and then the payment gateways fell over...so even if you try and do all you can it might not be enough.

 

and Back to the original subject...

[Andrew Steer]

A typical techie response to a business problem.

 

There are industries and businesses that cannot afford for their technology to fail, ever. A small, on-line specialist niche retailer in South Africa is not one of them.

 

I know. I have had > ZAR 1bn budgets to ensure that no matter what,   the IT systems operated without degradation and without interruption. The cost of fully redundant, fully fault resistant systems is astronomical and well beyond what is needed by most.

 

So, at some point a BUSINESS decision is taken balancing the operational (and reputational) risk against the cost. That determines the trade-offs that must be made. Scalability is one such trade-off. Do you build and scale the operation (not just the tech) for the one-off Black Friday sales and have 85% of your investment sit idle for the other 364 days of the year, or do you invest to run your business profitably and deal with the inevitable fall-out when you have last Friday's volumes?

 

I know everybody with some IT knowledge could promise them the a solution that will handle the black Friday volumes. I know that nobody could do so without pushing up their cost which needs to be passed on to the consumer.

 

I am sure most (reasonable) people (without anger management issues) would rather have consistently lower prices than a seamless transaction once a year.

 

ps. I feel zip for CWC. I have only used the on-line store once and it was OK. This is a general comment.

 

If your site didn't crash on Black Friday, then your marketing and pricing maybe wasn't on point...

[lerouc]

A typical techie response to a business problem.

 

There are industries and businesses that cannot afford for their technology to fail, ever. A small, on-line specialist niche retailer in South Africa is not one of them.

 

I know. I have had > ZAR 1bn budgets to ensure that no matter what,   the IT systems operated without degradation and without interruption. The cost of fully redundant, fully fault resistant systems is astronomical and well beyond what is needed by most.

 

So, at some point a BUSINESS decision is taken balancing the operational (and reputational) risk against the cost. That determines the trade-offs that must be made. Scalability is one such trade-off. Do you build and scale the operation (not just the tech) for the one-off Black Friday sales and have 85% of your investment sit idle for the other 364 days of the year, or do you invest to run your business profitably and deal with the inevitable fall-out when you have last Friday's volumes?

 

I know everybody with some IT knowledge could promise them the a solution that will handle the black Friday volumes. I know that nobody could do so without pushing up their cost which needs to be passed on to the consumer.

 

I am sure most (reasonable) people (without anger management issues) would rather have consistently lower prices than a seamless transaction once a year.

 

ps. I feel zip for CWC. I have only used the on-line store once and it was OK. This is a general comment.

 

this is what i was trying to say as well... 

[Eldron]

Me - I see nothing wroing with retailers telling people to buy elsewhere.

 

Willing buyer - willing seller is my standard. I've told a few people to purchase elswhere. For various reasons - some have bled me dry for info over a period of 6 months whilst emailing me to tell me what great prices they got online using my advice, some just want a deal that is win to them and lose to me, some are just dicks and no amount of money would make me want to deal with them again. I'm guessing it's less than 1% of people/customers though.

 

Perhaps the wording could have been kinder but ultimately both parties have to be happy with the deal - we shouldn't be kissing retail arse to get our stuff and likewise retailers don't need to be kissing our arses to sell stuff. We're all grown ups.

 

Personally I'd like to see a copy of the OPs messages to see if the reaction matched the action.

 

If we are going to go fully hubanal on this one we need to see ALL messages not just Oom's reply.

[Jurgens Smit]

I reckon Hynek and Lakata are due for an Epic win in 2017...

Nooit boet, Susi and Jaro all the way

[Fox3]

Nooit boet, Susi and Jaro all the way

I'm not saying they're my favourites...but they have had a bad run of luck in the Epic! It's gonna be an epic-ally epic Epic 

[eccc whippet]

Me - I see nothing wroing with retailers telling people to buy elsewhere.

 

 

 

If we are going to go fully hubanal on this one we need to see ALL messages not just Oom's reply.

the price...it is like offering a 2 year old ice cream... :) then telling them that they have to go to mom for cabbage...its gona make a lot of noise.

 

I know i have learnt from comments i have made on the hub...i didnt share my experience about my shoe purchase that didnt happen because it wasnt the shoe displayed at the cheap price and they had no stock of the shoe i wanted...i just quietly took my rubber mallet and beat the crap out of my 100 mm steel block to relive my frustration instead  

 

i do agree that we need to see all the response.

[Cav']

Sometimes it feels as if TheHub is filled with a bunch of whiny bitches.

[dev null]

Sometimes it feels as if TheHub is filled with a bunch of whiny bitches.

 

Recursion?

[Joe Low]

No matter who/what you are or did, a statement like you can shop somewhere else if you not happy , does not belong in your vocabulary, especially as a retailer depending on that very sale/s to put bread on your table.

 

A simple unfortunately we understand your frustration but we cant help you this time round as we are not geared for it ,but will definitely work on it and make sure we meet your every expectation next time round, would have done.

 

The hubbers actually protecting and encouraging this type of behavior is beyond me...

 

You need some more imagination if it is beyond you!

 

The response isn't good or clever as it's now on the interwebs forever, but it happens and as long as it's not CWC's default response the harm is limited.

 

Would still like to see what the OP said and it's disingenuous to hide that whilst trying to mobilise pitchforks and torches.

[Jurgens Smit]

I'm not saying they're my favourites...but they have had a bad run of luck in the Epic! It's gonna be an epic-ally epic Epic 

Most def, I'm pretty keen to see what Schurter does, the way he was dominating the xco this year makes one wonder 

[scotty]

Jannie....

That's him.