Filmnight Easter Sale (merged)

Babbler

Alzani wrote:

Hello there everybody

My name in Andrew and I am part of the website IT team for Filmnight.com and I feel that I have to defend us a bit as well as let you know what when so wrong!

As I'm sure you can imagine, DVDs being sold off at £2.95 generated a TONNE of interest; nothing like we've ever seen before. We had literally hundreds of thousands more hits than we originally anticipated, and as a few of you have guessed, our servers weren't prepared enough for it, hence the poor loading times. Fortunately now, we've done masses of performance enhancing, load balancing and suchlike on them and the site is running much more smoothly and quickly now!

We've taken a lot from this experience, and in the future when we do sales of this magnitude the stability of the site should be much better!

For those of you trawling through all the pages looking for titles in the sale you'll be pleased to know that you can now use the standard search to find titles that you may want. Simply use the search as normal, and if the item you want is in the sale you'll see a link with "available now for £2.95" on the right hand side of the search results... you can't miss it if it's there!

I apologise for any frustration that this has caused you all, I've personally had the hardest three days of work of my life working on this, and hopefully you'll keep an eye on us for our constant offers, sales and offers.

Cheers all

Andrew

Its good to hear from someone who actually works for the site.

I can understand your web site was overloaded. Its to be expected when you sell off whole series for 9.99 when the cheapest elsewhere can be between 20 to 50 quid!

The checkout process didnt help things however - having to confirm addresses twice, and enter card details only to find basket was emptied (tho it showed the items as soon as you exited).

Also, it is bound to be a bit quicker now that most the dvd's have sold out. Not much left worth looking at

I did spend 3 hours trying to get my bargains - lol. Gave up in the end...

It may have helped to have a phone number in these circumstances where you can place your order and 1 dedicated internal server that updates stock levels for the phone crew. Would have taken a load off the site. (just one possible solution).

Dont mean to offent - Im sure you worked really hard to get the site working properly. We'll see how good it works next time (if there is a next time!).

Thanks for your feedback on your side...

helen21_2

I just ordered meet the fockers, mr &mrs smith and robots, althought they dont appear in the £2-95 pages when you search they are there and all showing as in stock

If you search they are also showing other £2-95 dvd's as being in stock but at FULL PRICE

Sweetchuck

Alzani wrote:

Hello there everybody

My name in Andrew and I am part of the website IT team for Filmnight.com and I feel that I have to defend us a bit as well as let you know what when so wrong!

As I'm sure you can imagine, DVDs being sold off at £2.95 generated a TONNE of interest; nothing like we've ever seen before. We had literally hundreds of thousands more hits than we originally anticipated, and as a few of you have guessed, our servers weren't prepared enough for it, hence the poor loading times. Fortunately now, we've done masses of performance enhancing, load balancing and suchlike on them and the site is running much more smoothly and quickly now!

We've taken a lot from this experience, and in the future when we do sales of this magnitude the stability of the site should be much better!

For those of you trawling through all the pages looking for titles in the sale you'll be pleased to know that you can now use the standard search to find titles that you may want. Simply use the search as normal, and if the item you want is in the sale you'll see a link with "available now for £2.95" on the right hand side of the search results... you can't miss it if it's there!

I apologise for any frustration that this has caused you all, I've personally had the hardest three days of work of my life working on this, and hopefully you'll keep an eye on us for our constant offers, sales and offers.

Cheers all

Andrew

Did you not expect a huge amount of interest in a sale like this? Surely it's not too tough to realise that the site would be flooded, nor that demand would exceed supply.

It really is a poor show to confirm orders and then backtrack, offering a paltry 25% discount on future purchases in its place.

I certainly won't be taking FilmNight up on their offer and will be sure to recommend to all of my friends that they steer well clear of such an unreliable and unprofessional firm.

In situations like this, it's expected that websites will honour the prices advertised - see the great Amazon digital camera debate from a few years back.

FilmNight has acted in a completely amateur way right from the word go in this debacle and a 25% voucher is scant consolation when you have no intention of using the site ever again.

comicmankev

Sweetchuck wrote:

Did you not expect a huge amount of interest in a sale like this? Surely it's not too tough to realise that the site would be flooded, nor that demand would exceed supply.

It really is a poor show to confirm orders and then backtrack, offering a paltry 25% discount on future purchases in its place.

I certainly won't be taking FilmNight up on their offer and will be sure to recommend to all of my friends that they steer well clear of such an unreliable and unprofessional firm.

In situations like this, it's expected that websites will honour the prices advertised - see the great Amazon digital camera debate from a few years back.

FilmNight has acted in a completely amateur way right from the word go in this debacle and a 25% voucher is scant consolation when you have no intention of using the site ever again.

You live and learn aye.

executiverocker

it shows arrested development for £9.95 on the sale advert, but when you go to buy it shows as £27?

Bargain_Mad_2

Babbler wrote:

It may have helped to have a phone number in these circumstances where you can place your order and 1 dedicated internal server that updates stock levels for the phone crew. Would have taken a load off the site. (just one possible solution).

There is a phone number you can call;

Can I place my order over the phone or by fax?

Yes you can, you may phone us on 08707 66 34 66 (open Monday to Friday, 9:00am - 5:30pm) or fax your order on 0870 44 66 546.

Though I never thought to look until you mentioned it - wish I had since a lot of titles I would have liked have now sold out

Sweetchuck

People were trying to phone/fax orders but repeatedly told to use the website as the congestion would clear eventually.

An absolute shambles, from start to finish.

Bargain_Mad_2

Have to say that despite all the problems ordering, I am impressed with how quickly they have dispatched. Finally managed to place an order at 2.04am this morning, at 10.38am had an email that one of the items had been dispatched

Anyanka_2

Nothing great value is left now.

All sold out.

Sweetchuck

What really maddens me is that when they e-mailed me to tell me that part of my order had been cancelled, it was because there was no stock.

Guess what?

The very boxset I ordered is still quoted as being "in stock" on their website... at full RRP.

:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: