CK Shopping Cart fail

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MrBitters

MrBitters

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Mike,

Your shopping cart system needs a major upgrade.
The fact that more customers then available knives were, not only able to add knives to their shopping carts, but were 99% of the way through check out when knives vanished out of carts really sucks.
Even worse are the folk who still have knives in carts and the system fails to let them check out without updating them on the, now no longer available, knife.

I, for one, made it all the way through check out and was looped back to my cart when I hit the final button to pay for my order. Now the site just keeps looping me back to my shopping cart, the knife still sitting there taunting me. No feedback telling me the order status at all.

This is just another reason why my name online is Bitter. :grumpy:
 
Sorry. I had 25 knives and they sold in 47 seconds. There were 50+ people on that one page hitting refresh when they went up for sale. I was actually very impressed with the way the cart held up. BTW, I didn't program the cart, it is one of the top 5 on the internet (BigCommerce).

No website sets aside an item just because you have it in your cart; except Amazon Gold Deals and that is cool! Otherwise I would be putting a ton of stuff in mine and then waiting for payday. It is taken off the system when it is purchased. And today there were at least 25 people faster at completing that than you. I wish I had 200 of them.

Lesson learned, the next ones will go up on the site with no warning or heads up of any kind.... I understand you are just venting over sour grapes, but I really do wish I could have accommodated everyone.
 
Actually, another on-line vendor ran into the same issue with a limited release knife.
They 'held' a knife in the cart for 30 minutes and then it dropped out and reverted back to 'in stock'. It was as best a solution as could be had for the problem in question.

It did result it knives popping back up as available every 30 minutes or so and then vanishing again.

Maybe it is sour grapes on my part; however, I still think it is an issue with web-based shopping that needs to be dealt with.
 
Unless the other vendor you reference is Amazon, as I mentioned, I would like to know the url.

Nonetheless, I will bring it up the next time BigCommerce asks me my opinion on the matter.

Thanks for your insight.
 
MrBitters said:
Actually, another on-line vendor ran into the same issue with a limited release knife.
They 'held' a knife in the cart for 30 minutes and then it dropped out and reverted back to 'in stock'. It was as best a solution as could be had for the problem in question.

It did result it knives popping back up as available every 30 minutes or so and then vanishing again.

Maybe it is sour grapes on my part; however, I still think it is an issue with web-based shopping that needs to be dealt with.
Click to expand...

You are comparing KAI USA (a large corporation that employs literally hundreds of people throughout the world) to a small mom & pop shop? That is kind of a stretch, even for the username you joke about. I'm certain if CK had the resources he would have a several thousand dollars tied up in servers, and such. Even the way KAI has to propagate their sales their exclusives is not sold by them in house. Something to think about before whipping out the broad brushes.
 
RevDevil said:
You are comparing KAI USA (a large corporation that employs literally hundreds of people throughout the world) to a small mom & pop shop? That is kind of a stretch, even for the username you joke about. I'm certain if CK had the resources he would have a several thousand dollars tied up in servers, and such. Even the way KAI has to propagate their sales their exclusives is not sold by them in house. Something to think about before whipping out the broad brushes.
Click to expand...

Look Rev, I'm not trying to be an ass; however, even Mike said he is using one of the top 5 carts avalable. The KAI issue was not about KAI itself, it was with the vendor and that vendor worked to come up with a solution to a foreseeable issue.
You can call Mike a 'Mom & Pop' seller if you like, but compairing him to KAI is a straw man at best. KAI in this case is more like GEC. Ultimately, GEC has a limited number of dealers and Mike is one of the most high profile. Especially as he is ordering and selling the very limited and sought after SFOs. As such, I would hope that as the popularity of the product and his web site grows that cart he employs can handle the traffic. Mike noted that 50 people were trying to buy 27 knives. In the end, almost half of those people thought they were getting a knife right up until checkout when they got disappointment instead.
 
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MrBitters said:
Look Rev, I'm not trying to be an ass; however, even Mike said he is using one of the top 5 carts avalable. The KAI issue was not about KAI itself, it was with the vendor and that vendor worked to come up with a solution to a foreseeable issue.
You can call Mike a 'Mom & Pop' seller if you like, but compairing him to KAI is a straw man at best. KAI in this case is more like GEC. Ultimately, GEC has a limited number of dealers and Mike is one of the most high profile. Especially as he is ordering and selling the very limited and sought after SFOs. As such, I would hope that as the popularity of the product and his web site grows that cart he employs can handle the traffic. Mike noted that 50 people were trying to buy 27 knives. In the end, almost half of those people thought they were getting a knife right up until checkout when they got disappointment instead.
Click to expand...

....And those people who made up their minds, checked out and paid for them got their purchases, just like any other limited quantity item. There is no reason for a vendor (or anyone for that matter) to hold an item for a purchaser without prepayment or at the very least a downpayment.

You snooze, you lose...as the old adage says.
 
I think the only valid criticism here is allowing everyone to bull-rush the website at the same time for an extremely popular product. Mike admitted the supply-demand numbers were completely unbalanced, and offered a reasonable solution going forward. These type of computer issues are not uncommon under such circumstances. I remember trying to purchase a Spyderco forum knife that was to be released at a specific time and the online shopping cart completely locked up within the first minute and stayed down for about an hour. I understand you're "bitter" about this (I'd probably be, too) but, really, it's just a knife.
 
MrBitters said:
Look Rev, I'm not trying to be an ass; however, even Mike said he is using one of the top 5 carts avalable. The KAI issue was not about KAI itself, it was with the vendor and that vendor worked to come up with a solution to a foreseeable issue.
You can call Mike a 'Mom & Pop' seller if you like, but compairing him to KAI is a straw man at best. KAI in this case is more like GEC. Ultimately, GEC has a limited number of dealers and Mike is one of the most high profile. Especially as he is ordering and selling the very limited and sought after SFOs. As such, I would hope that as the popularity of the product and his web site grows that cart he employs can handle the traffic. Mike noted that 50 people were trying to buy 27 knives. In the end, almost half of those people thought they were getting a knife right up until checkout when they got disappointment instead.
Click to expand...

Bitters, the analogy between KAI and CK was inferred by you, you didn't come right out and say it but it was obvious. That one cannot be pinned on me, sorry. Crap happens, in this case I don't see how moving the goal posts could have made any difference in the end. Since we are talking about fallacies, the "Texas Sharpshooter" applies here, more than any other. I've missed out on knives I really wanted. It is always a shame that more knives were not made and/or I was not quick enough on the trigger rather than how the cart issue was handled. Just my opinion on the matter of course. It's worth exactly what you paid for it. I don't think you are being an ass, but you did extrapolate the context of your username a bit. ;)
 
The cart worked exactly the way they programmed it to work. The first people that finalized payment got the product. Nobody paid for a knife that doesn't exist; the screen didn't go blank for anyone; things didn't grind to a halt; nobody got more than one knife (that was a cart setting I enabled). I don't like waiting around for 30 minutes for an abandoned purchase to pop back up, and luckily I have a say. It was a success for the folks that got one and a disappointment for those that did not. I have never been to a basketball game when both crowds were complaining about the referee at the same time.

I hate that I couldn't accommodate everyone, but as dad always said, "damned if you do, damned if you don't". Today has it's own stress, I'm not bringing in yesterdays.

A re-seller has already contacted me after reading this thread and said he would buy the entire run of the wharncliffe and sheepfoot at a premium to resale on eBay. Think I will go that way this next time ;)

But, again, sorry that you got aggravated by it.
 
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