Transformers Collectors' Club Store Currently Offline

Jeebus Crust.... AGAIN?!?!


AGAIIIINNN!!??!!

PHASE ONE: Highly sought-after items in the club store.

PHASE TWO: Club Store crash after 'unexpected' surge in activity.

PHASE THREE: Everybody watch your credit card statements!

FunPub, didn't we learn our lesson in January when this happened?

My order went through, but the fact that the site crashed did nothing to inspire confidence in this sytem.

I will be watching my card again and probably will go ahead and just get a new card to avoid the crap from last time. I really don't want to deal with fraud on this in the event of a security leak.

If Mattycollector can handle a crap ton of people on their site on the 15th of each month then there is no reason you guys can't.

The system our new store software was installed on will not support the bandwidth demands that are being placed on it. The store software company will be moving us to a different server with more capacity.

Are they for real? First they have a system running on out dated software, so they move to one which can't handle a little bit of demand?

And I mean little bit ... I can't imagine there would be tens of thousands of people all clamouring at once to get onto the store.

Spinister and Octopunch could not have been the only remains of Botcon 2012. The others will show up soon enough.

LiKwid wrote:Are they for real? First they have a system running on out dated software, so they move to one which can't handle a little bit of demand?

It's surprising. I have a hard time believing that the demand was terribly out-of-line with what they experienced with Over-run; so they should have had a pretty good idea of what to expect.

And I mean little bit ... I can't imagine there would be tens of thousands of people all clamouring at once to get onto the store.

This is difficult for me to judge. But the point is, it should not have been difficult for TFCC to judge.

Yeah if it was SG Prime.Kick off or the junkions i can understand..but spinister and octopunch and runamuck?

Make no mistake, Runamuck is driving this demand. There are a lot of Over-run boxes in the wild with an empty spot in them. And collectors will always want these guys as a set.

I got lucky and got my order in early. The new store items actually went live just a few minutes before noon CDT. But by the time I was completing my order (at noon CDT or a minute after), the site was already obviously taxed. Shortly thereafter, it became completely inaccessible; and a little while after that, the URLs started yielding 404s. Since I would expect it to take a few minutes after the announced availability time for demand to peak, this suggests to me that capacity for the site was not just a little below the necessary threshold, but a lot. (I am, of course, just making semi-educated guesses here.)

It surprises me that they'd miss the mark by so much a second time. You'd think they'd (at least try to) overestimate the required capacity and then dial it back if it turned out they had a lot to spare. I really want to give these guys the benefit of doubt and chalk the previous issues up to naiveté and a learning experience. But when the "learning" part doesn't seem to be happening, it does try one's patience.

Next they release an email telling you their servers got hacked by Swindle again, and you card information was stolen.

How could they not see this coming? Their incompetence knows no bounds.

To add another level of absurdity to the ongoing craptastic adventures of the TF Collectors' Club website blues, it appears that they've allowed the urls for transformerscollectorsclub and gijoecollectorsclub to lapse. I went to the first this morning out of habit and it's basically being squatted on for the time being. My server wouldn't even let me look at the GIJoe site.

So I scratch my head a bit. An organization programs their follows to follow a single site for, what, seven years and then lets it go back in the wild to become victim to internet squatters? Instead they run on a site name (toyarama) which really needs to build a following before it resonates with the market.

I fear they need a techspert in the worse way, one who has an idea of the challenges and can anticipate needs.

fairplaythings wrote:To add another level of absurdity to the ongoing craptastic adventures of the TF Collectors' Club website blues, it appears that they've allowed the urls for transformerscollectorsclub and gijoecollectorsclub to lapse. I went to the first this morning out of habit and it's basically being squatted on for the time being. My server wouldn't even let me look at the GIJoe site.

So I scratch my head a bit. An organization programs their follows to follow a single site for, what, seven years and then lets it go back in the wild to become victim to internet squatters? Instead they run on a site name (toyarama) which really needs to build a following before it resonates with the market.

I fear they need a techspert in the worse way, one who has an idea of the challenges and can anticipate needs.

Maybe the really just don't want to do it anymore.

I mean, where I work, you can tell when someone wants to stop working and quit. They start to lose focus, become slower at their job, screw off and get in trouble more, make more and more mistakes, ranging from the obvious to the down right ridiculous. This is usually coupled with the standard replies of "I'm trying, it won't happen again, etc. etc."

I seriously, wholeheartedly believe funpub just doesn't want to be in charge anymore, but doesn't have the stuff to tell hasbro they quit. They will continue to do the job, much like a person who doesn't want to do it, until the boss (hasbro) fires them.

Maybe hasbro should start being more aggressive in finding a replacement, because with everything that has been going on, and even though they will never admit it, they are shopping for a new partnership, and probably have been for a while.

And for those who disagree, please remember Hasbro is a company in the business of making money. As will all businesses, they are constantly looking for new ways to cut costs and still make a profit. To think they don't have the names of at least 5 back-up groups to replace funpubs is almost offensive.