Disaster Or Great Marketing Ploy?
Like many who have previously shopped at eBuyer, I received an email informing me that they were going to be having a crash sale on Monday 28th November with all sale items listed at £1.00. The sale was due to start at 11.00am but if you ‘liked’ the eBuyer facebook page you would earn yourself a 30 minute head start on everyone else, well not quite everyone as an impressive 48,000 people clicked that little old like button.
I wondered if it would be the usual tat these kind of sales usually have for sale, the kind of stuff more suitable for a car boot sale, maybe a few cables, blank CDs cable ties and the kind of stuff you could find in any old pound shop. Curiosity grabbed me and just before 10.30am I made my way to the eBuyer home page; that was the last time I saw it until around 21.00hrs. Despite several attempts to see what this wonderful £1 sale had to offer I never even managed to get the front page to load, not alone see what I bargain I might have grabbed.
In a second browser window I had the eBuyer facebook page open which was filling up at a rate of a new page a second with angry and disgruntled customers. At one stage I caught a post by eBuyer themselves saying we are sorry some of you are having problems it is due to the unprecedented demand?? Hang on a second, firstly ‘some of you’ more like 99% of us and secondly eBuyer is a technology store, they sell computer parts and they never realised that their servers were not up to 48k people visiting all at once instead eBuyer launched their very own DDoS attack on themselves.
Today the eBuyer facebook page is still filling with angry customers, not just those that never managed to see what fantastic £1 deals there were but customers who completed checkout only to be told today that the item they thought they had grabbed for a pound was out of stock. So what now for eBuyer? They still have 48,000 facebook likes, google will love all those likes and that is 48,000 people eBuyer can advertise to with a single post. They have a few thousand disgruntled customers to contend with but that should be easy to sort. I would expect to see a more realistic sale announced before Christmas, probably a 25% - 30% sale.
We are all very forgiving when it comes to bargains and we all have short memories so I dare say those complaining will be straight back looking for a bargain if or when the next sale is announced. Scam, Disaster or Great Marketing Ploy?
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I has one of the few that managed to get one of the deals into my basket and complete the checkout. When I got it into my basket there was 68 left of the motherboard. 2 mins after the confirm email I got another telling me it was out of stock. I was then no longer able to access any more of the deals, not that 1000 DSI cases are worth spending £1 to then find out the delivery is £8.99 on top of that…
I wouldn’t say I am angry but they did promise they would be running the sale from 10:30 till midnight and ALL clearance products would be added. Some of the products on there when added to basked displayed the normal price.
Hi Chris – I was annoyed I didn’t get a chance to make a purchase or even see what was available for £1.00. I would have been spitting nails if I had thought I had grabbed a bargain only to receive a sold out email… I have just read a dubious post on the ebuyer facebook page – A facebook newbie has posted to say he/she got a Revo for £1 and then cancelled two motherboards for £1 each as they decided they didn’t need them. An employee or friend maybe, the shame gets worse.