Thought you guys would like this screenshot of a page I've been receiving from Macys.com for about the last half hour. Makes it pretty hard to see what their final One Day Sale before the holidays has to offer. Keep up the good work Consumerist!We like the "wait in line" style of the message. It's a good way to remind people who shop online to avoid crowds that they've managed to fail in that regard.]]>
Mike
I do believe I shall shop elsewhere, and my Macy's card will keep its pretty zero balance this holiday season.
]]>@RottNDude: nope because people just call in and order which ties up lines...prob cost more
]]>It's actually been doing this for months...and it doesn't put you in line at all. It redirects you to the home page after 5 seconds, forgetting everything you were trying to do.
]]>It happened to me, too. Just as I was looking at a really cute dress! GRRRRRR...
]]>Get it together, kthxbye
]]>Booo Macy's.
]]>You don't know what the state of their IT infrastructure is.
]]>Take 2:
<!-- APP_ERROR_CODE=0101090518#The server encountered an unexpected condition which prevented it from fulfilling the request. (HTTP Response Code: 500) -->
]]>@savvy999: I'm not sure it is regional, but it might be "folksy" and signal a positive completion. Clean up, finish up, take up camp, sweep up, etc.
]]>It has nothing to do with the server being too "crowded".
]]>In this age of cheap dual-core everything, more computing power for your server farms is always cheaper than lost customers. Didn't Macy's have a problem like this on Black Friday 2006, and didn't Sears have several problems like this recently?
Oh, and there's no wait at websites for JCPenney... or Kohl's... or Dillard's... or Nordstrom... and the list goes on and on. Unless the item you're looking for is a Macy's house brand exclusive, chances are that you can find it elsewhere.
]]>On the up-side, it's not a 5xx code from the web server, and traffic that's already in there can still shop w/o suddenly being shoved out the door by that comically-fat lady who takes up a whole isle in the perfume area (and buys the stuff by the gallon). :)
In the words of the Guiness guys, "BRILLIANT!"
]]>Wow. I'd much prefer to see a "we are experiencing technical difficulties" statement. Instead, I feel like I'm at the mall on Black Friday.
]]>On the other hand, it might actually be good business in controlling the traffic flow. They might actually be able to handle an abnormally high traffic rate, but they may be under an even abnormally higher traffic rate than could have been reasonably expected. So they had, with good foresight, made a user friendly message that reports the (unlikely) eventuality that the servers have too much traffic.
However, there is probably some other problem as you wouldn't expect these messages to last very long for EVERYONE.
]]>10 mins...still waiting...
]]>In any case, it's just a high-fallutin' 503.
]]>