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A lot of people seem to be seriously pissed about this. One comment I've seen on an email list for (very) high-end electronics hobbyists pointed out that Spark

A lot of people seem to be seriously pissed about this. One comment I've seen on an email list for (very) high-end electronics hobbyists pointed out that Sparkfun just made a few hundred friends and several thousand enemies. It got them a lot of publicity, but whether it was the kind of good publicity that will result in return visits, I don't know. Especially since many of those valuable first-time visitors never got through to the site at all.

joe_bleau 17y ago
Care to share what list this was? (I noticed a ton of gripes on time-nuts today.)
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- CamperBob 17y ago
  That's it.
ra 17y ago
Here in Australia I know people who stayed up until 5am trying to get an order in, but ultimately were booted out in the checkout phase. These people are dedicated electronic hobbyists, and long term sparkfun customers. So that's 1000 happy customers, and probably something like 100,000 really pissed off ones.
sli 17y ago
I, for one, am going to continue giving my money to Adafruit. Sparkfun certainly lost this prospective customer. I wonder what they were saying to themselves when the site began to time out before the sale even started. "But we streamlined everything!" My ass.
kellishaver 17y ago
It was very frustrating. This was the first time I'd ever heard of sparkfun. I got to the final stage of the order confirmation page when they still had about $72k to give away, so should have been within plenty of time to get the discount--I never made it through. As soon as their promotion ended, I went ahead and bought the starter kit.... from a different veodor.
ErrantX 17y ago
It was a free giveaway... I think they got a little more attention than they expected. 100,000 simultaneous people will easily slow down a big big network... :) I cant see why people are pissed to be honest; it was a bit of fun. Is $100 really that much to get worked up over?

joe_bleau 17y ago

Care to share what list this was? (I noticed a ton of gripes on time-nuts today.)

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
CamperBob 17y ago
That's it.

ra 17y ago

Here in Australia I know people who stayed up until 5am trying to get an order in, but ultimately were booted out in the checkout phase. These people are dedicated electronic hobbyists, and long term sparkfun customers. So that's 1000 happy customers, and probably something like 100,000 really pissed off ones.

sli 17y ago

I, for one, am going to continue giving my money to Adafruit. Sparkfun certainly lost this prospective customer. I wonder what they were saying to themselves when the site began to time out before the sale even started. "But we streamlined everything!" My ass.

kellishaver 17y ago

It was very frustrating. This was the first time I'd ever heard of sparkfun. I got to the final stage of the order confirmation page when they still had about $72k to give away, so should have been within plenty of time to get the discount--I never made it through. As soon as their promotion ended, I went ahead and bought the starter kit.... from a different veodor.

ErrantX 17y ago

It was a free giveaway... I think they got a little more attention than they expected. 100,000 simultaneous people will easily slow down a big big network... :) I cant see why people are pissed to be honest; it was a bit of fun. Is $100 really that much to get worked up over?