Archived Target's Website Crashes on Cyber Monday.

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It took me 4 hours yesterday to order shoes that would only let me do site to Store as shipping, then the store cancelled my order even though the shoes are in stock and right on the shelf. So frustrating.
 
If I recall correctly, it's 15% off everything. Massive traffic. We broke our online record for Black Friday sales (Wii U Was the Top-Selling Item in Target’s Record-Breaking Online Black Friday Sale)

Jesus, I'm all in favor of critiquing corporate but some times it's not their fault. It's a massive sale, with massive traffic. I swear sometimes the complaining is just ridiculous

Are you new? Target has had IT problems for YEARS. In stores and online.
They know when the site is going to crash. Do you know how they know? Because it has already happened! MULTIPLE TIMES. But they are too cheap to fix it. It's going to backfire. They are trying to increase their online sales. It's the big focus. Yet they fail on the biggest days. Not a good sign.
They need to get their shit together. No excuse.
Amazon.com doesn't crash on big days.
 
Prior to working for Target I worked for a movie theatre chain - stuff liked this happened when movies like Harry Potter, Hunger Games and when any comic book movie tickets went up for sale. I'm sure it happened with Star Wars. I'll take our recent Target.com crash over the thousands of movie goers that I'd have to personally see when they came in to see the movie and tell me about their horrible ticket buying experience and how they are so disappointed they had to reserve their seat ahead of time.
 
Are you new? Target has had IT problems for YEARS. In stores and online.
They know when the site is going to crash. Do you know how they know? Because it has already happened! MULTIPLE TIMES. But they are too cheap to fix it. It's going to backfire. They are trying to increase their online sales. It's the big focus. Yet they fail on the biggest days. Not a good sign.
They need to get their shit together. No excuse.
Amazon.com doesn't crash on big days.

Y'know this was twice as much traffic as their previous record high traffic, right?
 
Y'know this was twice as much traffic as their previous record high traffic, right?


All that traffic and it has lead to lost sales and angry guests. Again. Who else has this problem on a regular basis? Other companies plan ahead. They know the one area they 100% be certain is going experience high increase is sales is online. On top of that they added all the FF stuff. Not hard to predict that they should be seeing more than twice the traffic when you have added an entire new dimension to what you offering. Who did not see this coming? Every year over and over. Then again this is the same company who opened up 100 plus stores in Canada with no plan on how to get them product so I guess prior planning is just not something Target does. Excuses, they do those well.
 
I had really wanted to get that Sims game but alas...I could not. It was wayyyyyy too busy!!!
 
Y'know this was twice as much traffic as their previous record high traffic, right?

You can plan for that much traffic, and always plan for at least double your highest volume. They went cheap and once again it bites them in the butt. You would think "Let's go balls out and make sure it won't crash." Nope.. I have seen major video game releases world wide that make spot look like a local box under a desk launch with less issues than spot. You want to play with the big boys get the big toys.
 
You can plan for that much traffic, and always plan for at least double your highest volume. They went cheap and once again it bites them in the butt. You would think "Let's go balls out and make sure it won't crash." Nope.. I have seen major video game releases world wide that make spot look like a local box under a desk launch with less issues than spot. You want to play with the big boys get the big toys.

and with recent obvious Internet/Credit Mishaps, you think Target would be the first company to have their website in "Ship" Shape

I am totally stealing that pun and trademarking it, BTW
 
Honestly, I can't fathom what goes on in those heads of the spot new corporate leaders. Maybe they need to corporate checkbook and write themselves a "reality check".
On a side not maybe that is why our store level managers are acting clueless, you know that old saying that emulation is the highest form of flattery.

The store side employees have to face the angry guest, and try our best to retain their loyalty, so that we can get a paycheck. Recently it was the breach, and that stigma will never go away, the spot will always be mentioned and compared whenever it happens to another corporation,. But continued website issues? This just isn't cutting with the guest, every time we have a designer launch, there goes the site. Now cyber Monday and it goes down, that isn't exactly reassuring in our guests mind. Even at the store level we are never prepared, because the spot bases all store promotions it on historical data or a small and non-representational store "pilots". Well spot if you keep acting like a cyber dinosaur, we are going to become extinct, "free shipping" isn't going to work forever on the consumer.
 
My favorite part of this whole fiasco is that they basically turned off the target.com phone lines so they didn't have to answer to the guests. Must be nice...but it doesn't work that way, folks!
 
My favorite part of this whole fiasco is that they basically turned off the target.com phone lines so they didn't have to answer to the guests. Must be nice...but it doesn't work that way, folks!


They just go to the stores and scream at the TMs.

Seriously Spot, do you hate your employees that much?
 
You don't even have to be at the front end to have people take the site issues out on you. If you're salesfloor or operator, you too can share the burden. Didn't help that the flex fulfill system crashed multiple times on Sunday. That should have been a warning sign.
 
You can plan for that much traffic, and always plan for at least double your highest volume. They went cheap and once again it bites them in the butt. You would think "Let's go balls out and make sure it won't crash." Nope.. I have seen major video game releases world wide that make spot look like a local box under a desk launch with less issues than spot. You want to play with the big boys get the big toys.

EXACTLY. We go balls out in the stores every year with payroll and staffing to ensure we're prepared for black Friday... Online should be the same way; especially now that brick-and-mortar stores are losing a lot of ground to online shopping.
 
My buddy is the Electronics Team Lead at my store, and he got at least 3 or 4 calls an hour asking him why the site was down.

Because, you know, he works electronics so surely he knows everything there is to know about the website!
What store still has an electronics team lead?
 
I haven't worked for Target for about a year now and I ordered 2 things online that I could only go pick up in the store (not available to ship, store pick up only). I went in tonight to pick up the stuff I ordered and the GSA who helped me out at guest services is a friend who I used to see all the time and she just looked super depressed, upset, and frazzled. She pulled my stuff up on the iPad at the desk, walked over to where the stuff was stored, and brought it out to me. I started to make small talk with her and asked how she was, etc. and she just looked so beat. She was very unhappy looking and I felt terrible. She said that people were coming in, screaming, cussing, and just being plain rude because of all the crap yesterday. I'm glad that I no longer have to deal with all that, but I feel so bad everytime I see bad stuff that gets posted on here (or on Facebook or wherever it is) because I know that my friends that are still at the store have hell to pay over all of it.
 
People were complaining about the website a lot today at guest service. This is the new norm. Humans especially Americans are becoming lazier and lazier each year so it's expected that people are going to sit on their asses and shop online instead of physically going to a store and shopping like a normal person.
 
Back in the day, I was studying to do IT/networking, and also ran a few small websites. It's not rocket science to anticipate server load and farm it out to an off-site company if needed. I imagine the IT people are feeling the burn far more than all TMs combined today; a lot of them likely lost their jobs (and deservedly so, if this was their decision). As has been said already, most other websites managed to stay up and functional. My guess is there was a major push to trim the budget for Cyber Monday in Target's IT dept, and the IT employees have been saying "told ya so" all day. ;)
 
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