posted on November 1, 2005 11:50:18 AM
As we're moving into the holiday crunch I'm thinking back to mistakes I made last year and making changes so they don't happen this year, and I trust that Vendio is doing the same.
Last year, between Christmas and Thanksgiving, Vendio had at least one day where most photos were not displaying. They resolved the problem eventually and blamed it on the holiday crunch. There was a similar problem this year during an eBay "free listing day," which was again attributed to the crunch.
My question is "What precautions is Vendio taking and what backup procedures are being put in place in anticipation of this year's holiday crunch?"
While a day or two down out of 365 days doesn't sound like a big deal, it's a huge deal if you have a hundred high-end listings concluding and have most of your volume sales during this time period. Should we be staggering our auction listings to spread out the risk?
Thanks for any insight you can lend, and best wishes to all for a super-efficient and super lucrative final quarter 2005!
posted on November 4, 2005 06:30:18 AM
We should hope so. They took a week off from the community boards back in I think September so they could prepare for the Holiday rush! Time will tell. For the prices we pay here the mistakes that happen shouldn't be as frequent as they are.
posted on November 17, 2005 04:32:45 PM
Hello chrisnich,
We have invested a great deal of time and resources creating redundant and fail-safe systems, however, the best-laid plans do sometimes go awry (especially during peak times when traffic is heavier than normal).
Although we would like to be able to guarantee 100% uptime, because of the nature of the technologies involved this is impossible. Even eBay experiences technical problems on occasion. While we don't expect any problems this holiday season, it is always best to stagger your listings so they're not all closing at the same time and/or upload the images of your highest value items to the web space provided by your ISP as a backup (most ISPs provide a few MB of web space for free with their services).
posted on November 22, 2005 11:59:54 AM
Thanks, Diana, for your advice and candor. I don't expect a 100% guarantee, and would be suspicious of anybody who made one for something with so many variables relying on so many different parties. That being said,you told me what I wanted to hear, that Vendio recognized last year's problems and has taken steps to try to prevent a reoccurance; and you offered some practical tips to help spread out the risk against the best laid plans taking a few hits from Murphy's Law. Thanks again, cheers and Merry Christmas.
