I know. But sometimes a bit of perspective is required.village wrote:Now, come on Ian....you know that's the silliest comment you could put on a watch forum
I am sure I was pretty upset when the web site crashed during the big sale in February and probably said (or at least thought) some nasty things about the web site then. Especially as I thought that the web is the main source of business for CWL. But I still am a customer and having met Chris and Wera and talked to them I know that they are not a faceless large corporation that do not care. And as Kip said they massively increased the number of servers. So they did listen, they did try and do something and it still was not enough. But at least they care and they try. For new forum members they may not have had the wonderful experience of the CWL customer service.
I was trying to do an analysis and I hope it was not rose tinted but I am pro CWL. Everyone is a potential customer and you cannot please all of the people all all of the time. I just think some of the things that were said were a bit much regardless of how frustrating it is. I was as frustrated as some as a couple of the watches I wanted went out of stock before I could get them bought. At least the web site kept going this time as Feb was a total melt down. It is very difficult to predict peaks. Even when the site was opened early it was struggling and theoretically only forum members would have been on it then.downer wrote:Interesting analysis.
However, we need to be careful to avoid rose-tinted glasses syndrome. Those "low post count/vitriolic comment" guys are real customers and may be people who would, in the future, adopt CWL as their brand of choice. The experience encountered the other night was extremely frustrating and must surely be avoidable. Some of those guys (customers) are lost forever, and some of them will tell others etc,etc.
The next sale must be better planned and executed.
When a big department store opens it's door for a sale there is a crazed rush to get to the good stuff and woe betide anyone who gets in the way. In that sense it was a bit like that. Some people got what they wanted, some didn't, some just got frustrated and angry while others just went to bed.
Remember if they spend large amounts of money to cope with a 2 hour peak twice a year then that has to go onto the cost of the watches. One of the things we like about CWL is how you can get a good quality Swiss watch at a low price. And a sale price is even better value.
As for better planned and executed - "we increased the server capacity X4 over the Jan Sale...and x15 over normal traffic expectations...and still it couldn’t cope...we even emailed less people". It sounds like they did better planning. That was one of my points (that I did not do a good job of explaining). It is all very well getting angry and saying how rubbish it is but that should be done in private and taking it out on an inanimate object. What we need is constructive criticism. How can CWL do better in future.