You didn't think the whole
Nook saga was over, did you? After
just succeeding in delivering devices to expectant pre-orderers
in time for Christmas, Barnes and Noble is today cleaning up yet another mess courtesy of its ill-prepared content servers. Judging by customer feedback on its support forums, it appears a glut of download requests over gift-giving day jammed the B&N net pipes and left a great many disappointed Nook users. All attempts at downloading an ebook yesterday -- even by those who got their Nook
a little earlier in the month -- were greeted with a "Queued: Will complete shortly" message, which apparently remained that way until early this morning when downloading finally resumed functioning. The biggest perceived failure here, though, is the book retailer's silence on the issue, which illustrates the importance of communicating with your customers -- most people seemed tolerant of the setback once they realised they didn't have faulty hardware.
[Thanks to all who sent this in]
posted December 26th 2009 8:56AM
It's hard to lead a business without making mistakes...
@DeviantmacG It's even harder to lead a business if you keep making them...
My nook wouldn't download and then I found the problem, I didn't own one. :(
@DeviantmacG Are you turning into a Nook fanboy? God... I have fanboys. Like the BlackBerry Storm 1 at it's attempt to be an "iPhone killer," it failed. If B&N got it right the first time, they would have gotten my vote. But, sorry. It's a tainted mess. Glad I cancelled my order, and gone with a Kindle.
@mcoopers81 Seemed less like a fanboy defense and more like a general comment about business. Things need to fail before they are improved. In the end this is good learning experience for B&N, present & future nook owners and even Kindle users.
You could even say that throwing that bit about the Kindle in at the end of your reponse was "fanboyish." But I'm not gonna...
@spidercoz Spot on. Does anybody remember the iPhone 3G release, and what a horrible stinking mess that was? Even the best smartphone on the market, from one of the most innovative companies out there, has mistakes under their belt.
A million people overwhelmed the servers, and it gave an error message? How is this news, or even blogworthy?
@JeanLuc Picard It's possibly blogworthy to Nook owners.
@JeanLuc Picard
Make it so!
Any man forgets his number spends a night in the box.
What is that man holding in his hands?
@dzeikei
a billy club
@dzeikei
It's called a BlackJack or sap. Good for the gentle art of persuasion. Especially good for making criminals 'fess up even if they didn't commit the crime.
@Average White Boy Also for fixing the issue of failing to communicate.
(look up Cool Hand Luke on wikipedia for those not in the know...)
Monkies Monkies Monkies!
This company has to be ran by Monkies for this to all make sense.
Agreed?
What we’ve got here is failure to communicate!
What's all that dirt doin' in Boss-Man's hole!?
ho ho ho mary crishtmas
If you're not smart enough to figure out that the service might be overloaded ON CHRISTMAS DAY then WTF are you doing with an eBook reader??
@dallashigh:
"If you're not smart enough to figure out that the service might be overloaded ON CHRISTMAS DAY then WTF are you doing with an eBook reader??"
They might've been thinking: "Amazon did it with no issues. Why would B&N have a problem?"
@dallashigh I was thinking: "Maybe, with all the delays, they will realize how popular it is and PREPARE for the mass amount of people that will be downloading on Christmas Day." Apparently, despite all of the delays from mass adoption, they didn't figure out that upgrading their servers in preparation would be a good idea.
@magus21
And tom dick and harry can come up with device. Creating a world class infrastructure to inject, manage and deliver content is a whole new ball game.
Guess who is the champ here?? Amazon! :)
Just to be fair, it wasn't just the Barnes & Noble site with the nook that was overloaded yesterday. Check out this article on the Sony Reader ebook store that had the SAME problem, http://the-gadgeteer.com/2009/12/26/sony-reader-site-buckles-under-load/
Seems that ebook readers were quite popular for Christmas this year.
@palmsolo Steam had similar problems during their holiday sales--as did, I imagine, everyone with serious demand. When I read this post, I see "Extra! Extra! lines at stores over the holidays!"
I think if you're going to use a blog post to critique a company for fail, the post itself shouldn't be quite so overloaded with fail.
@fortunzfavor The fix for Steam to me was to pick another location. I picked some random European server and it worked at my slightly-abysmal full speed of 230 KB/s.
Mistakes are one thing, but not having enough bandwidth is something that didn't have to happen. You would think B&N would have had computer analyst make sure there was more then enough bandwidth. YOU NEVER TURN A CUSTOMER AWAY. I still remember that motto from back in my retail days.
This is what happens when you try to drag an industry into the technology age that really wants to remain in the dark ages. We've seen a similar mess with music and video with all the DRM and suing their customers nonsense. Now we have badly planned and delivered services from printed media publishers.
The sad thing is, the writing has been on the wall for the printed media industry far longer than it was for music and video. And they still managed to screw it up.
wow.. they really dropped the ball here.
And so, what's the big deal here? Totally to be expected and totally understood, including by customers who have sensibility.
@Mikerman
Agreed. Nothing more than fodder for the "This sucks, that sucks" crowd.
@Mikerman
That's just a sad excuse to overlook a badly conceived, half baked products trusted into the hands of a consumer who has paid an arm and leg and all he wants is his book to download.
Has no one at B&N heard of this term called "Performance and Scalability Testing"????
@Mikerman Yup. I'd be upset with B&N myself if I had a nook, but engadget's treating this like something different than every other digital distro site in existence under similar circumstances, including those with years of experience with heavy demand, makes it seem like engadget doesn't really get the internet.
Have they not used the internet before? Do they post by snail mail? Or do they have the attention span of a moth on crack?
@Mikerman Yeah, I'm lost on this myself. My wife's worked fine on Christmas day, although we didn't try to do anything yesterday except for her actually READING on it. So yeah, it's been awesome. The only "problem" I have with it is the higher prices the ebooks have on B&N vs. Amazon. However, getting a device that comes with wifi, pdf, and runs on an SD card (not to mention runs on Android, just like both of our hacked G1s) is worth it. I'm sure the pricing will sort itself out, along with another software update by the time I order my own.
Maybe, instead of trying to rip-off the Alex reader, and rush to market so no one realized they were ripping off the Alex... maybe, just maybe, instead they should have paid for the Alex reader, and taken their time to get everything in place, so that they didn't have all of these issues.
This seems to be a common situation. New technology that relies on server/network infrastructure rolls out to the masses all at once, FAILS, AND customer service is clueless. It happened at least twice with the iPhone. I know it has happened in other cases. WHY is it so hard for companies to plan ahead and meter the usage ("We anticipate great demand so people with last names ending in Y will be sent their Nooks on date x"), and WHY is it so hard for the customer service folks to be informed immediately and at least have a message ("We have 243,633 people requesting books at the same time, really sorry, our metrics model says you might get your download in n Hours, if not try us again"). Or is the reality of things that, its easier not to plan ahead because any pain on Day One will be quickly forgotten? It just irks me because I work on QC and do my best every day to make sure these sorts of things don't happen and if they do I make sure I communicate it to the right people immediately. Maybe the consumer world is a different model.
Another reason not to buy version 1.0 of ANYTHING.
Windows 1.0
Mac 1.0
iPhone 1.0
Unless you want to put up with bugs, best to wait til version 1.1 :)
@(Unverified) too bad, they have update 1.1 already on the way for the 1.0 users. Don't suppose'n I'll be seeing you there, then, either.
@(Unverified) Kindle 1.0 was pretty good. I still have mine after two years, and I still take mine everywhere. Was it pricey at the time? Sure, but as far as v1.0 devices go, the Kindle 1.0 was one of the smoothest devices to be an early-adopter for.
@(Unverified)
For items from Microsoft, always wait for 3.0 if you can. :)
This does not look good... for Homestar Runner.
WOT WEVE GOT HERE IS...
I would say NOOK is too late! This company is doomed. That was th only chance for them to survive but they blew it!
It was overloaded for 24 hours but now it works fantastic. 5 seconds to DL a book. Big deal we had to wait one day. The impatience of people, especially Americans astounds me.
@solarpos Herp. Derp.
yeah i had that problem last night i found some free books in the ebook store on my nook and it said they would download later and it complete when i woke up.
OK, OK, I'm no fanboy of either platform, and I'm not giving B&N a free pass here, but you folks decrying this as the worst business mistake ever should take a bit of a chill pill. Yeah, it's bad, but if you all recall, the "other" platform has had some problems when it was young, too. Also, Kindle uptake was a little slower, over a longer period. I don't think it "hit" right over Christmas, so the folks at Amazon had a little more time to scale their servers and make sure they could handle large loads.
B&N need to get it fixed, and fast, or it could turn into a game-changing bungle, but a few minor speed bumps should be expected.
This stuff happens all the time when a new product is launched.
Servers overloaded by a sudden glut of users. Happens in games, happens with sites, etc.
I'm sure it'll work itself out.
Barnes and Noble rushed out the nook for Christmas and has made several mistakes in doing so. It's early to say these are fatal problems, but it does show that B&N cared more about getting it out than getting it right. This philosophy can succeed sometimes for first movers, but can be deadly for those who are staking a claim on technology that can be purchased elsewhere.
The problem is that the nook seems half-finished, which doesn't instill confidence in people who want to invest in the technology.