Thanks to everybody who ordered from the Paul Scannell collection yesterday, it was a monster day!
This was after the 10AM fiasco where the FSMCDs.com site immediately conked out upon going live with the new listings. I cannot tell you how mortified and frustrated I was, especially since I worked with the hosting company to get us up on a new server that wouldn’t crash just two weeks ago. More on this below...
The traffic was so heavy yesterday that I didn’t send out our customary email blast. I will do that shortly this morning, and let’s just hope it doesn’t slow to a standstill again. Please be patient because it will clear up.
The biggest question I get is can you order more than once, and can we combine and refund the excess shipping? Yes, of course! In fact we do that as S.O.P., unless we’re told not to. There is so much here to pick and pack right now that it’ll take a day or two, during which we automatically flag multiple orders and consolidate them.
So yes, we want, need and love to get multiple orders from you! The above pic is my living room right now and I need these glorious CDs out of my house, and into yours!
Here is an updated spreadsheet of our inventory, after yesterday’s sales. For technical reasons, I am not able to label the old vs. new stock—but it’s all good stuff, so dig in!
So about the website... some folks told me they were perched at their computer at 10AM Pacific, and even took off work, and then had hours of frustration and still didn’t get the titles they wanted.
I am just so sorry and embarrassed. I truly apologize.
Part of it was a weird quirk where the hosting company told me a glitch occurred when I deactivated the “maintenance mode” (when you see a filler screen). I found out the hard way I have to put up that filler screen, because when people try to order as the new titles are uploading, it crashes and becomes impossible. But when the maintenance mode itself has a bug, well, I don’t know what to do.
The short of it is that I need to invest more in our website so that it can handle the traffic. When I launched the site last year, I didn’t know how well it would do or how much demand there would be to sell people’s CDs, so I kept the spec to the bare minimum. E-commerce sites routinely cost low five figures and I just didn’t have the funds.
But clearly we need a “bigger boat” now, so I’ll be spending the money.
Now about fairness...this continues to bedevil the process, and please believe me that it’s something I think about constantly. (Since many of you know me going back to the 1990s, you know that I’m being sincere.)
There are, sadly, always going to be people who miss out on a title they want. The CDs are typically one-of-a-kind and I have struggled to find the fairest way to make sure people can buy what they want.
I could list them as auctions, for example, but that disadvantages people who don’t have a lot of money.
I am always trying to make this more fair and more transparent and will continue to do so.
Thank you for your orders and please keep them coming!