Motorola has had to reschedule its originally planned Cyber Monday sale after the company suffered last-minute traffic surge problems that forced it to delay the sale throughout all of Monday.
The issues began shortly before the planned 8AM CST start time for the full promotion when customers began flooding both the main online store and Moto Maker for the $150 discounted Moto X models. By 2PM CST, the issues were resolved enough to a point where the GSM and CDMA Moto X Developer Editions were sold out within minutes while Motorola was working to bring back the Moto Maker portal online to continue the planned sale.
Looks like Moto X CDMA Dev Editions just sold out. There are still a few GSM versions available. More to come on our Moto Maker deal!
— motorolaus (@MotorolaUS) December 2, 2013
Sorry we left you hanging today. We want to make it up to you with 2 days of price promos on Wed and Mon. We’ve added more devices too.
— motorolaus (@MotorolaUS) December 3, 2013
However, as the day progressed, it became rapidly apparent that the Moto Maker portal would not be restored at any point during today’s sale, with Motorola going as far as setting its own deadline of 8:30 PM CST to resume the sale.
With the short deadline, Motorola then proceeded to announce a Plan B, which was to relaunch the sale over two days, with one sale on Wednesday for Moto Maker models with the same $150 discount as today, and another sale next Monday, to help make up for the downtime. The Moto X Moto Maker stock will also be doubled over both days to ensure that everyone who orders will be able to do so, with the new sales starting at Noon on both days.
If we’re not live by 9:30 PM ET tonight, we'll offer the price promo @ Noon ET on Wed and again on Mon 12/9, doubling the devices available.
— motorolaus (@MotorolaUS) December 3, 2013
The Wed & Mon 12:00 p.m. ET sale will be for Moto Maker only. The Dev Edition Cyber Monday deal is sold out.
— motorolaus (@MotorolaUS) December 3, 2013
Update: Motorola Mobility CEO Dennis Woodside has posted a letter regarding the botched Cyber Monday sale and is posted below
We owe you an apology.
I want to apologize to our customers and fans for the issues we experienced on our website with our Cyber Monday promotion. I want you to understand what happened, and what we are doing to rectify the situation. First, we misjudged the overwhelming consumer demand for Moto X, which was far greater than we expected. Second, our pre-sale site testing was not sufficiently extensive. Testing failed to reveal weaknesses caused by large volumes of concurrent orders flowing through the MotoMaker customization engine.
Thus, when we opened the promotion this morning, an extraordinary spike in concurrent orders caused our website to go down. We couldn’t fulfill orders. The site became unstable. While some orders were filled, many customers tried all day to place their orders, unsuccessfully. Customers were left frustrated. We have since found a solution that we believe addresses the concurrent order issue. Motorolans are hard at work right now, implementing that solution.
Here is what we are going to do: Starting at 12 pm EST/9 am PST this Wednesday, we will relaunch the $349 promotion. To help make up for this major inconvenience to shoppers, we will also add an additional promotional day on Monday, December 9. We will double the quantity of phones available, while supplies last, to allow as many people as possible to take advantage of the promotion. We’re also extending the 30% off offer on accessories to these two days.
Please note that MotoMaker.com will open up for regular business tomorrow (Tuesday, December 3). We will stay the course on our regular sales as we restore our promotional prices for Wednesday and Monday. Stay tuned to our Twitter, G+ and Facebook pages for more updates. We understand people want frequent communications from us so we will do a better job at keeping you informed.
On behalf of all Motorolans, I apologize for what occurred today. I appreciate your understanding as we get this fixed in time for Wednesday and Monday.
Posted by Dennis Woodside, CEO
