Lee Valley website crashes under the strain of Cyber Monday

[Hilton Ralphs]

Cart shows nothing and when you login it's worse, even the 'saved for later' stuff is gone.

Disappointed there are no discounted gift cards this year.

Oh well.

[Dave Beauchesne]

Me too. I am not too happy. Maybe Rob will come good if it is in your cart? ( stuff put in cart when Cyber Monday started ?)

[Malcolm Schweizer]

Likewise. I had 6 items in cart. I was worried it was just me.

[Tim Offutt]

Same thing with me. Six items in my cart by 12:08 and every time I try to check out it shows nothing. I give up, time for bed.

[Frank Martin]

Same here….

[Allen Jordan]

Same here, quite frustrating. I hope I can get an order in.

[Marko Milisavljevic]

Please go to bed everyone. I'll let you know when it is working again.

[Malcolm Schweizer]

Well while we wait, am I the only one who chuckled at the Sailor's Book of Words? I imagine a bunch of cuss words. That said, I have two in my cart- one for me, one for my co-pirate.

[Hilton Ralphs]

I had tons of stuff in my cart, ready to add some Cyber specials to make a giant shipment to South Africa. Now even the 'saved for later' items are missing.

Somebody is going to be doing laps in the snow around the Lee Valley office without shoes on.

[Marko Milisavljevic]

I get "Items to Purchase Later" but my "Items in Wish List" and shopping cart are not listing anything.

[Frederick Skelly]

Same here. Ive tried to checkout from 12:05 Ottawa time until now. I give up.

[Hilton Ralphs]

and on top of all this, Derek's website was hacked and malicious code left behind for us to download.

Then just to add to the CyberBlue Monday, I discover that the photography-on-the.net forum is now open to non-Canon discussions! Heathens!

[Frederick Skelly]

Guys, try it now - my order just got through checkout and Ive received the confirmation email.

Good hunting!
Fred

(Thanks Mr Lee!)

[Hilton Ralphs]

Yeah working now but I've lost my appetite for this now as I my cart total is over $800 :(

I'll wait for the last free shipping event of the year and move the stuff I really​ want.

[Malcolm Schweizer]

That Cocobolo mallet is a real find, and at $40 well worth it. I also got the rabbeting jack plane, two of the sailor books, and 10 glue syringes. There were some really good deals to be found this year.

[Kevin Harris]

It is working now - I just ordered the jack rabbet plane and a skew rabbet

[Malcolm Schweizer]

I'm back up at 5:30 AM (which is only 4:30 Eastern) to prepare a work document and thought I would check- already many things gone such as the shooting plane, quick-release vise, and skewed rabbeting planes. No surprise there. Also the cocobolo mallet- again, no surprise there. I think that may be the coolest thing they had, simply because just to get a piece of cocobolo to make your own would (a.) be hard to find now that it is CITES protected, and (b.) probably cost you more than the mallet at just $40.

One surprise is the skewed rabbeting block plane set (not to be confused with the larger skewed rabbet plane that is sold out) is still available. Folks, let me tell you those are probably my very favorite tools, and without a doubt my most-used. It's a block plane; it's a rabbet plane. Also I am surprised that the bevel-up smoother is still there- again one of my favorite go-to tools.

This is an event I save all year for, but since we recently bought and restored a home, I didn't have as much as I had hoped. Home Depot also hit me for $99 on the M12 kit that I could not pass up. If I had more I would have gotten that quick release vise and probably a set of the skew rabbet planes. I skipped on the rabbet planes since I already had the block planes and also since I was buying the rabbeting jack plane. The difference in length between the block planes and the skew rabbet planes is only 1", although the rabbet planes have full length sides that would register more easily. I decided the rabbeting jack better suited my larger stuff, and the block planes I have will fill the gap for smaller stuff. I have a number of shutters to fix or build, all of which have a rabbet where they meet. Now I have an excuse.

I know there are a lot of lurkers on this site, so I will say- if you've been wanting to get into hand woodworking, and were waiting for a deal on tools, today is your day. They've got a jack, smoother, and fore plane left, plus some saws and other items. I have yet to buy a "factory second" from Veritas that I could ever figure out what exactly the second was. Usually it's some little scratch or minute pit in the casting, or maybe a paint flaw, but I've yet to find it.

Rob Lee, if it's not an industry secret, I am just curious how many hits you got at opening, and roughly an idea of how many of an item (although I am sure it varies greatly item to item) do you usually have on hand at start of the sale. Strictly out of curiosity.

[Adam Stevens2]

I got myself a Fore Plane and one of the dovetail saws. Hopefully it'll be a revelation using a brand new, top-quality hand plane.

[Tim Offutt]

When I got up this morning my cart was up but several items were sold out. I missed a couple planes I really wanted. Still managed to get a few items. Too bad the checkout didn't work at 12:10.

[Adam Cruea]

and on top of all this, Derek's website was hacked and malicious code left behind for us to download.

Then just to add to the CyberBlue Monday, I discover that the photography-on-the.net forum is now open to non-Canon discussions! Heathens!

Seriously? Derek's site got hijacked? :(

I mean, I would go check, but since I'm at work, I don't want to download something that's going to send DHS into a head spin. lol

[Maurice Ungaro]

That Cocobolo mallet is a real find, and at $40 well worth it.
Malcolm, for me, that was the prize find. As for all y'all clogging it up at the stroke of midnight, what can I say. Looks like we're not above materialistic greed. I'm certainly not an IT guy, but I am a business guy. If it were me, I'd release quantities throughout the day. This would curb some of the initial onslaught, and encourage folks to come back and check frequently.

As for the plane stock, there really wasn't much I wanted/needed/lusted (read: I've got a bunch of LV already), other than the skew block planes, but I didn't want to buy a pair of them, and the jack rabbet plane (that was one of the better deals at $100 off), but it was sold out when I checked at 1:30 am EST. Considered getting a second LA Block plane, but at only $30 off, I passed.

Just curious - some of you said you already had stuff in your carts at midnight. How'd you manage that?

[Derek Cohen]

Seriously? Derek's site got hijacked? :(

I mean, I would go check, but since I'm at work, I don't want to download something that's going to send DHS into a head spin. lol

As far as I can ascertain, there is no virus. Hilton stated he saw something on the main index (only). The website has been scanned for malware. I looked for any added files. None found. Seems OK to me.

I run off a Mac, and the archived files on my laptop are free of anything malicious. I run ClamXav on all files to be safe.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Jim Belair]

If it were me, I'd release quantities throughout the day. This would curb some of the initial onslaught, and encourage folks to come back and check frequently.


I like this idea and it may encourage more buying since no one would know what else might come up later in the day.

[glenn bradley]

I discover that the photography-on-the.net forum is now open to non-Canon discussions! Heathens!

That's the last straw :D

[Adam Cruea]

As far as I can ascertain, there is no virus. Hilton stated he saw something on the main index (only). The website has been scanned for malware. I looked for any added files. None found. Seems OK to me.

I run off a Mac, and the archived files on my laptop are free of anything malicious. I run ClamXav on all files to be safe.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Oh cool. Good to know.

The site code isn't changed, is it?

[Derek Cohen]

Hi Adam

I do not know enough to check the site code. Can you say how?

The website has a firewall that is checked regularly. It was checked today. Nothing showed up. That does not mean there is nothing there - just nothing that the scan does not show anything.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Malcolm Schweizer]

Malcolm, for me, that was the prize find. As for all y'all clogging it up at the stroke of midnight, what can I say. Looks like we're not above materialistic greed. I'm certainly not an IT guy, but I am a business guy. If it were me, I'd release quantities throughout the day. This would curb some of the initial onslaught, and encourage folks to come back and check frequently.

As for the plane stock, there really wasn't much I wanted/needed/lusted (read: I've got a bunch of LV already), other than the skew block planes, but I didn't want to buy a pair of them, and the jack rabbet plane (that was one of the better deals at $100 off), but it was sold out when I checked at 1:30 am EST. Considered getting a second LA Block plane, but at only $30 off, I passed.

Just curious - some of you said you already had stuff in your carts at midnight. How'd you manage that?

Materialistic and greedy? I prefer thrifty and wise. :-) The midnight onslaught is kind of part of the fun, and also shipping would be a hassle if I had to check out numerous times throughout the day. It's an interesting thought to make it all day, but I think they would lose money in my case because I have a set $ to spend, and I spent it (and a bit more) last night. I might have passed on the BU Jack Rabbet if I thought another tool might come up later, but having all the options in front of me, I could make a decision and spend my money right away. In fact, the whole site crash thing caused me to change my mind on a couple of small items before checking out.

I don't think people actually had carts filled by midnight, but I had mine filled by 12:10 ET. I had a set amount to spend, and had being already just about fully stocked on Veritas tools, there wasn't much left to buy, so it was a quick decision as to what I needed.

[Rob Lee]

Hi All -

Please accept our apologies for the hour or so our servers plugged up last night. Our CPU load went straight to 99% at midnight, and the system began to slow. We have actually had no problems with loads like this in the past, so were puzzled by what was going on. It took our IT staff about an hour to diagnose and resolve the problem - an indexing/memory issue that caused our servers to churn as they overswapped pages from memory to disk. This caused a number of sessions to time out. Given the loads necessary for this to occur - it appears there was no way to test for or anticipate this particular issue.

For many retailers, Cyber Monday (or Black Friday...) can be a bear to manage - if we do a good job of putting up offers with wide appeal, we can really get slammed. In a short (but intense!) hour we can hit volumes we wouldn't see over an average day. It's always a bit hard on staff and systems, but it's never intended to be hard on customers!


Sincerely -

Rob Lee

[Rob Lee]

(snip)

Rob Lee, if it's not an industry secret, I am just curious how many hits you got at opening, and roughly an idea of how many of an item (although I am sure it varies greatly item to item) do you usually have on hand at start of the sale. Strictly out of curiosity.

Hi Malcolm -

Well.... it kind of is an industry secret, but I'll find a way to answer it anyway.... :)

We try to select items that we know will sell through - but also last a reasonable portion of the day. The plane seconds are always in high demand, and we really work hard all year at NOT trying to make them...so those will always go first. Quantities there could be as few as 20, and as many as 200. Other items, like the 14TPI dovetail saw, we have an entire production run of (a worn tool caused the cosmetic flaw) - but will only sell at this price on this day, and will put them back in storage.

We have to be careful in what we select, and how we present it, as the prices on products we post are the lowest they can be for at least a full year - the deals have to be real, or you folks don't come back.

Cheers -

Rob

[Brian Hale]

Rob, what are you doing on here, shouldn't you be in shipping?

:D :D :D

[Malcolm Schweizer]

Thank you, Rob. I figured I was asking a bit much, and appreciate your response. Well I am certainly appreciative of the deals. I actually save up during the year and this is one of my favorite splurges. As I said before, I have yet to find a blemish on the so-called blemish tools- as testament to your high standards.

Oh, by the way, I got my shipping amount confirmation email notice at 6:55 my time, 5:55 yours. Please add to my charges a box of donuts for Jana Lafrance for working so early in the morn.

[Marko Milisavljevic]

Please accept our apologies for the hour or so our servers plugged up last night.

It happens! But one thing that I'll take this opportunity to complain about (since I don't have much else to complain when it comes to LV) is being asked on every visit what language and geographical location. My suggestion is:

- use a combination of IP geolocation and browser "Accept-Language" flag to guesstimate country/province. For example, you would geolocate me in BC with en-ca in my browser language settings. What are the chances I will select something other than Canada/English? I would guess well under 1%.
- if a user clicks on the flag icon in top/right to manually select language/location, save it in a cookie and respect it in future so it overrides above.

Or something like that. It used to remember it in a cookie in past, but it was buggy and would occasionally send LV home page into infinite redirect, so it looks like it just got turned off instead of getting fixed.

[Hilton Ralphs]

Marko, this all happens now anyway. Your browser is not playing nice.

[Rob Lee]

Hi Marko -

Have sent your comments on to our IT folks - and will let you know what they say. I suspect you may have a corrupt cookie, as we do store both country and language now, and am not aware of any problems in that area. Will get back to you!

Cheers -

Rob

[Ryan Baker]

Yeah, I got caught in the onslaught too. All you guys plugging things up. It took an hour to get through to my cart to start the checkout. I figured there was more at play than just the customer load, as previous years have never had that problem. Frustrating but understandable. I still got through with everything I tried to get (just a little less sleep). The selections were particularly good this year. I wasn't looking for anything, and ended up giving Rob a big lump of cash. Just couldn't pass up the shooter at that price! I looked hard at the skew block pair but let that one go.

[Marko Milisavljevic]

Marko, this all happens now anyway. Your browser is not playing nice.

Clearing leevalley.com cookies in Firefox made it work again as intended.

[Marko Milisavljevic]

Actually... going to http://leevalley.com always results in language selector in different browsers on multiple computers. Going to http://www.leevalley.com works as expected. Emailed to their IT department about it.

[Gary Muto]

As far as I can ascertain, there is no virus. Hilton stated he saw something on the main index (only). The website has been scanned for malware. I looked for any added files. None found. Seems OK to me.

I run off a Mac, and the archived files on my laptop are free of anything malicious. I run ClamXav on all files to be safe.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Good News! I'm glad no real damage was done.

[Gary Muto]

It is working now - I just ordered the jack rabbet plane and a skew rabbet

I got my order in around !:00-1:30 EST. I got the skew rabbet and BUJR Planes and a QR Vise. It sounds like maybe just before they sold out. I always wanted those items but had trouble justifying tehm for more general tools.

Fortunately for me I am visiting family in CA so it was only around 10:30 when I was done.

[Allen Jordan]

Thanks for putting up these sales every year, Rob. A lot of my money sure seems to go your way :) . The Veritas LA block plane from a previous year is the most-used tool in my shop.

This year I snagged a skew rabbet, 14ppi rip dovetail saw, 14ppi crosscut carcass saw, and cabinet scraper. Can't wait for them to arrive, I've heard especially good reviews for the skew rabbet.

[Jim Matthews]

Somebody is going to be doing laps in the snow around the Lee Valley office without shoes on.

That's known as Tuesdays, on the Rideau canal.
It's the pushups that are painful...

[Chris Wolf]

This was an incredibly frustrating experience. I added items to my cart successfully, but by about 12:15 a.m. EST when I tried to check out the site was no longer working. I sat there reloading the page for over half an hour. There was, of course, no way to tell how long the problem would go on so I gave up, even though I REALLY wanted that skew rabbet plane that I knew was in my cart. I went to bed. I woke up and looked at the clock to see it was about 2:10 a.m. so got up to try again. I found that the site was working and my cart appeared to be intact so I was all set! However, when I went to check out, then it told me that the plane was no longer available. Arrrrrrrgh!

My suggestion would be to delay the start of the sale until some time Monday morning, to make this reasonable for all time zones. The people on the west coast obviously must have made most of the best purchases in this sale simply because the sale fit better with their schedules, especially with the failures because of the overloaded server.

[Simon MacGowen]

Chris,

That was frustrating. Computers could act up without warning, as we all have found out from this or other experiences.

Perhaps for LVT to consider next year: Start the sale at 8pm Sunday instead of midnight so everyone who needs to go to back for work next day has enough time to put things into their carts and, JUST IN CASE, will have a couple extra hours of spare time to see through their orders.

Call it Cyber Sunday Evening sale, if need be (but who says it has to be Cyber Monday to please your customers?). LVT is famous for thinking out of the box and I think this is doable. It is also good for the IT staff on standby.

Personally, I did not stay awake for the sale as I was planning to get some discounted gift cards the next day, if any was left.

Simon

[bob blakeborough]

Nothing personal at all guys but really, asking them to change a sale time/date is silly. It is cyber monday and everybody gets the same rules to play by and it is the same every year. If you move it for one demographic, it will annoy another. If it doesn't work for you, so be it. The reality is everything gets sold so it isn't like it is going to make it a more successful sale for the company. You are all basically just asking for them to bend around your own desires which is kind of self centered.

[Chris Wolf]

Nothing personal at all guys but really, asking them to change a sale time/date is silly

Uh, nothing personal, but asking us not to give them feedback is what is silly. Customer service revolves around finding out what the wishes of your customers are, and then deciding on how you as a business person want to handle the diverse responses you get. If you equate customer wishes with "self-centered" "desires", so be it.

[glenn bradley]

Nothing personal at all guys but really, asking them to change a sale time/date is silly. It is cyber monday and everybody gets the same rules to play by and it is the same every year. If you move it for one demographic, it will annoy another. If it doesn't work for you, so be it. The reality is everything gets sold so it isn't like it is going to make it a more successful sale for the company. You are all basically just asking for them to bend around your own desires which is kind of self centered.

Wait . . . what? You mean that Kohl's is going to ignore my email asking them to not open at 5am because I don't want to get up early to go to the sale!?! Why those unsympathetic so-and-so's :D.

[Ryan Baker]

Yeah, I'm on Eastern time and I stayed up for it. Then I got to get up for work four hours later. It's like anything else, if you really want it then you will deal with it. Everyone knows the rules ahead of time. If it started earlier, the initial hit on the web site would be even worse.

I suspect the LV IT department will be on a bit higher alert next year...

[Mike Tekin]

Just an fyi, most companies dont apologize...so cheers for Lee Valley for addressing their customers and continue to try to improve

[Adam Cruea]

Hi Adam

I do not know enough to check the site code. Can you say how?

The website has a firewall that is checked regularly. It was checked today. Nothing showed up. That does not mean there is nothing there - just nothing that the scan does not show anything.

Regards from Perth

Derek

You can get the new code from the web pages and compare it to a known good copy. Since you're on a Mac, you can look for "diff" tools that will compare two files and show you the differences.

Or you can just go through and look for things that reference something not from your site.

[Dave Lehnert]

I worked retail for over 20 years.
However way we would try to make a Black Friday sale fair, to some, it was always the wrong way to do it.
Take the suggestion for the sale to start at 8pm on Sunday. Guarantee the 2nd shift workers would not like that idea.

I forgot to check last night for the deals and missed out. Glad some got in on the deals.

[Frederick Skelly]

I worked retail for over 20 years.
However way we would try to make a Black Friday sale fair, to some, it was always the wrong way to do it.
Take the suggestion for the sale to start at 8pm on Sunday. Guarantee the 2nd shift workers would not like that idea.

+1. LV has a worldwide customer base. No matter what time of day, it will be inconvenient somewhere.

Personally, I don't object to setting an alarm and getting up in the middle of the night to buy a good tool online. The tough thing was getting up and then hitting the computer snags. But Rob already apologized and explained, and Im betting that wont ever happen again.

Fred

[Hilton Ralphs]

Actually... going to http://leevalley.com always results in language selector in different browsers on multiple computers.

Then why do you keep going there? Just go to the dub dub dub address and get on with it.

[Marko Milisavljevic]

Because typing "le" is enough to get my browser to offer leevalley.com. Otherwise I'd have to type "www.le", which is a staggering 200% more keystrokes. So I have a difficult decision between those extra keystrokes or moving my finger on trackpad and tapping "English Canada" button.

But really why I'm mentioning it is that when you do something for living and you are perfectionist about it, it gets annoying to deal with same small annoyance over and over. It is clear that current behavior could not have been intended by design as best user interaction so after many months trying to decide whether I should bother someone with this little thing or just live with it, I decided to let it all out and bother all of internet.

[Hilton Ralphs]

There is a way.

If you delete ALL Lee Valley URLs from your browsing history and then go to the www.leevalley.com/CN/Home.aspx page.

Thereafter when you start typing 'Lee' the full URL should pop-up for you to choose. Of course you may very well be using Internet Exploder which does it's own thing but on Chrome and Firefox this behaviour is consistent, even across multiple computers.

[Marko Milisavljevic]

Thank you for that suggestion because it allows me to say "tree", which will make it seem like this may be related to woodworking. Namely:

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

That is, if I make my browser work as you describe and am not affected by this problem, will the problem still exist? And would the universe be less likely to unravel if it was fixed?

[Malcolm Schweizer]

This thread is getting silly. It crashed at midnight ET due to too many hits, so let's move it to a time where it can get even more hits? ...or let's spread the sale out all day so people can crash the site all day long?

Set the alarm, get up at midnight ET, buy cool tools, go back to bed. The crash was frustrating, but I think it weeded the men from the boys. :-) I'm on Atlantic time, so for me it was 1 AM. I ended up just staying up and getting some work done.

What other company has a CEO (? President? "Higher-Up") that comes on a public forum to apologize and answer questions?

[Ryan Baker]

Because typing "le" is enough to get my browser to offer leevalley.com. Otherwise I'd have to type "www.le", which is a staggering 200% more keystrokes. So I have a difficult decision between those extra keystrokes or moving my finger on trackpad and tapping "English Canada" button.

But really why I'm mentioning it is that when you do something for living and you are perfectionist about it, it gets annoying to deal with same small annoyance over and over. It is clear that current behavior could not have been intended by design as best user interaction so after many months trying to decide whether I should bother someone with this little thing or just live with it, I decided to let it all out and bother all of internet.

I go to leevalley.com (without the www) all the time and never get the language screen (after the very first time). There must be something wrong with your cookie.

[Marko Milisavljevic]

I go to leevalley.com (without the www) all the time and never get the language screen (after the very first time). There must be something wrong with your cookie.

I believe your browser is tricking you, by adding www. automatically, as described by Hilton in post #54. If you click here (http://leevalley.com) I am willing to bet a small but reasonable sum you will get asked for language.

[Marko Milisavljevic]

I just got an email from LV to tell me they set it up to redirect from leevalley.com to www.leevalley.com before prompting for language selector. Then the existing mechanism kicks in, and you get redirected to your desired language. Sadly, this leaves me with nothing to complain about.

[Fidel Fernandez]

I just got an email from LV to tell me they set it up to redirect from leevalley.com to www.leevalley.com (http://www.leevalley.com) before prompting for language selector. Then the existing mechanism kicks in, and you get redirected to your desired language. Sadly, this leaves me with nothing to complain about.


Probably is done with an DNS alias to redirect to WWW.LeeValley.com

[Marko Milisavljevic]

It is done by HTTP 302 redirect from http://leevalley.com/ to http://www.leevalley.com/default.aspx

We've gotten so far beyond forum topic, that I'll zip it now.

[Scott Driemel]

I too saved all year for this sale. Had to make a huge decision about buying presents for the kids right at the beginning of cyber Monday or going to the Lee Valley Site. Kept fingers crossed and went to LV. (Should only take me 5 minutes I thought!) Loaded my cart like so many others and my cart showed the items but I couldn't check out. Tried it over and over. I'm not very good for IT stuff so I yelled for my wife to come help. (She was on her computer trying to buy from a few other stores for the kids). Long story longer, I messed with the site for 45 mins, then finally totally frustrated and angry, yes I did in fact yell at the website more than a few times, ... I wonder how many did that? ... & went back to other sites for my purchases. We were fortunate that although we missed some other Cyber Mon sales we were able to find our kids present the day after at a still decent price. Nothing was a must have at LV so in a way, saving the $500 or so maybe was a blessing. I should invest in some meditation lessons prior to next year I suppose or at least a good bottle of single malt.