Re-doing Pre-Order Tomorrow At 3pm

[Dean]

To Everyone That Ordered Today,
To start off with, we are deeply sorry about how messed up everything got with the Jay Reatard pre-order. There were a number of frustrations and mess-ups along the way that made ordering this record insanely difficult. It initially got put up too early, and those that ordered it early ended up not being able to re-order during the regular time. The first orders were deleted, but their cancellation wasn't processed in time. Coupled with the slow server speed, a lot of people who signed in very early ended up empty handed.

To make up for this, and make it fair for all of the people that want to order the record we are going to re-start pre-order Tomorrow, 7/15 at 3PM ET. All orders from today are getting cancelled. I know it's even more annoying to go through all of this again but we will work incredibly hard to ensure that there is more room on the server to accommodate traffic, and make sure that we don't have any more "FRAUD" notifications for people that already ordered.

Once again, we're going to do pre-order again Tomorrow, 7/15, at 3PM ET at matadorrecords.com/store (http://www.matadorrecords.com/store)

I'm very sorry about this and sincerely hope that we can regain your trust.

[trappedinstatic]

and then when the people who bought them today, but cant get them in time tomorrow start a riot are we gonna have a 3rd try on Wednesday?

[jjchampion]

Yeah no kidding.

[otto midnight]

I'm very sorry about this and sincerely hope that we can regain your trust.


well, you lost mine when the first one came in an unpadded manilla envelope. i avoided the other two releases but will make sure i try to snag one of these because it seems like i should be able to turn a quick profit on ebay.

[Fiona]

Much as I love you guys, 'sake! I kept tonight free to stay in and order this. So now I've to cancel on my friends to stay in again tomorrow night if I want one?

[tinobeat]

this is becoming a stressful affair!

[jjchampion]

Maybe everybody will be so pissed off that they'll give up and as a result, #5 and #6 will turn out to be really easy to get.

[otto midnight]

Maybe everybody will be so pissed off that they'll give up and as a result, #5 and #6 will turn out to be really easy to get.


i'm hoping to score one while you and andrew get shut out so i can pit the two of you against each other.

[Fiona]

this is becoming a stressful affair!
Remember when buying records used to be fun? :(

If, after canceling on my friends, my laptop/internet craps out on me tomorrow night I might just explode.

[Patrick]

Sorry guys, I know this is a pain in the ass, but this was the only way to ensure that nobody was shut out by the combination of the accidental early launch, the credit-card order duplication problem with the overloaded server.

Back in February 1983, when Dischord released the second and third pressings of Minor Threat and In My Eyes (1000 copies each), all I could do was trudge down to Newbury through the slush and snow every afternoon after school to see if they'd come in and not yet sold out. There was more poetry in it, to be sure.

[trappedinstatic]

I dont mind ordering it again, I can handle it. I'm just afraid of what the next 2 will be like. if #3's test was having to order it twice, then maybe for #4 theyll sell the jacket and vinyl separately, 1000 each, but you can only order 1 or the other. The whole fun of this series is how fucking insanely limited theyre going to be, I say enjoy the fun. or you know.... buy it from me on ebay.

[awol]

So does Matador think the overloaded server problem will be resolved for tomorrow's pre-ordering?

[Dean]

We talked to the people who do our servers today and they're ready for tomorrow. Also, the "FRAUD" bug which popped up for a lot of people has been resolved as well.

[Jason]

A tip should something like this happen again:

If the pre-order option mistakenly goes up a little early, it might be a good idea to just honor those early orders that come in. Stop the pre-order and then re-start it when the right time comes, of course, but don't bother with canceling orders. Since no one was expecting the pre-order that early and it was only up briefly, there can't have been very many early orders, right? I don't think anyone who showed up at 3 PM would've been upset by this.

Another tip:
Mailing 7" records in unpadded manilla envelopes is a horrible idea.
http://www.bagsunlimited.com/cart/browse.asp?subcat=30

[jjchampion]

Another tip:
Mailing 7" records in unpadded manilla envelopes is a horrible idea.
http://www.bagsunlimited.com/cart/browse.asp?subcat=30

I understand that there was some bad packaging with the first Jaytard 7" that went out, but I have to say that my orders for each of the first three came packaged in proper cardboard 7" mailers from Bags Unlimited. "Screaming Hand" was even packaged with the single removed from the picture sleeve, for no ringwear. It seems that after some early stumbles, they got things figured out.

Hopefully the same will be true with the pre-ordering.

[tinobeat]

If the pre-order option mistakenly goes up a little early, it might be a good idea to just honor those early orders that come in. Stop the pre-order and then re-start it when the right time comes, of course, but don't bother with canceling orders. Since no one was expecting the pre-order that early and it was only up briefly, there can't have been very many early orders, right? I don't think anyone who showed up at 3 PM would've been upset by this.

Well, from the email Dean sent out, it sounds like a LOT of them were ordered before 3PM. I would have been upset had I showed up a little after 3PM to find it sold out, mainly because a bulk of them had been bought early.

[otto midnight]

I understand that there was some bad packaging with the first Jaytard 7" that went out, but I have to say that my orders for each of the first three came packaged in proper cardboard 7" mailers from Bags Unlimited..

jay, mine came unpadded and rubberbanded to magazines and bills, it was totally unplayable.

[Paul]

jay, mine came unpadded and rubberbanded to magazines and bills, it was totally unplayable. Maybe yours was a personalized special delivery?

[tinobeat]

Yeah, apparently that was the doing of one of the interns who hadn't sent out vinyl before, or something. I remember that being explained and corrected...

[winterversion]

jay, mine came unpadded and rubberbanded to magazines and bills, it was totally unplayable.

Sorry Otto (and Matador), but that is so awful, it's practically laughable. Fuckin' interns.

[Dave]

jay, mine came unpadded and rubberbanded to magazines and bills, it was totally unplayable.

We sent you a new one, right?

[jjchampion]

I hope everyone else can appreciate the irony of the current listing on the home page...

http://s17.divshare.com/files/2008/07/15/4945475/jaytardfuckedup.jpg

[otto midnight]

We sent you a new one, right?

no, it never occurred to me to ask. i was more pissed at the post office of rubberbanding all my shit together but whatever. i have a new one now that's playable.

[Fiona]

Back in February 1983, when Dischord released the second and third pressings of Minor Threat and In My Eyes (1000 copies each), all I could do was trudge down to Newbury through the slush and snow every afternoon after school to see if they'd come in and not yet sold out. There was more poetry in it, to be sure.
June '94 - eight hour round trip by bus to secure a copy of Bee Thousand on vinyl. Hope I love this as much.

[trappedinstatic]

oh goddammit. charges that went through yesterday aren't refunded yet so I have no money to buy the album today. thats just an extra kick in the nards.

[jjchampion]

Sweet. T-minus six minutes, and the product page in the store is already not loading on refresh.

[tinobeat]

it only took me 6 minutes this time, but the server was craaawling today too.

[awol]

23 minutes later and I still can't get this thing to go through! This is worse than yesterday! Guess the server problem isn't fixed...

[otto midnight]

i had it in my cart at 2:02, couldn't log in for 36 minutes. when i did it was no longer available. c'est la vie.

[winterversion]

Server was frustratingly slow for me too and took me about 25 minutes to get my order through. Oh, the pains of ordering music from the comfort of my computer desk!!!

[awol]

Yeah Otto same thing happened to me, had it in the cart for almost 30 mins, finally went through and it was already sold-out. It just doesn't make sense why they re-did this today only to find the server's were even slower than yesterday. I'd say fair's fair, but in this case it kinda isn't.

[trappedinstatic]

feel a pre-order #3 coming....

[Jason]

Had it yesterday in just a few minutes, got dick today.

Ah well. My interest in it today was pretty limp anyway after yesterday's bungle. My expectations were low.

Last night, I tempered my annoyance with Matador by ordering some stuff from a label I actually like. Today, I think I'll do it again.

[Paul]

Wow, what a poorly planned clusterfuck this turned out to be. I haven't even tried to order one (waiting for the cd comp), but this has been a thorough exercise in how to make a bunch of happy people extremely angry.

[jjchampion]

We talked to the people who do our servers today and they're ready for tomorrow.

Ahem.

[9000]

i'm going to straighten this out at the show tonight. check youtube in the morning.

[tinobeat]

Nice Whalers hat, 9000

[HBSP-2X]

I thought I had one as well. I battled through it yesterday. Paid for it. Got an email confirmation, and was totally satisfied. Didn't think to check back on it, because why would you. Now, 26 hours later I am cursing this system. Thanks matador. Next time, maybe an email notice.

"Prior planning prevents piss-poor performance."

[mediumheadboy]

No record for me.

I probably wouldn't care so much except for the fact that I "ordered" it twice yesterday.

As far as "fair is fair", that to me would consitute honoring the orders of those folks that happened upon the site early yesterday.

I got screwed on the first one (beat up cover, warped record, wrapped in gay porn), the second one just sucked and the third one, well, it was pretty.

Way to go, Matador. You were able to take what was a truly original and exciting idea and turn it into garbage.

[9000]

Nice Whalers hat, 9000

the merch girl doesn't stand a chance.

[jjchampion]

...the second one just sucked...

That's where you lost me.

[tinobeat]

As far as "fair is fair", that to me would consitute honoring the orders of those folks that happened upon the site early yesterday.

fair is giving people who had an accidental advantage a record and screwing people who waited patiently til 3PM?

The accidental early order link meant no solution at all would be fair, its too bad, but its true.

[jjchampion]

I got screwed on the first one (beat up cover, warped record, wrapped in gay porn)

That sounds more like the fourth one (http://www.matadorrecords.com/matablog/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/ole-819-fluorescent-grey.jpg).

I'll be here all week, folks!

[johansen smith]

I'm not sure there was a good way out of this scenario, but personally I'd have let the original sales stand and leave it at that. I think no matter what Matador ended up doing though, plenty of customers were gonna dislike, so it doesn't really matter.

[mediumheadboy]

fair is giving people who had an accidental advantage a record and screwing people who waited patiently til 3PM?

The accidental early order link meant no solution at all would be fair, its too bad, but its true.

What's the accidental advantage? I happened to notice that the link was up around 1PM. I didn't participate in screwing anybody out of anything. (For what it's worth I immediately e-mailed a ton of people to tell them it was live.) And I'm relatively certain that nobody tricked "Dean" into posting the purchase link 2 hours early.

It's also not my fault you or anyone else "waited patiently til 3PM". I'm sorry, I had nothing better to do during my lunch break than play around on the internet.

It's really simple: Matador offered to sell me an item. I chose to purchase said item. I completed the transaction in good faith. I even received an e-mail from Matador expressing their gratitude for my purchase.

Then I am told an hour later that my money's no good here...until a certain time.

Bullshit.

Yet, I decided, "Okay, Matador. I'll play."

Approximately 2.5 hours later, I was able to naviagate through 4-5 web pages and complete my transaction a second time, albiet with a different credit card, but whatever. I was done for the day.

Check the inbox. Another thank you from Matador. All is well.

Then I am told an hour later that my money's no good here for 24 hours.

Bullshit.

THAT'S not "fair". I'm not even convinced it's entirely legal. But I do know that it is bad business.

I guess the 3rd time's not a charm as I walked away from today's fiasco empty-handed.

Like I said, I probably wouldn't be so bent out of shape about this except for the fact that I ordered the record twice yesterday.

But who cares, right?

[johansen smith]

I can guess that were I to trudge over to VLV, there'd be a thread from Monday afternoon alerting everyone to the early pre-order. Just saying, it likely got around without anyone here's help.

[tinobeat]

What's the accidental advantage? I happened to notice that the link was up around 1PM... etc.

The accidental advantage is that Matador said it would go up at 3PM. So most people went about their lives and waited until 3PM. There was an accidental upload of a link, and anyone who went along with the parameters Matador laid out would in an unfair position of showing up late when they thought they were on time. Especially if you were emailing folks saying "yo they messed up its up early lets beat everyone else to the punch" and thus *reducing* the chance that people going by the guidelines would get records. Not very fair.

Nobody tricked Dean, I'm sure it was an honest mistake. Shit happens, but it does make it unfair to those who waited until the time things were supposed to go up.

What I'm saying is that, the way things went down, there was no "fair" outcome at all that's all. Matador accidentally got itself into a hole that there was no good way out of, and it sucks for them, because now there's a lot of angry customers, it sucks for the people who got a confirmation yesterday and now have no record, its just a crappy situation that happened by accident.

Saying you "fairly" should have gotten your record early due to a mistake is a fallacy. At this point, nobody "fairly" got a record, which is a bummer, but it wasn't some evil plot, it was an accident surrounding an already very tenuous situation.

If it were up to me I probably would have just made the call to make the early orders count, just to make life easier for everyone involved, BUT, it wouldn't have been "fair" it would have been "easy"

Matador chose to forego "easy" and make a college try at "fair" again and it unfairly didn't work out for a lot of folks. I had the luxury of being at my desk again, I could have been out at a meeting or something. Its just a different thing that could have happened. There's no bad guy here, just a bad situation. If you're really gonna be a crybaby about it, I'll sell you my record for $3 when I get it, but lets not kid ourselves about anyone being owed a record on any fair terms. Early orders weren't fair either. Those were just taking advantage of a mistake, not "fair"

I've typed the word "fair" too much now and it looks funny to me.

[HBSP-2X]

Actually, a fair outcome would be matador calling rti or united or whoever is pressing this thing and print however many more records they need to fulfill all orders, from both monday and tuesday. granted the collectibility of this record will be drastically reduced but assuming that most people like me are not concerned about that element of this ordeal, i think it is feasible resolution. With as much clout matador has, i am sure they could get this done in a matter of days. That is certainly a way to make most people happy, aside from the hawks and vultures that are going to lose several hundred customers on ebay. If the last one went for 60-80 consistently, I wouldn't be surprised to see this one break 100.

[jjchampion]

granted the collectibility of this record will be drastically reduced but assuming that most people like me are not concerned about that element of this ordeal, i think it is feasible resolution.

But for those not concerned with the collectibility of this record, there's always the comp LP/CD coming at the end of the series.

Personally, now that the quantities are getting smaller I'd rather see more (read: all) copies of the singles go to mail order instead of to stores. I fully expect that most copies going to stores won't even make it onto the floor; if employees don't grab them up to sell on eBay, the store itself surely will sell them on eBay. And who could blame them? Sure, I know that mail order customers will be selling copies on eBay as well, but I would think that a typical mail order customer is only going to be able to get one or two copies to begin with, whereas stores will presumably get more.

[otto midnight]

But for those not concerned with the collectibility of this record, there's always the comp LP/CD coming at the end of the series.



that's what i'll be getting but it would still be able to hear them when they come out. and hbsp-2x, i think i read somewhere that the limited editions were jay's idea so for matador to go out and press more would probably not work. on a business relations level if not a ethical/legal one.

[dola]

i think i read somewhere that the limited editions were jay's idea so for matador to go out and press more would probably not work.


Ah, makes more sense now. It's nice to have growing pains like that, especially when it's actually some sad bastard(s) at your label feeling it.


the internet * commodity fetishism * increasing artificial scarcity = can't wait for the cd

[mediumheadboy]

Matador,

I just got the e-mail.

You rule now.

[tinobeat]

Wow, crazy..


definitely awesome.

[Bangs]

Thanks for sorting things out Matador, glad that everyone who received a confirmation will get a record.

[trappedinstatic]

does that mean more than 1400 of the single are pressed?

[HBSP-2X]

Wow, thank you matador.

[tinobeat]

does that mean more than 1400 of the single are pressed?

My wild guess is that not all of the records were put up for preorder, and that some were reserved for distro/retail. And that however many extra were sold will be pulled from that pool.

[Patrick]

Statement in new thread - this one will now be closed:

http://www.matadorrecords.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9298