As expected, Samsung Malaysia’s pre orders for the Galaxy S7 edge has opened to a full-blown festival of frustration, anger…and the occasional glimmer of hope.
With only 1,000 units available for pre order for the S7 edge at one of the most attractive prices we’ve seen for such a campaign, the fact that many would be left frustrated is a given.
At the stroke of midnight, Samsung’s website ground to a halt from the surge in traffic across Malaysia. It was reminiscent of Xiaomi’s first few flash sales in Malaysia in 2013, where it was almost impossible to make any purchase.
Half an hour in, with the site still struggling to cope, the angry comments came in full force on Samsung Mobile Malaysia’s Facebook page. Some were plain angry, others were useful (such as one person pointing out that the traffic was being routed through Singapore, South Korea, China and back to Malaysia), and of course, the few who actually managed to secure their units.
At the time of writing, the number of comments has surged past 800.
An anonymous source at Samsung Malaysia mentioned that within the first 30 minutes, the pre order page hit 30,000 page views. However, pre-orders are still available as of writing, with the source indicating that it is “selling fast”.
It was a similar frustrating experience for us while we conducted some independent testing on the page. Due to the huge traffic, the site simply could not cope, usually redirecting to a 404 page (“We’re sorry….”). This went on for the next hour or so, with the site occasionally loading parts of the page (which rendered it useless).
From there, we searched our forums for tips from those who managed to secure their units. Some said using Internet Explorer worked better (unlikely to be a good tip), but the one about using mobile browsers seemed to work best; after all, mobile sites reduce the number of elements to load.
This proved to be the case, as we were able to access the pre order form several times successfully. There, Samsung’s web designers could have done a better job.
Pre ordered units need to be collected at Samsung Experience Stores nationwide, which makes sense. But breaking them down into three separate loading lists makes the experience rather frustrating.
In more than one occasion, the list of outlets that loads is for a different state
As most who tried will know, tapping “Locations” usually brings up an empty list, or even occasionally bringing up a list of outlets from a different state from the one collected. It may have been a better idea to put all outlets into a single long list, or at the very least, a “loading” icon to show that the list was being fetched from a server that’s already under heavy load.
In any case, the lucky and plucky who persevered have successfully secured their units, as can be seen from some of the comments. Confirmation emails were also sent within a few minutes of the payment confirmation, we were told.
Of course, this won’t subdue the thousands of others who failed to secure their unit. The angry comments will continue on Facebook, but this situation can best be summarised by Razer CEO Tan Min-Liang, whose company offered a one-time, 50% off everything celebratory sale (besides its laptops) on its Razer online store after a successful CES 2016:
“…if you get what you want, be glad – many gamers have had success in previous years – but if you don’t get what you want – don’t worry, it’s just part of the game – you’ll find many other gamers here who had mixed successes over the years.”
UPDATE @ 3.20am: All 1,000 units of the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge pre order have now been fully secured.
