The Internet's Holy Day

[meredithp]

I got my DVD recorder and video stabilizer and set them up. I managed to get them working, but I didn't have the remote control for the DVD recorder. It was mentioned in the auction as being missing, so that was fine, but it turns out a lot of the features are only accessible through the remote. I called up Panasonic to find out the part number, and with shipping it would be about $20 to have it sent. I said I'd think about it and order online. I finally decided I wanted it after all, so I can create chapter stops, etc. So just now I went to the Panasonic parts ordering site, and I selected the right remote and added it to my cart. I could see it in the cart, but in place of a "Proceed to Checkout" button was the following message in bold red text.

Parts and accessories may be ordered over the Internet Monday thru Saturday 6:00 am to 1:00 am EST. This site is currently available for Parts Pricing only. Please return during our normal business hours to place an order.

So do the tubes get clogged on Sundays? Is the Internet at church? WTF?

Comments

[mornhyland.livejournal.com]

Blue Law on the internet, interesting.

[sunnydale47.livejournal.com]

That is just bizarre. I've never seen anything like that. Orders are only filled during business hours, but the whole idea of Internet shopping is that you can order 24/7 because computers don't sleep or take days off.

Weird.

[eudyptes.livejournal.com]

You're absolutely right! The tubes are clogged!

[sewcute.livejournal.com]

oh that is teh funny11!!!1 ;)

[euziere.livejournal.com]

Our university's student business website (register for classes, get transcripts, etc.) is only available from 9am-10pm or something like that. I find it bizarre.

[lizzamay.livejournal.com]

Our university's website closes down on Sunday too (and nightly at like 2am I think) - I think they use Sunday to do all the biggest updates rather than have the site be down at various times throughout the week. They probably choose Sunday on the assumption that that's when the fewest people would be using the site. At least, that would be my guess.

[antuvschle]

From my point of view, I'm always paying personally for the gap between people's expectations of 5 9's availability and the actual cost of it.

Sometimes work can be carried out automatically at 3am; other times somebody like me has to be there to do it, and I don't get overtime or shift pay. More often, the work doesn't happen, isn't allowed to happen, and it's the 3am panic call instead. And the work is harder because the scheduled maintenance was denied us due to the "need" for so much uptime. And the processes don't exist because we don't have the resources to plan and test them, because the customer expects the availability without the cost. So I get to invent them in my sleep. With angry people over my shoulder asking why it takes so long. And no amount of "because I told you it would when you denied me the weekly maintenance window" matters.

Finally somebody has gotten a customer to accept that this kind of stress is not necessary, and their customers say, what's wrong with you?

Maybe 54 hours a week is too much, but most weeks I'd give my right arm for 4. And for a few hours not between 1 and 6am? wow. hey, are these guys hiring?

[woofiegrrl.livejournal.com]

Five hours a night is one thing, but an outage for ALL of Sunday seems odd. Also, my interpretation of the message was more that they didn't have anybody around to take the order, rather than the website being down for scheduled maintenance. And most of the site was running - it was just the ordering system that was down.