Motorola had some sweet deals on Cyber Monday yesterday, and apparently not that many people were able to take advantage of them. Motorola was offering the Moto X for $349 and the Moto X Developer Edition for $399, but the deals were so hot that their website became overloaded, leaving many anxious customers unable to grab Moto’s Cyber Monday Deals. Motorola is hoping to make good with frustrated customers by offering their previous Cyber Monday deals again, with $150 off of the Moto X and 30% off of accessories on December 4th and December 9th.
Not only were customers unable to purchase a Moto X yesterday, the MotoMaker customization tool went down as well. MotoMaker appears to be working at time of writing, so hopefully Motorola’s got that all straightened out.
CEO of Motorola, Dennis Woodside quickly posted a blog post begging for forgiveness for the website outage, citing inadequate website testing and huge volumes of orders to blame for the outage. As a penance for the huge screwup, Motorola is offering $150 off of the Moto X on December 4th and December 9th. Moto says they are increasing Moto X quantity, as well as offering 30% off on accessories as well.
So if you are one of the frustrated many who tried to purchase a Moto X yesterday to no avail, check out Motorola’s website on December 4th and December 9th to take advantage of Motorola’s failed Cyber Monday deals. CEO Dennis Woodside’s blog post follows below.
Monday, December 2, 2013
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