The website secretsales.com has today proven how easy it is to annoy
tons of potential customers in one fell swoop. I'd have thought it
would be better to get PR for all the RIGHT reasons not the WRONG
reasons. Will they learn from the exercise though?

Although the organization has a great way of attracting attention and
stimulating interest in its wares, they really don't appear to have
put as much thought into delivering on the customer expectations they
set.

Those of us that have signed up to receive their email alerts were
excited to learn earlier today that they were (allegedly) going to be
offering iPads for sale at half price, yes, that's 50% off! They did
state there would be limited availability, but what ensued really was
farcical.

With an hour to go, they posted "1 hour to go before our 50% off Apple
iPad sale opens. Make sure you're at the ready! For release times of
the other iPads, follow us on FB" on Twitter.

At 4pm when everyone tried logging in to their site - everyone found
out the site had crashed.

The response from @secretsales on Twitter was: "Much bigger traffic
than we expected! We are working on getting the website up as soon as
possible. Sorry guys, there is still stock left!"

That left tons of people frustrated to say the least. As I commit
this article to my blog, TweetDeck is chirping away in the background
with an increasing number of disgruntled folks vowing to turn their
back on Secretsales.com and claiming the whole thing was a PR stunt -
and I'm inclined to believe that myself. Same goes for their Facebook
page too!

I've just managed to access the sale site (finally). It is claimed
there are 33112 members connected and also states "We are sorry, there
are no iPads available to buy at the moment. We have limited
availability but will be releasing more stock over the weekend. Become
a Fan on Facebook to find out the next release time in advance.
The last lucky person bought an iPad on 10 September 16:29" - That's
got to be a crock of ****