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OnTheGrind wrote:Hmm, been hitting refresh constantly, don't think they ever went for sale...

Same here!

jk, snagged them

I'm not sure how exactly Shopify works, but I believe that the owner of that account has to unlock the product to have it for sale. It could simply be that Jackson is having trouble connection to the net where he is.

But while we're all waiting. Jackson has created a discount code for 10% off of all the Sherlock items specifically for the card forums. It's valid until Monday.

The code is: AE&UC

Used the code, worked great! The product went up for sale and looks like is already sold out

OnTheGrind wrote:Used the code, worked great! The product went up for sale and looks like is already sold out

Glad the code worked great. I believe that Jackson has to unlock each item so they can be listed for sale on the site. That probably takes a bit of time depending on the internet speed he's got to work with.

I believe it's not as bad as when he was in Tarpley, Texas.

Well... that's not cool. I was refreshing pages like crazy since 5 min before time. Added LE to cart the immediatly when it came online. But the other decks was still unavailable. Takes almost 5 min before Bakerstreet came online, then same thing for Holmes and Hound of Baskervilles.

When finally this last one was available, added it immediatly to card. Go to checkout one second later... LE removed from cart because sold out!! So it was impossible to buy them all in one order. A bit sad...

But the coupon code works well, thanks for that.

Very very disappointed with what happened to me just one minute ago. I have been waiting this day for so long. I had 2 alarms in my calendar. I have been 1h sat down in front of my computer awaiting the release of the Sherlock decks as I missed the original campaign in KS. At time, the limited deck was activated and I added 1 to my shopping cart. Yeah I had one! Then I had to wait for the other two ones to be activated, as they were not activated at the very same time. 10 minutes later, when I had added my three decks I went to pay and... VOILA!!! My limited deck was gone forever. The cart did not reserve it and I have lost all my chances to get one after this effort. I bought the other ones, but I feel quite disappointed and deceived.

Quite angry right now. Very unfair


EDIT: the same that happended to suicideking

Discount code worked. Ordered a Hounds and a reg baker St. All the budget would allow. Hopefully I can get the others on pay day.

Thanks again Jackson for the discount code.

SuicideKing wrote:Well... that's not cool. I was refreshing pages like crazy since 5 min before time. Added LE to cart the immediatly when it came online. But the other decks was still unavailable. Takes almost 5 min before Bakerstreet came online, then same thing for Holmes and Hound of Baskervilles.

When finally this last one was available, added it immediatly to card. Go to checkout one second later... LE removed from cart because sold out!! So it was impossible to buy them all in one order. A bit sad...

But the coupon code works well, thanks for that.

adanyeva2 wrote:Very very disappointed with what happened to me just one minute ago. I have been waiting this day for so long. I had 2 alarms in my calendar. I have been 1h sat down in front of my computer awaiting the release of the Sherlock decks as I missed the original campaign in KS. At time, the limited deck was activated and I added 1 to my shopping cart. Yeah I had one! Then I had to wait for the other two ones to be activated, as they were not activated at the very same time. 10 minutes later, when I had added my three decks I went to pay and... VOILA!!! My limited deck was gone forever. The cart did not reserve it and I have lost all my chances to get one after this effort. I bought the other ones, but I feel quite disappointed and deceived.

Folks - it's beyond his direct control. It's just not one of those things where he can click a button and be done with it and I can assure you there was no intentional deception. Now, if you had a 10% coupon you could have easily gotten "out the door" with one as soon as it became available and waited for the rest to become available. I did it through the point of completion with absolutely no problems whatsoever.

I'm sure the 10% off the total would have made up for the additional shipping charge and also fairly certain that if you coordinated it with Jackson he could have fixed you up on the shipping, since basically these days the cost to ship 1 deck and 4 is more-or-less the same (not exactly), but for certain it works that way for a "Priority Mail" box. As always, I can't speak for Jackson and I do know he's out of town right now, so he might not have the best of connections where he is.

Mike Ratledge wrote:Folks - it's beyond his direct control. It's just not one of those things where he can click a button and be done with it and I can assure you there was no intentional deception. Now, if you had a 10% coupon you could have easily gotten "out the door" with one as soon as it became available and waited for the rest to become available. I did it through the point of completion with absolutely no problems whatsoever.

I'm sure the 10% off the total would have made up for the additional shipping charge and also fairly certain that if you coordinated it with Jackson he could have fixed you up on the shipping, since basically these days the cost to ship 1 deck and 4 is more-or-less the same (not exactly), but for certain it works that way for a "Priority Mail" box. As always, I can't speak for Jackson and I do know he's out of town right now, so he might not have the best of connections where he is.

I live in Spain Mike, so it would be $20 for each packet... I thought the cart would reserve the deck for me at least for a while, as in many other shops.

Besides, I tried to contact Jackson a couple of times some days ago telling him about this (by Facebook and by email) and I got no answer.

Perhaps this is not the best way to treat customers, but that's the way it is.

adanyeva2 wrote:

Mike Ratledge wrote:Folks - it's beyond his direct control. It's just not one of those things where he can click a button and be done with it and I can assure you there was no intentional deception. Now, if you had a 10% coupon you could have easily gotten "out the door" with one as soon as it became available and waited for the rest to become available. I did it through the point of completion with absolutely no problems whatsoever.

I'm sure the 10% off the total would have made up for the additional shipping charge and also fairly certain that if you coordinated it with Jackson he could have fixed you up on the shipping, since basically these days the cost to ship 1 deck and 4 is more-or-less the same (not exactly), but for certain it works that way for a "Priority Mail" box. As always, I can't speak for Jackson and I do know he's out of town right now, so he might not have the best of connections where he is.

I live in Spain Mike, so it would be $20 for each packet... I thought the cart would reserve the deck for me at least for a while, as in many other shops.

Besides, I tried to contact Jackson a couple of times some days ago telling him about this (by Facebook and by email) and I got no answer.

Perhaps this is not the best way to treat customers, but that's the way it is.

I'm sorry for your experience. It's unfortunately, but it's part of how the cart system works sometimes whether it be for a large company (Amazon) or small vendors running a Shopify site. I know not all sites are similar, but Shopify works that way in that an item in cart is not reserved; only an item checked out is properly reserved. I've similar experience where I had an item in my cart, but yet when I finally checked out the item was sold already. Stuff like that is unfortunately beyond the control of Jackson. I don't believe there's a way to release all the Shopify pages all at once so each one had to be released individually.

As someone living outside of the USA, I understand the pain of international shipping and I tend to do the same thing in that I buy my stuff in bulk. So I can understand wanting to buy the decks all together to save on shipping. I'm sorry you missed out on your deck. For the LE decks, there were always going to be some that won't get it no matter how prepared they are. Is that ideal? No. Definitely not, but equally it is a limited deck with a very small number remaining and nothing else could be. No deck was specifically reserved for anyone outside of Kickstarter orders and the site is as "fair" as can be. Everyone had as equal of a chance as snagging one of those decks as anyone else.

I'm sorry for your experience, but I hope you can understand. Jackson does not and tries not to slight any of his backers or customers. They're who make it possible for him to do what he loves to do: design playing cards.

bhong wrote:

adanyeva2 wrote:

Mike Ratledge wrote:Folks - it's beyond his direct control. It's just not one of those things where he can click a button and be done with it and I can assure you there was no intentional deception. Now, if you had a 10% coupon you could have easily gotten "out the door" with one as soon as it became available and waited for the rest to become available. I did it through the point of completion with absolutely no problems whatsoever.

I'm sure the 10% off the total would have made up for the additional shipping charge and also fairly certain that if you coordinated it with Jackson he could have fixed you up on the shipping, since basically these days the cost to ship 1 deck and 4 is more-or-less the same (not exactly), but for certain it works that way for a "Priority Mail" box. As always, I can't speak for Jackson and I do know he's out of town right now, so he might not have the best of connections where he is.

I live in Spain Mike, so it would be $20 for each packet... I thought the cart would reserve the deck for me at least for a while, as in many other shops.

Besides, I tried to contact Jackson a couple of times some days ago telling him about this (by Facebook and by email) and I got no answer.

Perhaps this is not the best way to treat customers, but that's the way it is.

I'm sorry for your experience. It's unfortunately, but it's part of how the cart system works sometimes whether it be for a large company (Amazon) or small vendors running a Shopify site. I know not all sites are similar, but Shopify works that way in that an item in cart is not reserved; only an item checked out is properly reserved. I've similar experience where I had an item in my cart, but yet when I finally checked out the item was sold already. Stuff like that is unfortunately beyond the control of Jackson. I don't believe there's a way to release all the Shopify pages all at once so each one had to be released individually.

As someone living outside of the USA, I understand the pain of international shipping and I tend to do the same thing in that I buy my stuff in bulk. So I can understand wanting to buy the decks all together to save on shipping. I'm sorry you missed out on your deck. For the LE decks, there were always going to be some that won't get it no matter how prepared they are. Is that ideal? No. Definitely not, but equally it is a limited deck with a very small number remaining and nothing else could be. No deck was specifically reserved for anyone outside of Kickstarter orders and the site is as "fair" as can be. Everyone had as equal of a chance as snagging one of those decks as anyone else.

I'm sorry for your experience, but I hope you can understand. Jackson does not and tries not to slight any of his backers or customers. They're who make it possible for him to do what he loves to do: design playing cards.

I agree in most of what you said, but try to understand my deception and anger. I just "fought' for it and I lost it.

Well, I did post twice in both forums warning people to be ready and that Jackson wasn't at home, so I was kind of expecting things to be not as easy as they should have been. If you know Jackson you know he's a no BS kind of guy, and I am absolutely certain beyond any shadow of a doubt that this was NOT his intentions to make anyone upset - much less angry or feel like they were deceived. Those other decks are going to be there for a while, and the 30-something LE Baker Street decks that were left went about every 30 seconds until they were gone. In the future, just be reasonable and prudent about what you're doing, and understand that "the road to hell is paved with good intention". No matter how much you try you're always going to have 1% of people that pitch a fit, and I'm not trying to belittle anybody's experience or comments.

Your anger? Definitely. I hate being prepared and missing out on something 'cause I wanted it really badly.

Deception? Not really. It's simply how Shopify is coded and it's not as if Jackson went into the site and moved a deck from your cart to someone else. Sometimes, some things are simply beyond people's control. Jackson will admit straight out that there's a lot of things he's great at and a lot of things he's horrible at. It's one reason he has a Shopify site over him trying to code a shopping site from scratch. But it's definitely something to "fix" with Shopify for the future if it's possible.

I do hope you enjoy the other decks you ordered. Each of the deck is really amazing.

I'm sorry, but I think it was an error by Jackson. I'm a bit disappointed, of course, I wanted that deck very much. I was there on time, but not him. But I'm not angry. Errors happen.

I know for sure that Jackson didn't have any bad intention. I'm a fan (obviously, to refresh a page hundreds of times over 25 minutes...). But fans can admit a mistake. Fans don't have to always say yes, yes, yes no matter what.

All decks should have been available at the same time. If impossible, LE should have been the last one online. That was an error. No bid deal. I will sleep well tonight. But please don't say it was the fault of the customers...

I know Jackson have great projects for his website. I'm sure he will learn from that kind of situations and improve the site.

I don't think the issue is that non-checked out items aren't "safe" - this is common, more that all the products weren't available simultaneously, forcing people to wait or multiply shipping.
It may well be something in the way Shopify is coded, as I can't imagine Jackson would purposely stagger the release (without prior warning)

montecarlojoe wrote:I don't think the issue is that non-checked out items aren't "safe" - this is common, more that all the products weren't available simultaneously, forcing people to wait or multiply shipping.
It may well be something in the way Shopify is coded, as I can't imagine Jackson would purposely stagger the release (without prior warning)

SuicideKing wrote:I'm sorry, but I think it was an error by Jackson. I'm a bit disappointed, of course, I wanted that deck very much. I was there on time, but not him. But I'm not angry. Errors happen.

I know for sure that Jackson didn't have any bad intention. I'm a fan (obviously, to refresh a page hundreds of times over 25 minutes...). But fans can admit a mistake. Fans don't have to always say yes, yes, yes no matter what.

All decks should have been available at the same time. If impossible, LE should have been the last one online. That was an error. No bid deal. I will sleep well tonight. But please don't say it was the fault of the customers...

I know Jackson have great projects for his website. I'm sure he will learn from that kind of situations and improve the site.

All I can say is definitely. The stagger released is just an unfortunate side affect of Shopify. If that is to happen again in the future, we'll work out something better.

It's the first time there was such a limited release item available on the site. I believe there were only 50 LE decks were release for sale and yes, the cart issue was unforeseen, but something we'll keep in mind for future releases. We'll figure something out next time so something like this is least likely to happen again.

I'm sorry for those affected by it. Everything is a learning experience.

Regardless of being able to pick up the LE deck or not, I hope everyone is happy with any decks/Sherlock items they've grabbed.

Obviously, this is an issue to be fixed as soon as possible, to guarantee such situation is never repeated again. When I put a bottle of milk in my cart at the supermarket, it is MY bottle of milk, meanwhile I buy other items. And then I pay everything. I don't need to go to the checkout as many times as products I am grabbing. I thought it was obvious.

Can you imagine Jackson just pops in and sell us a couple of limited decks from the private reserve?

Thank you all for answering and understanding the discomfort.

bhong - I think it's pretty cool that you're on hand to take this forward!

Maybe also look at an option to "lock" a product in the shopping cart for a limited time (say 10 mins), so things can be 'first come first served', rather than "first with the fastest connection and no hiccups during checkout, first served" lol. A 'nice to have' for the roadmap perhaps

montecarlojoe wrote:bhong - I think it's pretty cool that you're on hand to take this forward!

Maybe also look at an option to "lock" a product in the shopping cart for a limited time (say 10 mins), so things can be 'first come first served', rather than "first with the fastest connection and no hiccups during checkout, first served" lol. A 'nice to have' for the roadmap perhaps

I simple possible option could be just take all the items offline, unlock it for release and put them back online at the same time, if possible.

We'll have to see what's possible with Shopify. Obviously, what can be done is limited to what's available in Shopify.

Erm actually there's a simple solution to this, unlock the LE decks the last, you are not expecting the rest to sell out in 10 mins right ?

volantangel wrote:Erm actually there's a simple solution to this, unlock the LE decks the last, you are not expecting the rest to sell out in 10 mins right ?

In theory sounds like the simplest solution, but I can guarantee you that no matter which way you zig or zag somebody is still going to blow the horn and that 1% or less is always the loudest, no matter what you've done right. Nobody be offended please, I'm not pointing any finger(s) - just a statement of fact. Somebody would P&M about it no matter which way you go - and it's all pretty much dependent on the limitations that "shopify" has, not how quick you are on the draw.

The other side of that coin is that Pierre ("badpete69") is always going to toast anybody else that's working on a time-sensitive connection like me. My satellite-based connection has an inherent delay because of the synchronization between the ground station and the orbiting transponder (and back) to my 10 watt radio / transponder up on my roof. Pierre's fibre channel type connection is ALWAYS going to burn us to a crisp if we're just trying to do the same thing at the same time because there's absolutely no delay and the raw connection bandwidth is simply awesome compared to what most people are used to these days. I'd love to hear some of the raw numbers as far as how long it takes him to download certain things that seem to take forever for the rest of us. It's just bound to be so fast it's almost blinding for those of us that can remember things like downloading files over a dial-up modem and such arcane things. Just an example, but when I used to download new maps for my TomTom PND (Personal Navigation Device) it would take about 90 minutes between the actual file transfer and the update process, but using the satellite it's about 10 minutes. I'm thinking it's going to be down around a minute or maybe even 45 seconds to do the same work over an all digital fibre based network, since you're also hacking out any and all conversions back and forth between analog and digital signaling protocols.

This is unfortunate and probably happened to several more people. It's unfortunate and hopefully wont happen again in the future.

Well there's no perfect solution, but I think it's something simple and easily implementable without changes in the system.

Hur hur I'm running on fibre as well, haha I could do a race with you if you want

Mike Ratledge wrote:..........I'd love to hear some of the raw numbers as far as how long it takes him to download certain things that seem to take forever for the rest of us. It's just bound to be so fast it's almost blinding for those of us that can remember things like downloading files over a dial-up modem and such arcane things. Just an example, but when I used to download new maps for my TomTom PND (Personal Navigation Device) it would take about 90 minutes between the actual file transfer and the update process, but using the satellite it's about 10 minutes. I'm thinking it's going to be down around a minute or maybe even 45 seconds to do the same work over an all digital fibre based network, since you're also hacking out any and all conversions back and forth between analog and digital signaling protocols.

Sorry I snipped some of your post. I just wanted to keep things neat. In reference to your question of raw numbers I just downloaded a 1.7GB video file and timed it. I have a Verizon FIOS connection that is 150mbps down/50mbps up. The download finished in 1 minute 32 seconds with and average throughput of 18.4 MB/S. Of course it's late and I am the only one awake in my house on the connection. Mid-day would have added about 5-10 seconds.

I think the staggered release was brilliant! Yes...I have to admit it sucked to have to hit refresh for 25 minutes or so, but it kept only a select few from buying everything up at one time and not giving others the chance to buy. If anything, it was a great move I think.

I was smart enough to buy and checkout with each release on the KW website yesterday instead of waiting for each to come open before checking out. Once I realized they would be staggered, it made sense to check out as soon as possible.

I think it separated the real collectors from those just hovering to snatch up the decks just to sell them for top dollar.

Brilliant.

chadmcmillan wrote:
I think it separated the real collectors from those just hovering to snatch up the decks just to sell them for top dollar.

Brilliant.

How? Any reseller could have done exactly the same as you did (and no doubt did). The only way to prevent it would be to set a cap on the number of each product that can be checked out in a single transation.

Staggering can maximise opportunity for collectors by releasing portions of each product at different times (to cater to different time zones for example). In this case different products were sold at different times - effectively (an unintentionally) penalising international collectors who wanted more than one product. If anything this played into the hands of resellers intending to inflate the prices as they absolutely wouldn't care about waiting or paying multiple shipping.

montecarlojoe wrote:

chadmcmillan wrote:
I think it separated the real collectors from those just hovering to snatch up the decks just to sell them for top dollar.

Brilliant.

How? Any reseller could have done exactly the same as you did (and no doubt did). The only way to prevent it would be to set a cap on the number of each product that can be checked out in a single transation.

Staggering can maximise opportunity for collectors by releasing portions of each product at different times (to cater to different time zones for example). In this case different products were sold at different times - effectively (an unintentionally) penalising international collectors who wanted more than one product. If anything this played into the hands of resellers intending to inflate the prices as they absolutely wouldn't care about waiting or paying multiple shipping.

I agree with Joe. Although I believe the staggering could not be helped due to the way Shopify is coded, I think the staggering did more harm than good, and probably did put resellers at an advantage.

Luckily for me, I was only interested in getting the LE decks at this time (since there was a more than better chance that the regular decks will not sell out, based on past releases, and even if it did, the resellers on eBay would mimic the price soon after) and I was able to check out. Mind you, I probably had one of the slowest connections, as I was using my mobile and the place I was staying that night didn't have the best reception. Still, I was curious to see how fast the LE would sell out so after checking out, I refreshed until I saw them sold out... Probably in 15 minutes or less. If I were a reseller, I could have easily bought a brick, even with my slow Internet connection.

I agree with Volant that the best and simplest solution at this time would be to release the LE last if there is no way around the staggered releases. HOWEVER, it would be prudent to announce the staggered release and ensure that as many people as possible know the LE will be released last. This is important because if someone didn't know this, they could be refreshing for 15 minutes after the release time and think they got the wrong hour and quit... Then be pissed when they realize that if they waited 20 minutes, it would have been available.

So, I've talked with Jackson and we'll definitely work on something else for the future. What happened was unfortunate, but it's over and done with and something we aiming to avoid in the future. The important thing is to always learn from each experience and to hopefully not make the same error twice.

Will this guarantee that someone won't miss out on grabbing that LE deck that they want? I will promise that more than likely something will come up and happen where someone will just miss out on the LE item. That will always be the issue with a very limited number released items.

I'll give you all a theoretical scenario: Everything is released on time and at the same time. There's 50 LE item available and there's 70 people on that page as the item is made available. They're all trying to grab that item when it becomes available. There will be 20 people that miss out 'cause their connection or computer is too slow or somehow Shopify isn't reading their request proper or etc. Those 20 people are going to be upset 'cause to them, they were on the page and the item was clearly in stock and they should have been able to grab it 'cause they clicked on the "add to cart"/"buy". To them, the items were snatched from them.

I'm not saying we won't work on a way to try to prevent this, but I'm just saying that in reality it's an imperfect system. I know that the way online shopping works we all use the analogy of putting an item in the cart. It is totally realistic? Yes and no. I've seen people grab items off of other people's carts before in real life. Is that totally smart? Only if someone is looking for a fight.

So I'm definitely sorry for those that missed out on it.

I've said it in the Sherlock general comments, but they are Sherlock items being held in reserve for any potential Kickstarter issues. It is one reason why the uncut sheets aren't available for sale on the KW site. It will be up to Jackson whether they become available after an appropriate amount of time has passed. There is no guarantee they will be available afterwards or if there is any to be made available after any Kickstarter replacement orders are sent.

well mark me as one of the people that the stagger prevented from buying anything. I went in trying to get a whole set, I originally thought the HotB and Holmes editions were sold out, so if I would have checked out it would have been just to sell the limited edition (which isn't how I operate). By the time I realized it was staggered the LE sold out, so because I wanted the whole set I would rather just not have any than pay what will be the ridiculous aftermarket fee.

(granted I missed out on the KS, so I can't complain too much, I didn't realize that KS was a booming place for cards until after this campaign)