Next server fails, world explodes

But really, was it that big of deal? You are going to "waste" another 2 hours at the restaurant, an hour + travel time to get there and home, plus getting around time. Whats another hour on the internet. I am sure it wasn't your least productive hour at work in your life time. I disagree that things were mostly negative also. It isn't like we are all going to get tickets anyway! Whats going to happen when all the people who waited 2 days for 2 hours don't get tickets! Cry babies.

ariel, almost everyone was more than 'slightly annoyed'. the difference is that most of us have learned (a) to put up with annoyances when there is a potential reward (b) to not throw tantrums whenever we feel bad about something.

To the author: While I do agree with your general sentiment that everyone should try to refrain from posting vitriolic statements in any public forum (the first comment attached to this post is a fine example of the inappropriate yet all too common), I must sympathize with the frustration voiced by the user's of Next's website. I too was one of those users yesterday and today and, while I did successfully obtain tickets, I can say that it was a very time-consuming and painful experience. I understand that Next is not a technology company; nonetheless, I expect better. I won't give Next too hard of a time for having volume-related issues, since those can be very hard to accurately test and thus you may not truly encounter them until your site is live. However, what ARE worthy of complaint, especially given the site's simple functionality, are its bugs in the purchasing step, which numerous people encountered. I myself lost my first selected slot because time ran out as I kept on getting a "You must enter your credit card's CVV" error message even though it was staring right at me from the screen and subsequently tried every card in my wallet to no avail. Only after I managed with luck to grab another slot was I eventually successful because by then my card information had been saved and I was able to access an input box that was not accessible if you were entering new card information. This was clearly a logic problem, not a volume problem, and it's one that would have been found with some basic testing. And although I said that I wouldn't give Next too hard of a time for having volume-related issues, I still think they deserve some criticism based on the very nature of their business model: they HAD to expect tens of thousands of people to hit their site all at once; their model INVITES it. To have them say that the volume was unexpected is thus either disingenuous or very naive. A transaction between a business and a customer can be thought of as a conversation, and it is paramount that the business focus on making that conversation as smooth and satisfying to the customer as possible. That's not to say that the customer does not have responsibility for being respectful, reasonable, etc., but it does mean that the business has a responsibility to foster the type of conversation it would like to have if it were in the customer's shoes. Anything less is failure, and just because Next and its chef are highly praised and demanded doesn't mean that its customers (including those who would like to be but who do not have the luck of fetching tickets) should have to swallow their discontent, only their vitriol. To completely swallow their discontent would be to give the business the misleading picture of satisfaction and would promote its future laziness. If Next and its chef want to be/remain at the top of the podium, I'm sure they will appreciate the commentary and try to make as many improvements as possible. On a final note, I would suggest that including the commentators' full names your post above only serves to detract from your general message that we all need to be more reasonable and respectful. I realize that by posting their comments on Facebook they knowingly made those comments and their identities public, but to then advertise their identities here adds no value whatsoever to your argument. Instead, the addition merely lowers it closer to the level of the mud slinging you are criticizing in the first place. In a sense the negativity here is even worse because at least the aforementioned Facebook users can argue that they lost their sense of decorum due to their frustration in the moment...