Thousands of shoppers are disappointed after all the difficulties they have gone through in the last days trying to get one of the Mini NES Classic Edition, as the device is sold out in all major stores such as Walmart, Best Buy, and even Amazon.
At this point, the Mini NES is almost impossible to get under normal circumstances because it has been sold out practically from the moment it hit the stores.
Some people are facing the choice of having to buy it from resellers at the cost of $200-$300 when official retailers are selling it for $99.
ThinkGeek made honor to its name and came up with a creative solution to the Mini NES scarcity problem
The retailer ThinkGeek has devised a way to distribute the Mini NES Classic Edition and be fair in the process.
If someone wants a mini Nintendo Entertainment System, they must add the product to his or her wish list, and ThinkGeek randomly selects one of those names every day at 10 a.m. and sends them a code.
Then, he or she will be able to buy the coveted console. The code will be “alive” for 24 hours. If the code is not used, it will be put back into the “lottery system’’ for the next day’s drawing. ThinkGeek expects this to continue until the stock sales out.
Target is not doing so well with its queue system
In Australia, the last batch of Nintendo Mini NES consoles went on sale on the morning of December 12, 2016. As it was expected, the product sold out in a matter of seconds. Some web stores, like Target’s, crashed under the number of people trying to obtain the console.
Target claims it is using a queue system that tells people their place on the line every thirty seconds. However, the notice never arrives.
When you try to get back into the site, you will only see the busy page again and sometimes it will say that an error has occurred and you need to refresh the browser, wishing for the product to still be there in your basket.
There will certainly be a lot of disappointed shoppers this Christmas, but this was expected to happen – the same thing occurred when EB games offered the Mini Nintendo Entertainment System the first time.
The disaster surprised no one because Australia’s Internet service is infamous for not handling heavy traffic. Australians have had the same problem when they are doing critical governmental processes.
Source: Forbes