OFFICIAL I Hate The US Mint Thread

SereneDude

The US Mint is now my least favorite business.

53BKid

There's one of these threads every single popular offering!

The thing is, nothing's improved over the past ten years or so.

PTVETTER

over 2 hours and I still can't get on the mint site

epcjimi1

<< <i>over 2 hours and I still can't get on the mint site >>



Me neither.

Cakes

try this link:

http://catalog.usmint.gov/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/TopCategoriesDisplay?storeId=10001&catalogId=10001

PinkFloyd

If you're on a Mac, try Safari. Only browser I've tried (and I've tried Chrome, Firefox and Opera) that seems willing to spin for a long period of time without timing out.


Good luck.

mrearlygold

There's always at least one. You "hate" the US mint.

Whew

comma

I got all mine through, but it is absolutely nonsense that a .gov site as big as the mint can't handle that kind of load.
There are thousands of sites I can think of that handle WAY more traffic than this all day every day (Facebook, ebay, itunes, etc).
I understand there is only a big surge like this every once in a while, but who cares?
My rant is over

LanLord

Just like everything else about the US govt. They can't plan ahead for need.

Every private business with an Internet presence has the ability to scale their server farms and processing capability up and down based on need.

A real business would lose all their customers if their servers crashed every time things got busy (say Christmas).

rant off!

blu62vette

I did not have much issue getting these. You need to plan ahead and be ready and be on a system that is fast and ready to go.

It is not like the mint should upgrade all their systems to some insane level just for the couple days a year of order frenzy.

I went where I had the fastest access this morning an it went well the first couple minutes.

LindeDad

Cut goverment spending and slow it down more. But in reality since there is going to be about 20,000 customers credit card numbers used on the site today I'll be happy that it slow and secure as mine was one of them.

And as mentioned by a few already it works fine for about 360 days out of the year anyway.

TheRaven

I have been trying for 3 hours now

ctf_error_coins

double post

ctf_error_coins

<< <i>

<< <i>I did not have much issue getting these. You need to plan ahead and be ready and be on a system that is fast and ready to go.

It is not like the mint should upgrade all their systems to some insane level just for the couple days a year of order frenzy.

I went where I had the fastest access this morning an it went well the first couple minutes. >>



I was, still took THREE hours
PITA

Free money is not Free after all

HalfStrike

Maybe they only did 100,000 sets because the website couldn't handle any more. I can just hear the mint saying "Yes we can do 500,000 sets but we didn't want to burn up the servers, let's only do 100,000."

LanLord

<< <i>I did not have much issue getting these. You need to plan ahead and be ready and be on a system that is fast and ready to go.

It is not like the mint should upgrade all their systems to some insane level just for the couple days a year of order frenzy.

I went where I had the fastest access this morning an it went well the first couple minutes. >>



Hate to tell you this, but it has nothing to do with your connection speed. Although you were fortunate to get in, and processed, all the delay is on the mint's web servers and billing processing servers. No matter how fast you connect to the internet, it won't speed up their process.

You get in and get the process started, you're golden, others wait and wait and wait and...

comma

Ya, it has absolutely nothing to do with your connection speed (well, unless it is so slow that the site normally wouldn't load )
It's all because the mint's servers can't handle it...which is dumb

SereneDude

<< <i>

<< <i>I did not have much issue getting these. You need to plan ahead and be ready and be on a system that is fast and ready to go.

It is not like the mint should upgrade all their systems to some insane level just for the couple days a year of order frenzy.

I went where I had the fastest access this morning an it went well the first couple minutes. >>



Hate to tell you this, but it has nothing to do with your connection speed. Although you were fortunate to get in, and processed, all the delay is on the mint's web servers and billing processing servers. No matter how fast you connect to the internet, it won't speed up their process.

You get in and get the process started, you're golden, others wait and wait and wait and... >>


It took me well over two hours to finally get to the product page and I have a relatively fast FiOS internet access.
Now I have to mention that the system hung terminally the first time I got to the product page and I had to kill the process and start over..
About 2:15 or so, I got the product page back, placed an order for 5 units then hoped for the best.
It took each succeeding page (Billing, Payment, Review, Confirmation) at least 4 minutes each to load.
All during this process I kept calling the Mint's order line and kept getting a busy signal.
Clearly the Mint was completely unprepared for this release.
It's always the same old story with the Mint - a complete lack of consideration for their customer base.
I would venture to say that the Mint is probably loaded with workers who got their job thru political patronage. And it shows!

Zrider

I was on the web site around 11: 30 and every thing was fine,,at 12:00 it changed,,all of us bottle necked the web site, and it took three hours and fifteen miniutes to place a order. I think I kept going to the back on the line. lol.. I think the key is to just wait after you click a button...do not refresh..<< its the " go to back of line button"..

epcjimi1

I think it's the browser and service provider's ability to hook to the mint server that's key.

I farted around with firefox for a couple of hours, got frustrated, started an old version of IE, version 6 and it was wham, bam, thank you mam.

ElKevvo

This happens every time the Mint has something 'big' going on...only the lucky who have time to try and try again get through. Chance of me getting through on a work break? Practically zero.

K

SereneDude

<< <i>Just like everything else about the US govt. They can't plan ahead for need.

Every private business with an Internet presence has the ability to scale their server farms and processing capability up and down based on need.

A real business would lose all their customers if their servers crashed every time things got busy (say Christmas).
>>


Indeed - just remember AOL.
AOL was my first ISP many moons ago.
At the time, users were charged connection fees by the MINUTE on top of a monthly service fee.
Other ISPs started offering unlimited connection time at a low price and AOL finally had to get on that bandwagon or lose its customers.
So, AOL started offering a unlimited access plan and it proved to be EXTREMELY popular with their users.
So much so that people weren't able to connect to AOL.
This was circa 1995 or 1996 and it left a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths - including me!
Shortly thereafter I switched to a local ISP for dial-up service and never went back to AOL.
Then about 10 years or so, my phone company started offering DSL plans for what I was paying for dial-up, so I switched to that.
Later on, when my area was served by fiber optic service, I changed to FiOS - which is REALLY fast.
But I digress...
Back to AOL.
When I heard that Time-Warner was going to merge with AOL, I thought the honchos at T-W had taken leave of their senses.
Sure enough, the merger proved to be a bigger corporate blunder than the New Coke.
Now very few people use AOL for anything. Old time users get their email there (for free now) out of habit, I suppose.
Hmmm now what was my point