Dear Great Pumpkin,

I am writing you this year on the behalf of those at Usborne Books and More and Randall White. You see, they have a lot of problems, and they’re not really good about asking for help, so I thought I would ask you.

Last week, the company decided to launch a big sale to last until your big arrival on Halloween night. They told people to expect problems because there is just so much excitement when the company has a sale. After all, this is a sale for Consultants, to stock up, force their books to go out of stock/out of print leaving what little customers they do have unable to purchase books at a discount; they end up paying full price from a Consultant who just by coincidence has that book they desperately want.

Well, Home Office released a little note about the crash that in some cases took 3+ hours for people to log in, shop, and check out. I thought I would share it with you.

“Many of you asked what happened last night (09/28/17) and we have worked with IT to provide you as clear an answer as we possibly can (without getting too completely technical). The launch of the Fall Frenzy Sale last night caused us to experience a ‘choke point’ due to a combination of issues. Was it site traffic that caused it? No. And yes. We can assure you that traffic alone was not the issue. A flood of site traffic in a short amount of time (second and minutes) paired with an addition isolated problem, caused the issue. For those familiar with IT, you may already be well aware that once problems are identified they are difficult to correct with continued site traffic. Our IT team worked late into the night to correct the problem, and around 11 PM CT was pleased to see the same volume of traffic as the initial sale launch time yet with much increased speed. They are continuing to work today to ensure that this is not a lingering issue. Again, we can’t thank you enough for your patience and flexibility (and even your excitement!!). An additional note: HEADS UP: When an item has sold out, it will drop out of the cart and return you to the home page. There are still over 100 titles available in the sale!”

Great Pumpkin, you always send presents. I think you need to send Home Office some new servers. The way I see it, these IT problems keep happening over and over. First, in 2015 their website encountered a crash due to having a Black Friday/Cyber Monday Sale. They did not even bother having such a sale last year. They have promised people for almost three years for a new and improved, user friendly website, and back office. They hired ByDesign, and when Randall realized he could not micro manage them, he terminated their services and blamed them for every problem they have had ever since. I think maybe you should send him a whole new team of IT experts, including replacing Randall’s son Craig who is supposed to have vast knowledge about computers, website building, and e-commerce—an all knowing IT guru and genius!

You may not be as popular as the guy in the red suit, but I have faith in you because you try harder. I mean there are three things you should never discuss with people: Politics, Religion, and The Great Pumpkin.  People laugh at me and tell me you are fake when I try to tell people that on Halloween Night you rise out of the pumpkin patch and deliver toys and goodies to all. All I am asking is for you to deliver some new servers and some new people to Tulsa. Ohh and you might to want to include a note telling them that the reason AOL sends every e-mail sent from Home Office to a spam folder, is because AOL uses algorithms searching emails for words like sales, deposits, animated and still pictures and memes. That is a problem they need to fix with their e-mails that are embedded with numerous pictures. And, to a computer it looks suspicious. It would also help if the AOL user would add the Home Office e-mail address to their contact/address list. Don’t tell a person to get a new e-mail address for Usborne related e-mails ONLY , that’s lazy. That’s like having a virus on your computer and instead of removing just the virus, a person deletes everything off the hard drive, losing all data and has to start over from scratch. Because they have no idea how to fix the problem and that’s the easy way out.  It looks like Craig and his team does things in a similar fashion. You know, maybe Randall and Home Office don’t deserve your treats. I’m sure they can figure it out. They can add how to build and keep a functional website to the “Maybe, someday” list they have compiled.

Your Friend,

Uzzie

PS: If you are fake, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.