Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Apple Offering Some Devs a Second Chance at WWDC Tickets

Keyhole said:
Seems like the system may have failed and made it seem like all of the tickets were sold out in two minutes. Apple is following up trying to sell off the unsold tickets without re-opening the sale to the public.

Just a theory.
Click to expand...

I think that the payment side of the system failed, but the side of the system that keeps track of inventory was decrementing the inventory with every purchase attempt.

Who'd have thought they'd need a robust sales system for $1600 tickets being made available to a developer community?

I understand when their servers go down during an iPhone launch while trying to verify your contract status with AT&T or Verizon or Sprint. But WWDC sales volume has to be far less.
 
I didn't make it far enough unfortunately so not expecting a call lol
 
Boy I hope this is true. I'm one of the people who got all the way to the final submit button on the purchase problem before getting an "Oops, something went wrong" message. The only option was to go back to the shopping cart, which was now empty. That really stung.

Losing the chance to attend my first WWDC thanks to a server error really hurts. It would be fantastic if Apple could make it right.

Fingers crossed.
 
petsounds said:
They need a reservation timer like Ticketmaster and many other sites have.
Click to expand...

The last thing Apple needs is to be more like Ticketmaster, they can't cope with major events. The London 2012 Paralympic ticket fiasco taught me that.
 
Shaun said:
Seems a daft system to me. Couldn't they hold a series of WWDC conferences around the world over the space of a month to give more developers a chance to attend. Not all Mac developers live in California.
.
Click to expand...

That would mean pulling their engineers for several weeks when they could be working on bug fixes etc for the software.
 
Shaun said:
Seems a daft system to me. Couldn't they hold a series of WWDC conferences around the world over the space of a month to give more developers a chance to attend. Not all Mac developers live in California.

Or maybe take it online instead with webcast seminars and presentations followed by the chance to have web chats with Apple engineers.

The current system just shows how US centric Apple still is despite repeatedly stating that future growth will primarily come from international sales.
Click to expand...

Please educate yourself. Apple engineers, 1000 of them, work personally with attendees. They work in Cupertino. Not so daft now is it? Right Guv'nah?
 
timborama said:
Hmmm, can't even get 5,000 sales right. SJ would not approve.
Click to expand...

Given that 5000 folks were trying to book at the same time, or even 1000, it's understandable.

Stands to logic that they know who got errors and probably are calling those folks to see if they want the ticket they couldn't complete before and then if anyone says no they will open those up for sale (like they would have any left)

----------
BC2009 said:
I think that the payment side of the system failed, but the side of the system that keeps track of inventory was decrementing the inventory with every purchase attempt.
Click to expand...

Very possible. and beyond Apples control if the issue was the server on the other end.
 
HenryDJP said:
Wow, the tickets were sold out in 2 minutes?? And someone here yesterday thought $1599 was too much to charge. :D
Click to expand...

Well, the Internet does not require people to have any f@cking clue what they are writing about. Having first hand access to real Apple engineers is priceless if you are in need of a solution.

We have been to WWDC 2011 and were in some trouble with an in-house application development at that time. We already spent more than 300 man hours trying to solve 5 problems in our app (roughly EUR 55k in manpower cost alone). An Apple engineer solved all our problems in less than an hour and even took the time to go through our code and suggested some alternate API calls that were more efficient than what our guys were using. A bargain even at ten times the price.
 
I just got voicemail from them. :) If anyone is curious this what they said.

"Hello, this message is for [NAME]. We're contacting you from Apple Developer Program Support. We saw that you tried to buy a WWDC 2013 ticket and were unable to complete your purchase. We do have a ticket reserved for you, so we'll be sending you an email with instructions on how to complete your purchase within the next 12 hours. Again, this message is for [NAME]. We saw that you tried to buy a WWDC 2013 ticket and were unable to complete your purchase. We do in fact have a ticket reserved for you, and we'll be sending you an email with instructions on how to complete your purchase within the next 12 hours. If you have any questions, please let us know, thank your for your interest in WWDC 2013"
 
ohbrilliance said:
The important figure isn't 5,000. It's however many people were attempting to get tickets at that time. On a side note, I wonder how many tickets would have been sold in 24 hours if there was no cap on the number of tickets.
Click to expand...

Apple doesn't want to know that, simply because they do not care. Proof will be if they post the conference in its entirety on iTunes U. This is the 21st century. It doesn't take a genius to figure out the return for simply holding a second conference. Apple has over $100 billion in cash just sitting there. They can afford to do anything they want.
 
Apple > Google

I was one of the many people that got a ticket to google i/o only to have google wallet timeout and lose my ticket. Contacted google and they basically said "tough luck". Would have been nice if google did something like apple.
 
edolecki said:
Feels good doesn't it?
Click to expand...

Feels good to be offered a second chance to PAY someone else 1600 bucks?

Apple really have turned the world on it's head when people are happy to do so.

I wish I could get 5000 people to give me that much, 8 million dollars isn't small change.
 
holy molly

less than 2 minutes ? :eek:

(People obviously love WWDC.)

This is getting to be like a live concert of Madonna.. A stamp-eed of elephants just ran through the door, and whoever gets trampled on.... well..... too bad.

ya... good idea to offer a second chance... Maybe a third, and forth one be good.
 
Shaun said:
Seems a daft system to me. Couldn't they hold a series of WWDC conferences around the world over the space of a month to give more developers a chance to attend. Not all Mac developers live in California.

Or maybe take it online instead with webcast seminars and presentations followed by the chance to have web chats with Apple engineers.

The current system just shows how US centric Apple still is despite repeatedly stating that future growth will primarily come from international sales.
Click to expand...

That's not a realistic proposition. The reason that WWDC is so popular is because so many Apple software engineers are there to answer questions and give advice. While they are doing that they are not doing their day job. That's going to be a problem if they having to do it for a whole month.
 
pixelpro said:
This is what separates the king of customer service from the copycats!
Click to expand...

This is like opening up your iPhone only to find scratches forcing you to drive down to the Apple Store to swap it out. Problem should have been caught before ending up in my hands.
And now we call it great customer service when they swap it out without questions asked. That little trip cost me gas money and time.
 
bkushner said:
Please educate yourself. Apple engineers, 1000 of them, work personally with attendees. They work in Cupertino. Not so daft now is it? Right Guv'nah?
Click to expand...

Yeah and they can't be allowed to travel because being American..,

They don't have a passport
They can't drink the water or the eat the food because its foreign
And they wouldn't enjoy the experience of another culture anyway

I know it would be too expensive for Apple's shallow pockets, but instructions to 'educate yourself' and a Dick Van Dyke attempt at an English accent are not really polite.
 
turtlebud said:
I was one of the many people that got a ticket to google i/o only to have google wallet timeout and lose my ticket. Contacted google and they basically said "tough luck". Would have been nice if google did something like apple.
Click to expand...

I got a bone to pick with McDonald's. They forgot my large fry when pulling away from the drive thru. I came back and they said tough luck. Looks like I lost more money than you.
I guess next you're going to tell us how Microsoft screwed you!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back