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Article Big W Shoppers Fuming Over Toy Mania Chaos

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We predicted it! All those eager beavers waiting for the stroke of midnight to fill up their virtual shopping carts with discounted toys. But Big W buckled under the hoards of online crowds and shoppers were left frustrated and fuming at the Toy Mania chaos.

It sounded good in theory! The retailer’s iconic midnight in-store launch of the mega Toy Mania sale was cancelled due to COVID-19 (impossible to social distance with trolley wars). Instead, Big W decided to trigger off the sale online at 12:01 midnight Tuesday 16 June. And then follow this up with extending the deals to physical outlets from Thursday 18 June running through to 15 July.

This should have worked. There is no excuse for this imploding. A retailer this massive should have a super-duper-robust IT infrastructure and genius geeks in the server room figuring out how to welcome thousands of eager shoppers seamlessly onto their online platform. Sure, Big W is traditionally not an online business but they’ve had quite a few months to get their act into gear.

I must admit, I did not try and access the Big W website at 12.01am. There really wasn’t anything in the Toy Mania catalogue that was worth interrupting my sleep. But I know others had long lists and were determined to get their Christmas shopping sorted in the wee hours of the morning.

Join The Waiting Room

If you tried to join the Big W online shop, you were presented with a message:

“Due to a high number of shoppers you have been placed in the waiting lounge. We value you as a customer and we will transfer you to the website as soon as possible. We will update you shortly.”

The BIG issue I have with this is that you have absolutely NO idea how long you could be waiting in this virtual lounge. Are you next up or at the back of the queue of 100,000 people.

There did seem to be some sort of indicative time estimate last night. So perhaps if the wait is longer than one hour, a time does appear. But I think you should always know how long you could be waiting.

This is not so bad during the day (the waiting room is still active on the Big W site) but when you should be sleeping and instead you’re staring at an unchanging screen, this would make me want to scream!!!

waiting-lounge-bigw

Hurry Up And Shop!

When you eventually reach the front of the line, you get the following message:

“You can now shop Toy Mania! Thanks for your patience. Once you are in the main website, you will have 60 minutes to complete your order and you can place as many orders as you want during this time.”

Hours and Hours of Toy Mania Chaos

It only took me about 30 minutes to get into the website this afternoon but frustrated (and very dedicated) consumers said they waited over 4 hours to shop last night.

Sorry!

Big W released a statement on their social media platforms apologising to those unhappy customers:

“Most shoppers checked out without a hitch however we apologise to those of you that were kept up past your bedtime and experienced a few technical glitches.

Our Toy Mania elves are working incredibly hard behind the scenes to keep the online queue moving quickly, and we can assure you that we’ve spoken to our toys, and they can’t wait to be added to your basket, be that in-store or online.”

But Sorry Doesn’t Cut It!

Sadly an attempt at humour didn’t placate the livid customers and they swarmed the posts with complaints.

“A few glitches? Waited over 4 hours to get through for my cart to keep being emptied and then everything doubled then errors it was a mess 4:30 am I got to bed fingers crossed everything I ordered will be honoured,” said one livid customer.

“It was an epic fail actually. Waiting hours in the “lounge” to be let on the site. Every two seconds the site would freeze. Then there was the issue that nearly every second toy was not available for online or was already out of stock. So, fill the cart full of items that were chosen by default, not what was actually wanted, get to checkout and page crashes and sent back to the lounge to wait. No thanks, think I will go elsewhere,” said another.

“We certainly didn’t have any luck. Tried at 4:30am for an hour, and then at 8:30am – both times our order wouldn’t go through,” said on customer of the Toy Mania chaos.

“Website crashed as I was going through PayPal? Money has come out but no confirmation? What a shit show!”

“Still can’t get on it’s ridiculous should start instore and online same time to make it fair,” said another.

“Yeap I jumped on, waited for an hour, only to get to checkout and be kicked off. Majority of the toys I won’t I can’t even collect in-store and when I go to use PayPal it is telling me I have to pay it all upfront!?”

“I’ve given up on trying online. Spent last night getting error messages and 3 hours today with a message saying I would be updated soon on how long I have to wait in the lounge. Big W should have anticipated the huge influx of people online and handled it way better then they are. Now I will have to brave the shop!”

No Stock!

Limited stock has also been a major complaint about the Toy Mania chaos. It sounds like the online store had very few of the hot-ticket items so they were pretty much sold out after a few minutes.

“What a joke. People are boasting that they succeeded in getting 80+ items in their cart, where others couldn’t even get one item! All the Lego sold out before I even had a chance to get online and I was at the page waiting well in advance of midnight. When I tried again this morning there were literally 30 something items left in the whole online store. very disappointing,” said one customer.

Kmart and more recently Thredbo had similar appalling customer feedback for their online sales. It seems like these companies have a long way to go before they should be marketing major online events. It’s certainly not winning them any customers…in fact it’s driving them away in droves.

Did you get caught up in the Big W Toy Mania chaos? Tell us in the comments below.

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Comments

  • Look I don’t have little kids anymore as son now 18 but I was interested in the snack specials & some PS4 games on sale. But Im disappointed for fact bigw chose to take themselves off shopback this week through online. I don’t know why they did this other then to get more money as they have to pay shopback.

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  • Considering they all anxiously waited until midnight and beyond to do the shopping, the shoppers expected things to be hard to get and some problems, otherwise why not wait until the next day. I get there are many things out of stock, but that happens every year regardless of online vs instore. I have a month of waiting to see if the things I want come back instock to do my shopping. If not, no big deal, I’ll just set money aside every fortnight for gifts for Christmas and the upcoming birthday. Stress less people, it is just possessions, stuff we (kids included) do not need, just want.

    • Totally right – I checked out the prices in the catalogue and there wasn’t anything needed that desperately by my kids.

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  • I isn’t anything I wanted thankfully

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  • No, not sure why people are surprised there is never enough stock in Big W!!

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  • Was going to have a look in store but am guessing it will be crazy there too and probably no stock.

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  • Very dissapointed with the way toy mania was handled. When I finally accessed the site there was nothing left! I checked the website throughout the day in spare moments… no way I’d sit there waiting for hours… poor form big W!

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  • No, fortunately I didn’t need/want anything – wouldn’t wait online for 4 hours even if I did ……

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  • Again frustrated and fuming shoppers ! Last weeks it was about the empty shells in Kmart, then about ski holidays and now about the Toy mania shoppers who don’t get what they want.
    Where people can get upset about puzzles me.

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  • There was a glitch somehow happened to my friend a while ago where normal lives credit card didn’t work at checkout. At the end only PayPal could get through… wrote to Big W and they never care to fix.

    I was placed on a queue with my laptop but as I browsed with my mobile phone the queue system never came up…

    Reply

  • Logged on at midnight straight to lounge. Told 45 minute wait. 90 minutes later, told 4 hour wait, refreshed the page went from 1.5hours to access. Went to checkout 504 error, finally checked out after refreshing several times. Got to address part cart was empty. Had to go back and add to cart again. Several more 504 errors and posts on Facebook pages. Finally got through to payment had to remove items as they were home delivery only then tried to laybuy through PayPal. PayPal was not budging on not receiving the entire payment. So the laybuy option was not available thankfully was able to add to my ZipPay account. Went back in and did a separate order for the home delivery item. Thing is the Web pages advertised that laybuy was available through PayPal and payments would not start until August, essentially make it an 8 week laybuy. BigW finally responded on the Facebook page so I screenshot there response advising my fellow parents that the page was being monitored and we were all being ignored. At 3am, I received a private message advising to give BigW my email and items that had been in my cart that I had to refill so they could look in to it. At this stage I had got what I wanted. And in all fairness had I not wasted 3 hours on the website my children would have missed out, due to BIGW only having limited stock of certain items. To say the whole set up was a major cluster f%^*k is putting it lightly. I just wish there were more options for long term laybuy in other stores. Or that they actually had there act together before advertising the toy sale online.

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  • There was always going to be some sort of wait when everyone wants the toy sale. It cant be helped

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  • My partner did our order this morning before going to work (around 6am) he waited about 10 mins, we got everything we wanted, the most annoying part was half the items we wanted weren’t available for layby or instore pick up, so we ended up having to pay for everything up front rather than for layby which was annoying, we did get a couple of things through layby, but $700 of an $800 order had to be paid upfront! Luckily we had some savings to be able to pay it, we managed to shop for our 2 boys and our nieces and nephews.

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  • I didn’t need anything but I had a little look on the website this morning and there wasn’t a queue then.

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  • I was actually up at midnight (for other reasons) and tried on a whim – by 12.05 I’d ordered everything I wanted and checked out. It was really smooth, but then, I wasn’t after any really big ticket or insanely popular things.

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  • 1st world problem???????????? lucky i dont need anything

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  • Wow. People are full on. I would never stay up until midnight just to buy some toys.

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  • I had a little look this morning and really wasn’t impressed with the prices!
    The things I wanted to get my bub were still full price and others were $4 off?
    I honestly don’t see what all the fuss is about.
    I waited around 10 minutes to get in and the site was slow but not as bad as when Kmart had their half price Easter sale.

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  • I most definitely did not get caught up in the mania! The number of people shopping online due to the virus is unprecedented. The supply of products is apparently also low in many places. Sadly there seems to be so much impatience.

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  • It was very clear the whole time how long your wait time was. It was in the top right hand corner on phone/tablet

    My wait time was too long so I went to bed and ordered when I woke up. Waited 10mins to do it then.

    I think the virtual queue/waiting lounge was perfect. Made you know exactly where you stood. There’s no way they can handle that amount of traffic otherwise and there’s no way for them to know how many people to expect. Very different times at the moment

    Happy I got the Bluey house and some other bits and pieces

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  • I tried 30 mins ago. My wait was around 10 mins and I got to order the1 item I wanted. If your going to go on when everyone else is then you have to accept that it is busy and you will have to wait! Despite counting down the days, I actually forgot about it twice today… guess it worked in my favour

    Reply
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