Takealot struggles minutes into Black Friday

Takealot buckled under the pressure of Black Friday just minutes after midnight — and by 8.30am, the site was still turning shoppers away.

At 12.22am Friday morning — 22 minutes after opening its Blue Dot sale — the company issued an apology to an unhappy customer, stating that it was working on “stabilising the site”.

Thanks for staying up Steve & sorry for the troubles. As you’ve probably noticed a lot of other shoppers have done the same, but we’re working on steadying stabilizing the site and hope to restore full access to the site & App ASAP.

— takealot (@TAKEALOT) November 23, 2017

The company tweeted that it hoped to restore full access to the site and app “ASAP”, but by 8.30am, the online store was listed as “full”.

“There are so many customers shopping, we can’t squeeze everyone in,” the site reads. “Please be patient and come back in a few minutes.”

Takealot said that the issue was “due to a failure of a fundamental service within its platform”, MyBroadband reports. The company has apparently found the source of the issue and is working on processing a backlog of orders.

The https://t.co/FoxSAGgqv7 website and apps are temporarily down.
We’re so sorry for disappointing any customers who are trying to shop this Black Friday, and we’ll be back up and running as soon as possible. pic.twitter.com/i5XS8YR6eo

— takealot (@TAKEALOT) November 24, 2017

Earlier this week, Takealot CEO Kim Reid told Memeburn that while the company had “done a lot of work on the platform to make sure it stays up during the season”, he still wasn’t sure it would run perfectly.

“We’re taking the learnings from the previous year, and we’re applying it to the current year all the time. The best way to learn is through feeling the pain from the previous year,” Reid said.

It seems the pain is continuing at least for one more year — and it’s a feeling shared by consumers.

When you stayed up all night for @TAKEALOT and the site crashes 0.0000001s into their #BlueIsTheNewBlack sales #BlackFriday pic.twitter.com/osE7eY8g9U

— TH3_C4S3 (@TH3_C4S3) November 23, 2017

superbalist and takealot already crashed, 12:00:34 crashed, 34 seconds

— AQA (@aqaworldwide) November 23, 2017

Takealot was not ready

— KUTZ (@ThabzBarron) November 24, 2017

Takealot’s Blue Dot sale runs until midnight Tuesday, 28 November, though deal-priced stocks are limited.