Got an I/O ticket...only to have payment gateway fail?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5368574

by fallingmeat • 13 years ago

29 48 13 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

jstreebin• 13 years ago

You made it further down the line than me. Clicked the signup within a second of going live and still loading...

lugia• 13 years ago

so I wasn't the only one...

georgelawrence• 13 years ago

Same here :(

keithvan• 13 years ago

I think this is definitely not a good first impression of Google Wallet. It was my first time using Google Wallet and I think it was for many others as well.

rplnt• 13 years ago

Oh, it's I/O time again.. HN for the next few days will be nothing else than blogs crying about not getting in (and various reasons for why it is not fair). Oh well..

rjzzleep2• 13 years ago

and about students wanting free stuff leaving the good longtime cutomers in the dust... or something like that

mrinterweb• 13 years ago

I would wager that a fair chunk of the demand for Google IO is people wanting to be showered in gadgets and then there are people who legitimately want to learn stuff. Maybe I'm just being cynical. I have never been to Google IO so I don't really know. Any previous attendees have impressions about this?

untog• 13 years ago

I'm not really bothered by the fairness (or otherwise) of it, I'm just amazed that Google keeps getting this so horribly wrong. I thought they might have learned after the Nexus 4 mess that they need to improve their purchasing system, but no.

Their 'fix' appears to have been handling page reloads for us, and making sure it's only done every 30 seconds- rather than, say, addressing the underlying weakness in their system.

cdjk• 13 years ago

Happened to me twice. Trying for a third ticket now...

sunils34• 13 years ago

Same thing for me.

pshken• 13 years ago

same here and Google Wallet still show it is processing... :/

metajack• 13 years ago

Ugh.

http://imgur.com/opR63hx

CCs2• 13 years ago

Got ticket and now counting down on the Wallet page.

Console says "Failed to load resource: the server responded wit status 401 on checkout.google.com/inapp/api/v1/purchase_options"

CCs2• 13 years ago

Timer ran out. I saw several 500 (Internal Server Error) messages in the console.

fallingmeat3• 13 years ago

I now think there are actually only five tickets available, being distributed in chocolate bars around the world...

jechen2• 13 years ago

Can't say I didn't see this coming. It's been the same absurd registration experience for several years now. What Google really needs to do is stop throwing all this free swag around so the conference can really find its intended purpose and audience again: developers. I've to most I/Os since its inception, and damn has the quality of the actual conference gone down since the first.

objclxt2• 13 years ago

Although I don't think the free stuff helps matters, WWDC tends to be a very similar free for all - slightly less hectic, but that's only because Apple don't give notice of when the tickets are going on sale, so it's more of a mad scramble than a pre-planned thing.

Which is to say, in terms of registration issues I'm not sure making it more technical and getting rid of the free swag would alleviate matters, if you just go by what happens with WWDC.

jechen2• 13 years ago

Interesting. I've never gone to a WWDC, but I've been to the first three I/Os, and while it could be the fact that the conference has become better known since then (and increasingly at larger scales), you can definitely see the effects that the free swag have on registration demand (and the effect on the quality of the people going to the conference) over the years. It's been really disappointing to witness the change, as personally I/O was my favorite tech event back when it was true to its original purpose: a conference for developers.

banterability• 13 years ago

Same thing happened to me.

double051• 13 years ago

I was able to get the Google Wallet options to appear and hit 'purchase', but the the 'purchase' POST request timed out.

Trying again, but now I'm seeing this: "Try again. We couldn't find you a ticket, but there still might be tickets left!"

frankchn• 13 years ago

I've got 2x $900 pending charges shown on Google wallet after attempting to purchase the ticket.

DrewRWx• 13 years ago

Kind of happened to me. The first time, the modal didn't complete, but I received an email that the charge updated. For kicks, I jumped into the queue again and that time the page completed all the way to the reg form. I now have two pending $300 charges.

saddino• 13 years ago

Same here. Have a pending payment in my Google Wallet account. Ah well.

fallingmeat3• 13 years ago

GOT ONE! Try opening a new tab an logging into Google Wallet after a ticket is reserved...That might have been a coincidence, but it worked

Shenglong• 13 years ago

All sold out.

astrojams• 13 years ago

Same error. Now sold out.

fallingmeat3• 13 years ago

http://imgur.com/B7xRaPZ sold out :(

BHSPitMonkey• 13 years ago

Better than I managed.

robflynn2• 13 years ago

Same here. Got a "ticket" 6 different times and had wallet failures til timeout. A friend of mine got his, though. I am no longer speaking to him. :)

robflynn2• 13 years ago

Looks like the final attempt ended up going through just as registration closed. Confirmation e-mail received.

kordless• 13 years ago

The site says sold out. I just got up.

I hate to be obvious, but putting registration up in the morning for a bunch of developers (most of whom are on the West Coast) isn't the best idea in the entire world. Especially when it sells out in 15 minutes.

objclxt2• 13 years ago

I mentioned this in another thread: lots of engineers do live outside of California. The majority of engineers in the world are not based on Pacific Time.

Last year Apple put WWDC tickets on sale at 5:30AM PDT without notice...the rumour mill suggested this was deliberately done by Apple to ensure more attendees from outside the west coast. I heard something similar from someone at Apple as well.

Whatever time you put tickets on sale, somebody is going to complain. There are certainly two sides to the coin here...I'm not pretending to have a solution, but merely pointing out a time that's convenient to you may well not be convenient to, say, developers in Asia.

BillySquid• 13 years ago

got the ticket but my wallet throw an NoFundsFound

mfkp• 13 years ago

What a frustrating experience. Waited in line for an hour only to have a broken checkout screen. You think they would have their shit together by now.

thomaslangston2• 13 years ago

This brings up a common problem I have with high demand ticket sales. Why not, for at least the first portion of tickets, us a scaling price? When sales open, the price is $10,000. Drop the cost by 1% of the starting price per minute for the first 90 minutes. Recalculate the starting price at the current price and begin again until we reach a floor.

  So if sales start at 9:00 am we have the following schedule:
  09:00 am  : $10,000
  09:01 am  : $9,990
  10:30 am  : $1,000
  12:00 noon: $100

Jabbles• 13 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_auction

Google doesn't necessarily want the richest companies/developers to attend. Nor are they interested in extracting the maximum amount of money (though of course they could do a few charity auctions). A good mix of small companies, freelancers, corporations is probably what they're aiming for.

thomaslangston2• 13 years ago

If the goal is to spread tickets evenly over all potential attendees, then lottery style ticket sales make more sense.

Although if they want to control the composition of their audience even more, they can sell some tickets via Dutch auction and use the profit to pay for the costs for attendees are specifically invited.

lnanek2• 13 years ago

Searches never got anything for me. Girlfriend got to buy button which never returned from graying out after pressed. Wish I'd tried the dismiss popup and retry or check wallet in another tab tricks people mentioned working here. As it is, lost the ticket due to the 5 minute finish count. Oh, well, always next year. :)

nchlswu• 13 years ago

Everytime it comes up, I'm always fascinated that online checkout under demand is still unsolved, even by a giant like Google.

Obviously it's a small chunk of all online sales, but it always seems like the process fails somewhere

tjs-mn• 13 years ago

How irritating. I got as far as getting a ticket for Google I/O three times. Google Wallet failed to complete the transaction all three times, although once it got as far as creating a "pending" transaction. After the third Google Wallet failure, Google I/O was sold out.

Geez....

lagrz• 13 years ago

exactly what happened to me got ticket payment processing..... timer runs out.. WTF

bkbonner3• 13 years ago

Another view of the ticketing process: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...

Got an I/O ticket...only to have payment gateway fail?

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