O'Reilly $9.99 Sale - Has Anyone Been Able to Download Their Book Yet? | Hacker News Reader

O'Reilly $9.99 Sale - Has Anyone Been Able to Download Their Book Yet?

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12 pointsalanthonyc25 comments

My account's 'Electronic Media' page still says that I don't have any books available.

same for me. I emailed ORA friday night and (not surprisingly) haven't heard anything back yet.

Same. I've tried their normal site and mobile site.

I was excited about the sale and the chance to purchase an ebook in a format that would work on my Android phone, but this experience has dampered my excitement.

As a technology publisher, O'Reilly should be ashamed of themselves.

Send a tweet to @oreillymedia and you'll get faster action than actually trying to use the accounts =at= oreilly.com email they are giving out.

The have all hands on deck trying to deal with this but their systems have been completely over whelmed.

Hey everyone, sorry for the problems with your orders and the delay in responding. We're working through the list of people who are missing ebooks and fixing them.

Our servers were really overloaded on Friday, so some ebooks didn't get added to accounts. We're working on an automated solution to fix this and in the meantime are adding missing ebooks manually.

If you're still missing ebooks, email accounts@oreilly.com, and we will add them for you. You can also try DMing @oreillymedia with your order# and your oreilly.com username.

I emailed customer support and got this email back:

<quote> Thank you for contacting O'Reilly Media Customer Service. Today we had a very heavy volume of orders due to our "ebook deal of the day" promotion. This is affecting the delivery and accessing of electronic media. We have verified that your ebooks are in your account. Please be patient and keep checking your account. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience. </quote>

I still haven't been able to download my ebooks yet though.

Same here; sent them an email and this is the response I got back:

Greetings,

Thank you for contacting O'Reilly Media Customer Service. Today we had a very heavy volume of orders due to our "ebook deal of the day" promotion. This is affecting the delivery and accessing of electronic media. We have verified that your ebooks are in your account. Please be patient and keep checking your account. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience.

Best Regards, O'Reilly Media Customer Service

Another person who hasn't yet, but if you follow @oreillymedia you'll see them actively working on it, although it seems like those people are currently cherry picking, which makes me wonder if someone else is doing the rest come monday or what. If I don't have them available by end of tomorrow I know I'll be throwing them another email.

I've had an account there for a long time and bought lots of books, so it's not a new vs old account thing. I bought a book on Friday and still haven't got it. Emailed them and just got the bog standard "apologize for the inconvenience" form letter.

No problems here. Ordered ~23:30 Pacific and immediately had access to my purchases.

Not sure if this may have something to do with it, but I'd ordered a few ebooks from them before. Maybe the backlog has to do with setting up new accounts?

I had nothing, and no reply to my email, until I mentioned it on Twitter with @oreillymedia in the tweet - within minutes my ebook was available.

Which makes me think that they're having to fix this by hand.

The last time they had a sale like this I had to call them twice before I could download my ebooks. They don't seem very well prepared for the volume they get for sales.

I was able to download the book I bought (The Book of Xen), after about 10 minutes.

It's the second ebook I've gotten, first one "Learning iPhone Programming" came available instantly.

Nope, glad to hear I'm not the only one. I registered for a new account as part of the purchase; I wonder if there was a bug in that code path?

I registered for a new account as well, and I've had access to my books since Saturday.

I am unable to download any of the books I bought. Makes me not want to buy ebook from them again.

Mine still aren't available. I just tweeted them, so hopefully it'll be available soon.

I bought 3, only 1 (Beautiful Code) was available immediately. Still the only one.

I bought 4, half are available (Beautiful Code and iPhone App Dev: Missing Manual) while two are not (JavaScript: Definitive Guide and Hackers).

I wonder if it is related to the books themselves (perhaps each are on specific servers) or if it is only a coincidence that our available books match up.

After sending an email on Sunday evening it was fixed for me within 24 hrs.

Mine worked about 5 minutes after I purchased it.

Nope. Ordered on friday. Still not available.

Still waiting for a book I bought on Friday.

Ordered on Friday. Downloaded Saturday.

ordered on friday, just downloaded it about an hour ago.

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