MCS - Mycomicshop website down 0

[JollyComics]

While watching the auction, the website was down. They currently try to fix it since 9:32pm CST.  I may miss to bid one book due to time has expired while the website is down.

What is your thought?

[Unstoppablejayd]

yea me too... this is crazy, I wonder what happens to peoples books they cosigned?

[JWKyle]

I don't ever remember the sight ever crashing like this during an auction although it has been slow to fresh at times during the auction time. I'm hoping they just don't let it runs it course when they get the sight back up that would be a real disservice to the consignors in this one. 

[Crops068]

Hopefully they institute a sort of "time-out" for instances like this.  Otherwise the owner and potential bidders lose out.

[JollyComics]

As far as I would remember that CC website was down, CC resumed the auction next day. It went back to normal as usual.  Hopefully, MCS will do the same.

[mycomicshop]

We've been working on it. We don't have a solution yet, and whatever the issue is has been especially tough to resolve. For the affected auction items starting part way through the auction when the disruption started, I have rescheduled their closing times to Tuesday night. I will be sending an update email to bidders and sellers shortly. I'll provide another update on Tuesday once we know more.

[mycomicshop]

I believe the problem has been conclusively identified and fixed now. Our site runs on Amazon cloud infrastructure, and one of the low level infrastructure pieces we use had a set amount of activity it was configured to allow. We didn't realize there was a limit involving that component, and our activity has grown to the point that we were exceeding the limit, which resulted in strange errors and long response times. Once we traced it to that, it was relatively easy to reconfigure it to allow for higher traffic and activity levels.

[DavidTheDavid]

5 minutes ago, mycomicshop said:

I believe the problem has been conclusively identified and fixed now. Our site runs on Amazon cloud infrastructure, and one of the low level infrastructure pieces we use had a set amount of activity it was configured to allow. We didn't realize there was a limit involving that component, and our activity has grown to the point that we were exceeding the limit, which resulted in strange errors and long response times. Once we traced it to that, it was relatively easy to reconfigure it to allow for higher traffic and activity levels.

Sounds like a good problem to have.  

Thanks for updating.

[shortboxed]

Deleted - posted in wrong thread 

 

 

Edited May 14, 2019 by shortboxed

[Crops068]

56 minutes ago, mycomicshop said:

I believe the problem has been conclusively identified and fixed now. Our site runs on Amazon cloud infrastructure, and one of the low level infrastructure pieces we use had a set amount of activity it was configured to allow. We didn't realize there was a limit involving that component, and our activity has grown to the point that we were exceeding the limit, which resulted in strange errors and long response times. Once we traced it to that, it was relatively easy to reconfigure it to allow for higher traffic and activity levels.

Sound like you need some monitoring in place that will notify you of any thresholds you are getting close to reaching.  Just dealt with email bounce notifications with AWS that could have been catastrophic if they had not notified the top IAM user on our account.

Glad you got it figured out and appreciate the updates!

[shadroch]

 Last night, I dug out four boxes of TPBs I want to get rid of. Am all set and log on to MCS to see which ones they are buying, and get timed out.  I feel bad for the auction folk but I'm sure MCs will get it right.

[Ryan.]

What a disaster. I had two books end in this week's auction and the hammer prices were so low I'll likely never consign via MCS auction again. No doubt the various outages the last 24 hours had a huge impact on ending prices. 

[bb8]

Had a bunch of mid-range silver in this auction and I’m pretty happy with the results. I don’t think the outage had an adverse effect on my lots luckily enough.

[mycomicshop]

47 minutes ago, Ryan. said:

What a disaster. I had two books end in this week's auction and the hammer prices were so low I'll likely never consign via MCS auction again. No doubt the various outages the last 24 hours had a huge impact on ending prices. 

Hi Ryan,

I agree with you that both those books of yours should go for more, but I don't know that the disruption Monday night was an important factor. One of the two items ended about an hour before the site problem started. I think they would have done better in our quarterly prime auction rather than the weekly auction--prime is better for pricey gold and silver age, weekly is targeted somewhat at lower value books (typically under $50 in value), moderns, and multi-item lots. I know the site didn't give you the option for prime on these two--our internal pricing wasn't up to date and wasn't valuing them high enough to think they were eligible. I'm putting in a fix for this tomorrow, so that books like these would have the option to go in prime, and if the value's high enough prime would be the only auction option they'd qualify for. Also, for you or anyone else reading, if you ever have a book that our site says is only eligible for the weekly auctions that you know to be valuable enough to be a good fit for prime, if you ask our consignment manager we can override the item for you to put it in the prime auction. I'll also follow up with you via PM.

For what it's worth, this weekly auction actually ended up averaging in the ballpark of 5% better relative to price benchmarks than the two weekly auctions that preceded it, which both contained roughly the same quantity and mix of material. As with any auction, there will be some individual disappointing results and some individual disappointed sellers, but it doesn't look to me like there will be too many upset sellers because despite the Monday night disruption, on average the auction still ended up performing a bit better than a "normal" undisrupted weekly auction.

 

[Ryan.]

8 hours ago, mycomicshop said:

Hi Ryan,

I agree with you that both those books of yours should go for more, but I don't know that the disruption Monday night was an important factor. One of the two items ended about an hour before the site problem started. I think they would have done better in our quarterly prime auction rather than the weekly auction--prime is better for pricey gold and silver age, weekly is targeted somewhat at lower value books (typically under $50 in value), moderns, and multi-item lots. I know the site didn't give you the option for prime on these two--our internal pricing wasn't up to date and wasn't valuing them high enough to think they were eligible. I'm putting in a fix for this tomorrow, so that books like these would have the option to go in prime, and if the value's high enough prime would be the only auction option they'd qualify for. Also, for you or anyone else reading, if you ever have a book that our site says is only eligible for the weekly auctions that you know to be valuable enough to be a good fit for prime, if you ask our consignment manager we can override the item for you to put it in the prime auction. I'll also follow up with you via PM.

For what it's worth, this weekly auction actually ended up averaging in the ballpark of 5% better relative to price benchmarks than the two weekly auctions that preceded it, which both contained roughly the same quantity and mix of material. As with any auction, there will be some individual disappointing results and some individual disappointed sellers, but it doesn't look to me like there will be too many upset sellers because despite the Monday night disruption, on average the auction still ended up performing a bit better than a "normal" undisrupted weekly auction.

 

Hi Conan, 

I responded to your PM on the specifics but your willingness to work with me on this goes a long way. 

Regarding weekly versus prime auctioning, I have definitely gotten better results from prime auctions so I will put my books in those moving forward.