VOUCHER CODE DEALS CONCEPT PLAN!

[ScottiB]

I dunno I wish they could have perhaps checked account age and/or purchase history or something (although the orders were probably cancelled with a big script and not individually stopped)

Realistically impossible with 1100 orders and, frankly, there'd still be a lot of vocal people who have never ordered from us before.

 

[Robert]

That's awesome thank you!!!!!!

Good job OCUK!!!!!!!!!!!

Might be able get get a new GPU to replace my 1070, then 1070 will get handed down to my son also.

Had a navi in my cart

The premise of it being Gamers getting cards doesn't stand to scrutiny though, how many forum topics are their to mining with many posts. These people would also be entitled to cards based purely off number of posts.

There is no perfect rule when setting something like this up, obviously. Like I said, I applaud the idea and the reasoning, I just feel for those that it blocks from future cards.

Thanks for taking your time to respond, it really is appreciated.

Can I float an idea?

So bots and any monitoring system is generally going to cause issues for any site regardless of age or ability.

I personally was using the notifications on stockinforme.co.uk this is obviously polling your site and item pages for changes in the stock field or number of available.

So I'd rather not sit here waiting for a notification.

The idea would be to put different pages behind the login, (wall off public access to the GPUs pages or anything like this)
I suspect they would then just create a login to poll the site, you could monitor activity on accounts for suspicious web traffic just looking at GPU or all of them at the same time and maybe quarantine those accounts from seeing the GPUs.
I'd probably add additional checks or have a SMS 1 time code for finalising the purchase just before payment.

read the other posts in the thread, they’re limited by technical capability/tools/resources at the moment. Not that I’m a fanboy for ocuk, but that’s understandable. Whether this is due to lack of investment/management is another story and one I’m not going into/know about. Hopefully the new site will be much better assuming design/build/test/requirements are right.

edit: first bit didn’t mean to sound *****

 

[xb8browney]

Made with love

 

[Nicholas Eagle]

On a personal note I'd argue this to a point. Yes we are a business and we have to make money to survive but as a company OcUK's hiring policy has always been "are you passionate about PCs and gaming?"

My job interview...about 20 years ago now basically consisted of being asked what PC I had and a quick look at my CV...when I said " I have a Intel Pentium Northwood overclocked to..." they gave me the job instantly.

Gibbo and I have over 40 years combined experience in this industry and, frankly, we grew up in this company. We both left OcUK, experienced other companies in the industry for a few years and then came back, it's definitely more than just a job for us.

Not offence was to be given by that, apologies if it did.

It was a generalisation, as no business can servive without making money

I wouldn't mind to know if the prices hikes on the graphics cards are actually because your having to pay more per unit? I mean I can only take your word for it but meh.

Wouldn't of minded a job interview like that to be honest

 

[SirMX5Alot]

You can see the buy button on the pic above but the price is cut out... So the bots just added them to their baskets ? Without prices ?Just make them all 10k .. to mess with them !!! They will soon stop using Ocuk for bot buying if all the cards are at 10k

I'm another of the 'fluke' customers. Thought I'd finally landed a 3070. In my case I do have an alert set up, which I assume just checks for page changes, but I still have to be online in order to actually click the buy button and complete the purchase. No buying bot involved. I'd be amazed if a very high proportion of serious (genuine gamer) customers don't have some kind of alert running. Without being unbelievably lucky I don't see how else you would ever get a card.

So yeah, colour me disappointed!

 

[Telecaster]

@ScottiB Can I ask what the stock situation is on GPUs for plebs like me? Pre unavailability I was eyeing up a 1660 Super, I only see mention of current 3000 series and the like, what is the situation with lower spec cards?

Cheers

 

[Nicholas Eagle]

I'm another of the 'fluke' customers. Thought I'd finally landed a 3070. In my case I do have an alert set up, which I assume just checks for page changes, but I still have to be online in order to actually click the buy button and complete the purchase. No buying bot involved. I'd be amazed if a very high proportion of serious (genuine gamer) customers don't have some kind of alert running. Without being unbelievably lucky I don't see how else you would ever get a card.

So yeah, colour me disappointed!

Yeah I've been in IT for a while, I wrote a powershell script to monitor the 5900x back a few months back, just randomly checked every few mins with a random time so it wasn't every 60 seconds, but found stock informer later on.

 

[Gibbo]

Order got cancelled, **** happens, was extatic all afternoon though and that's something miners and scalpers can't take away.
What's the best way to get a card from ocUK if we've not been on the forums and that, had to pay with Amazon today as I didn't even remember my login details

What happened last night is beyond me but Scott has explained, I had a rough day yesterday due to food poisoning night before so I’d passed out in afternoon and once I woke up I went back to work and noticed lots of my hidden stock had all been sold. Scott explained their has been a website error/bug and BOTs opened it up, see Scott’s full explanation but hence the reason.

Now back to the website and general sales of graphics cards.

To give you guys some idea how things will work going forward....

- Will we still sell graphics cards online with the webshop? YES! (2060’s & 1050ti available now)
- Will we do MM only deals on cards listed at £10,000 to drop MM price to just above MRSP? YES!
- Will we still do NVIDIA 3000 and AMD 6000 drops on website with no forum heads up? YES!


I am trying to cover all bases to give everyone a fair chance of buying a card.

The problem is too many people are now using BOTs to try and win a graphics cards, most the people using BOTs are scalpers, some miners and of course maybe some genuine customers but the problem is so many people are now doing this has created this insane demand issue the world is seeing which has forced resellers to withheld their stock or over sell whilst they look for solutions to the problem.

OcUK is probably one of the most proactive companies in the world in trying to investigate new ways of selling cards and more importantly getting said cards into the hands of loyal customers and genuine customers.

I can only apologise to anyone who may have placed a genuine order last night during the bug/blip which has now been cancelled.

Our next deal will be a more public forum one and will be on Monday all being well and then we hope to do further deals later in the week which will either be public forum or back to MM depending on the outcome of the public deal.

 

[Gibbo]

@ScottiB Can I ask what the stock situation is on GPUs for plebs like me? Pre unavailability I was eyeing up a 1660 Super, I only see mention of current 3000 series and the like, what is the situation with lower spec cards?

Cheers

We have such cards but they have had dramatic price increases but I shall be doing deals on said cards via forums in coming days/weeks. I am trying to cover all budgets with the deals I do to try and cater for all customers.

 

[ScottiB]

Whether this is due to lack of investment/management is another story and one I’m not going into/know about.

I've said this publicly before so no reason to hide it.
All of our internal software was written from the ground up over the lifetime of the company. It's fantastic at doing what it's designed to do but has no real flexibility. Since it was written by one guy, who recently retired and it's not based on any off the shelf package, it's almost impossible "outsource" someone to improve it. It took our current IT guy a few years training with him to fully understand it all. Therefore, it's not really about a lack of investment but a lack of any realistic upgrade pathway

Therefore we've been working with a number of development teams in the background, working on completely new systems based on off the shelf packages. Heavily modified but still more future 'resistant', but because we can't just use a vanilla off the shelf solution, this process takes years rather than months.

We'll get there...after a lot of work

I wouldn't mind to know if the prices hikes on the graphics cards are actually because your having to pay more per unit? I mean I can only take your word for it but meh.

no offence taken. It's actually public knowledge as some brands, including Asus and MSI have come out and announced increases. I also posted a screenshot in another thread which showed the price of a 3090 which increased by $400 in the space of a few weeks. Prices have been going up pretty much every time stock arrives for the last few months. In fact, for a recent launch, we saw a £50 price increase between the first stock landing and the day the card launched.

 

[Destination]

This concept is a bloody good one.
Thanks.
Hope to avail of it soon.

 

[JamesU2005]

Got my 6700XT this morning. Great service guys.

First time I've ever received an invoice that has a discount of minus £9.5k haha.

 

[Telecaster]

We have such cards but they have had dramatic price increases but I shall be doing deals on said cards via forums in coming days/weeks. I am trying to cover all budgets with the deals I do to try and cater for all customers.

Cheers. I just fancied getting back into a few classic games I used to play and I'm only on 1080p/60fps so didn't really need an all singing and dancing bleeding edge, and used cards are daft money.

 

[SirMX5Alot]

I'm another of the 'fluke' customers. Thought I'd finally landed a 3070. In my case I do have an alert set up, which I assume just checks for page changes, but I still have to be online in order to actually click the buy button and complete the purchase. No buying bot involved. I'd be amazed if a very high proportion of serious (genuine gamer) customers don't have some kind of alert running. Without being unbelievably lucky I don't see how else you would ever get a card.

So yeah, colour me disappointed!

Yeah I've been in IT for a while, I wrote a powershell script to monitor the 5900x back a few months back, just randomly checked every few mins with a random time so it wasn't every 60 seconds, but found stock informer later on.

I do wonder whether stockinformer ever actually nets a card. By the time I've clicked the alert, added to basket and attempted to pay the item has always disappeared. I get further along in the process with OC but I think that's just because the stock levels aren't updated in real time.

 

[Gibbo]

Not offence was to be given by that, apologies if it did.

It was a generalisation, as no business can servive without making money

I wouldn't mind to know if the prices hikes on the graphics cards are actually because your having to pay more per unit? I mean I can only take your word for it but meh.

Wouldn't of minded a job interview like that to be honest

All manufacturers have hiked prices on every GPU and their reasoning is they are been charged more for GPU’s, component prices have increased and shipping cost have gone up ten fold, is it true that’s an unknown but we need the stock so we take it. These are manufacturers we deal direct also so no middle men adding a cut as to speak.

Is distribution making additional margin, well we can’t prove this but my gut feeling is they have gone from making 3-7% to likely 7-15% and have resellers stopped competing, absolutely they have because stock is king. So it’s fair to say resellers have gone from making 5-10% and more towards 15-25% but you can’t blame resellers because if they are sat on back orders they will be shipping those at a loss.

It’s a sorry situation but that is what happens every time there is a shortage. I get some distributors royally taking the mick though like trying to sell me cards hundreds pounds above where I am selling and I’ve seen some competitors charging £1200 for in stock 3070’s.

So yes their has been dramatic real price increases.

 

[danlightbulb]

Therefore we've been working with a number of development teams in the background, working on completely new systems based on off the shelf packages. Heavily modified but still more future 'resistant', but because we can't just use a vanilla off the shelf solution, this process takes years rather than months.

Out of interest how do your newly procured systems handle bot protection? I mean, even the likes of the rainforest, and the high street purple retailer, and even the site selling the FE cards, well they are all still (it seems) heavily infected by bots and seemingly can do nothing about it. Do new systems deal with this issue, is it even possible? The bots seem to get past the captcha's, they insta-buy products with saved card details in fractions of a second, they pull data from API's direct from the back end etc. All these tricks, are they solvable?

 

[ScottiB]

Out of interest how do your newly procured systems handle bot protection? I mean, even the likes of the rainforest, and the high street purple retailer, and even the site selling the FE cards, well they are all still (it seems) heavily infected by bots and seemingly can do nothing about it. Do new systems deal with this issue, is it even possible?

I dunno, I guarantee that it'll be discussed but the whole way that these bot groups work causes major issues. They have hundreds of "stooges" to get paid to allow them to use their name & address details, so on the surface we receive hundreds of orders with unique customer details. The bots act like a real human as much as possible, just faster. I'm not sure what can be done to be honest...but I'm not a developer.

 

[Jay85]

Loving all the newbies that are randomly appearing

Ocuk will do what they can and thats it. You can’t ask for more when its physically impossible. Don’t be greedy beggars

 

[GabenPlis]

Hello all, I think I was caught up in this, Gibbo can you confirm if 6700 xt were involved also? I've truly been sat on my pc for a week watching some sites waiting for stock to be avaliable because I downright refuse to pay £900 for one haha. I was so excited to see some stock go live, I was confused by some listings being £10,000 but I just assumed it was a placeholder. Anyway, when found the sapphire rx 6700 xt in stock I added it to basket and sprinted to checkout like a fat kid running after the icecream man. The site appeared to load a bit odd, so I see what you mean about potentially being an error but I did not suspect foulplay, just heavy traffic killing the site. My order went through, finally paid, got various confirmation emails, now to my great dismay my order was cancelled at 12.30am ish. Gutted to say the least!

P.s. I wont lie I was sort of looking forward to the mini haribo bag if covid hasn't finished that off also

 

[five8five]

It literally says in the OP they will look to open this up outside of the MM to all members.

I'm unsure what about that statement is confusing all these low post count users

Exactly, I'm surprised why so many people are ignoring that information.