Sorry, but Mondo still blows....

[holiday]

The Olly Moss posters for Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle are nice and actually prompted me to watch the drop.  I have an auto-refresh on my browser so I knew the moment they were posted.  I have a 50 Mbps connection.  Still, Mondo's site remains so ridiculously bad that all I could accomplish was put something in the cart that was 5 minutes later removed when I could proceed no further to checkout.

This just reaffirms what I have said all along.  Mondo is rinky-dink operation and will remain so until they do something to upgrade their hardware and ability to deliver proper online service. 

Now, let's see how many were handed over to the flippers.

What a joke.

[eatbrie]

It is getting harder for sure, but at the end of the day, I'm not sure they can do anything to solve the problem.  I don't know how many people try to get their gear on a given drop, Mitch can probably answer that, but it has got to be at least 2,000.  Probably more.  Most people do it from work.  I do it from home, and even though I have the fastest residential cable connection available, it is still much slower than a hardline internet connection.  

I now own 317 prints, including 26 that were bought from flippers.  So I guess I'm not doing too bad.  Still, Mondo is advertizing like crazy, it is getting harder and I understand the frustration, the same frustration that has led me to buy less in recent months.  Which is somewhat good, because I sometimes get carried away by hype, only to end up with a print I couldn't care less about.  If I buy from a flipper, I will obviously think twice about it.  So there is good in bad.

T

PS: In the case of those Moss prints, forget this morning drop, you should buy the variants.  The Japanese lettering makes them so much better, imo.

[holiday]

I'm so out of touch with Mondo these days I did not know until I saw a post about the regular.  I'll look for the variants.

I think my point with Mondo is that they are advertising like crazy, getting their name out there and making good money in the process.  They should reinvest part of that into building the infrastructure necessary to serve the larger audience they are advertising to.  The fact that they don't is simply callous indifference in the face of a desire to simply grab as much money as they can.

And for fuck's sake, Mitch, don't defend this by calling me disgruntled.  I could give a shit about the prints in the end.  But, a lot of our members do care, and it grates against the bone to see this crap go on for years now.

[eatbrie]

Do you suggest that they increase the print run?  Because it is one of the main appeals.  The more they print, the more ends up in the hands of flippers and the less people care.  I know I wouldn't.  Each time the print run goes over 500, I look away.  Owning something that other people want because it is so limited is attractive to their core audience.  This is why Phantom sells for so much.  There are only 100 of them out there (and I own 2... hahahahahahahaha... sorry, got a little carried away )

T

[kovacs01]

It is getting harder for sure, but at the end of the day, I'm not sure they can do anything to solve the problem.  I don't know how many people try to get their gear on a given drop, Mitch can probably answer that, but it has got to be at least 2,000.  Probably more.  Most people do it from work.  I do it from home, and even though I have the fastest residential cable connection available, it is still much slower than a hardline internet connection.  

I now own 317 prints, including 26 that were bought from flippers.  So I guess I'm not doing too bad.  Still, Mondo is advertizing like crazy, it is getting harder and I understand the frustration, the same frustration that has led me to buy less in recent months.  Which is somewhat good, because I sometimes get carried away by hype, only to end up with a print I couldn't care less about.  If I buy from a flipper, I will obviously think twice about it.  So there is good in bad.

T

PS: In the case of those Moss prints, forget this morning drop, you should buy the variants.  The Japanese lettering makes them so much better, imo.

Many of them use scripts that do everything automatically when the buy button pops up.  Its not something that the manual buyer is going to beat.

[eatbrie]

See, I didn't even know that was possible.  I guess it will eventually put an end to my collecting.

[wormie]

Actually I did attempt to write some code to achieve this, although I was totally an amateur. However, the code only works for certain types of pages and yet never worked for Mondo. That's where and when I gave up.

So I personally don't think script will work smoothly, unless the script is really smart. Three main functions are needed for the script:

• Change detection (which is relatively easy to implement, and many existing script/add-in/extensions exist for different browsers). There is one challenge here is that Mondo usually apply some random change to its page that might trigger false alarm.
• Automatic form filling (which is also relatively easy to implement, especially the form format doesn't change a lot).
• Exception handling. This is where the problems happen. You have to consider: 1) timeout (if too many visitors to response in time); 2) zero-inventory (if sold out after your form submission, especially for the stagger drop that Mondo is currently using); 3) random page/step (if there are some intermediate step added by the website, e.g. the shipping calculation "curtain" on Mondo; and many many more exceptions that I could not even think of. I pretty much got stuck in the first exception, and I believe this is the most difficult one to deal with.

Again, these are just my experience, and I was totally an amateur. Maybe someone got it right and used their smart script for Mondo drop all the time. But I really hope such script never exists, so we don't have to put this hobby to an end.

Having said of all the above, Holiday, I completely understand your frustration. I got completely shut out this morning as well for the Spirited Away.

Chengbo

Many of them use scripts that do everything automatically when the buy button pops up.  Its not something that the manual buyer is going to beat.

[holiday]

Dude, I'm just bitching.  I don't have a solution for them.  I think it should be a matter of pride of ownership for them.  They're systems have been outmoded for years now.  Their business is growing.  That's great!  But as it grows, they need to keep up their infrastructure.  But I get their point, too.  People keep buying it.  They keep selling out for the most part.  Why should they fix anything when everyone keeps coming back time and again and throwing money at them.

Oh well.  I've had enough of Mondo for anther two years.  Let's talk in 2015.

Do you suggest that they increase the print run?  Because it is one of the main appeals.  The more they print, the more ends up in the hands of flippers and the less people care.  I know I wouldn't.  Each time the print run goes over 500, I look away.  Owning something that other people want because it is so limited is attractive to their core audience.  This is why Phantom sells for so much.  There are only 100 of them out there (and I own 2... hahahahahahahaha... sorry, got a little carried away )

T

[CSM]

No need to apologize

[holiday]

No need to apologize

Oh, I'm not apologizing, I'm just me acting nice!

As far as I'm concerned, may Mondo's servers catch on fire from the overload and burn the fucking building to the ground.

Long live vitriol!

[Ari]

Maybe Loce should learn how to do screens?

[eatbrie]

Who stole Holiday's pills?

[Ari]

Who stole Holiday's pills?

You mean he is pregnant?

[CSM]

You mean he is pregnant?

Congratulations!

[wonka]

The Olly Moss posters for Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle are nice and actually prompted me to watch the drop.  I have an auto-refresh on my browser so I knew the moment they were posted.  I have a 50 Mbps connection.  Still, Mondo's site remains so ridiculously bad that all I could accomplish was put something in the cart that was 5 minutes later removed when I could proceed no further to checkout.

This just reaffirms what I have said all along.  Mondo is rinky-dink operation and will remain so until they do something to upgrade their hardware and ability to deliver proper online service. 

Now, let's see how many were handed over to the flippers.

What a joke.

You're doing it wrong.

And in terms of rinky-dink, their online store/cart system is anything but. Try ordering from huge companies like Nike when there is a surge of traffic. Cause it's much worse.

[50s]

Yeahr ya bunch of luddites. You'll need to sub contract out quick button presses to teams on standby to assist in third world for low monies

[CSM]

Yeahr ya bunch of luddites. You'll need to sub contract out quick button presses to teams on standby to assist in third world for low monies

 

[wonka]

Yeahr ya bunch of luddites. You'll need to sub contract out quick button presses to teams on standby to assist in third world for low monies

lol wut?

[erik1925]

Yeahr ya bunch of luddites. You'll need to sub contract out quick button presses to teams on standby to assist in third world for low monies

Hey Steve... can ya translate this??   

[50s]

Hey Steve... can ya translate this??  

Yeahr, theres peoples in 3rd world to press your buttons quick, quicker than 1st world luddites, lines of button pressors its simple just do it, they will do for low monies,just do it,.... $ savings, geddit ?