For the second time in as many weeks, Google has failed miserably while trying to sell their latest smartphone, the Nexus 4.
Early this morning, I received an email from Google letting me know that the Nexus 4 would be back in stock beginning at 3PM eastern time.
Having lost out on the phone the first time around as Google's servers crashed and burned, I figured they must have prepared better for the second round. I was wrong.
At 3PM on the dot, I headed to the Google Play Store and attempted to purchase an 8GB Nexus 4. First, I received a "sold out" notice. After refreshing, I was able to add the device to the cart. Hitting "Proceed" gave me a new error, "Due to high demand, your order could not be processed. Please try again later." On a third attempt, I was met with a generic error.
Now, the Store offers this warning: "Google Play is currently experiencing very high traffic. Nexus 4 is not sold out and will still be available for purchase. Please try again shortly. Thank you for your patience"
This has been going on for 3 hours now, and I can't imagine Google has actually sold one device yet. All this, and the company still expects the phones to ship in 5 weeks. Yes, 5 weeks. I have been an Android user since 1.1 on the T-Mobile G1, and this experience is no way to treat loyal fans of the OS.
Having lost out on the phone the first time around as Google's servers crashed and burned, I figured they must have prepared better for the second round. I was wrong.
At 3PM on the dot, I headed to the Google Play Store and attempted to purchase an 8GB Nexus 4. First, I received a "sold out" notice. After refreshing, I was able to add the device to the cart. Hitting "Proceed" gave me a new error, "Due to high demand, your order could not be processed. Please try again later." On a third attempt, I was met with a generic error.
Now, the Store offers this warning: "Google Play is currently experiencing very high traffic. Nexus 4 is not sold out and will still be available for purchase. Please try again shortly. Thank you for your patience"
This has been going on for 3 hours now, and I can't imagine Google has actually sold one device yet. All this, and the company still expects the phones to ship in 5 weeks. Yes, 5 weeks. I have been an Android user since 1.1 on the T-Mobile G1, and this experience is no way to treat loyal fans of the OS.
