Marketplace
For anyone who attempted to make a purchase in the catchoftheday flash sales make sure you check your credit card statements. I was incorrectly charged for two purchases which never went through. Each time these charges occured when I put in my credit card details however before the sale was confirmed the item sold out.
Catchoftheday did not pick up on this and only offered a refund when I found the error and brought it to their intention. When I asked how they were going to notify other customers I received a 'generic' sounding response saying that they are constantly upgrading systems and blamed it on the fact that they are growing on a daily basis.
With the thousands of customers attempting purchases that day I can only imagine how many other customers have been incorrectly charged some of who may never check their statements properly resulting in extra $ for catchoftheday.
It would be interesting to have a background of their ecommerce system. Most ecommerce sites charge immediately and then send out the item.
E.G. If quantity is greater than 0, then enable the buy button. Then you have a few minutes to complete the transaction. While this works for many sites, COTD sells a lot of the same item in a short period, thus I would guess causing people to be charged when the item is not there. What they should do is the Amazon model, where they don't charge your card until the item is shipped. This would solve any of the above charges and also not have people out of pocket while they are waiting for their items to ship.