As you may have noticed, the mobile alerts for the Wii are a Beta test at this time. As I state on the Mobile Alerts sign up page, this means that alerts are limited to only a few stores. The only stores that get distributed over the mobile alerts airwaves are Amazon, Best Buy, and Circuit City. I removed Sears from this list when they had their stock issues. If they behave tomorrow, I may add them back.

Since I put the mobile alerts option live, I have accrued about 400+ people following the alerts. I like this and want it to continue. But, what I really want is one of the above stores to release some stock for one last test run. In the initial tests there were some people, including myself, that were not receiving every alert. This is not good, but something we may just have to deal with going forward. I tried to diagnos the problem, but there is no clear answer as to what is causing the issue. All I know is that it is not on my end as every alert is sent to my Twitter account just fine. I have opened a bug report with Twitter in hopes of getting some indication as to why this happens, but response has been lackluster at best.

Once the next alert goes out via mobile, I should get enough feedback from users to understand just how bad the situation is and will decide how to proceed accordingly. So all users that are subscribing to mobile alerts, on the next alert, please come back to the News section here to look for a poll or something so I can better understand how broad the problem really is.

As I am sure a lot of you have noticed, Walmart has been suffering from history anxiety and want their name to dominate my Recent History for the Wii tracker. No, seriously though, this is what I call Walmart Flux. They have the stock, but it just disappears for some unknown reason only to come back and show as in stock a minute or ten later. This happened last year as well, hence why I have already given it a name.

So what should you do? Hang out on the Walmart site and just continue to hit refresh every minute or so. If you do this for 20 minutes and still see no stock, look back at my Wii tracker to see if I saw any during that time. If not, you might want to give it a rest. If I did see stock while you were refreshing there, then you might want to go back and try again for a little while. This is the best I can do for you. I am sure Walmart Flux will continue throughout the holiday season and probably longer. Just another web site glitch we have to deal with just like Sears and their inventory issues.

Just letting all of you know that, yes, Sam’s Club did have Wii’s in stock. I am doing this so that all of you will trust the tracker. There has been some dissent sent my way from people saying that my tracker is crap. Trust me, if there is an error with one of my scripts, I will surely admit it and post the error here.

Screen shot from Sam’s Club showing stock was available:

And once more, hang in there! I know the frustration can be great.

From now on, I will try to post as often as I can to show all you the tracker does work, and you do not get too discouraged. CompUSA did have Wii’s this morning as the tracker showed. In fact, here is a screen shot of what my spiders picked up:

See where it says “Usually Ships In: 1 – 2 Business Days“. While it appears they did have a limited quantity as can be expected from CompUSA, at least they had some.

Hang in there, we will get you a Wii!

All, I just want to let you know that starting later today as soon as Sears fixes their site once again, I will be reactivating Sears once again. However, this time around I am going to cut back on the alert times for just Sears. I typically send out alerts every 4 hours until stock is diminished. Given that it usually takes Sears longer than that to fix their site, I am going to push their specific alerts back to approximately 12 hours. Hopefully they will be able to fix their site within this larger time frame. If it so happens that Sears can’t deal with that time frame, I may push it even further. Time will tell.

Also, it appears that stock is being shown as available every morning. As I stated in my comments on an earlier post, I feel this is related to canceled orders being reintroduced back into the system. I can not control this. It does appear that there are units available in the morning, just a VERY, VERY limited number. I am talking in the single digits. As result of this occurrence, expect that you will receive alerts every day for Sears. And, unless you are up ultra early EST or late PST and act Flash Gordon quick, you will more than likely not be able to get a Wii before the site starts displaying incorrect inventory information.

I am tired of dealing with Sears and do not want to remove it completely from the tracker. I think this new system will work out in the end.

Also, I have removed Sears from the Twitter Beta test as a result. We do not need mobile alerts early in the morning for this limited number of units. I will turn them back on if I feel Sears has corrected the situation to a certain degree.

I just released the latest tracker to the mix. This is the Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Party Bundle for the Wii. Since there will be a lot of you getting Wii’s this holiday season and as a suggestion from a user, I have gone forth with adding this tracker. Stock has been very limited and I hope we can get a few of you some of them. I am only tracking the Bundle. Visit the DDR Hottest Party Tracker to sign up for email alerts.

Since this game is not in as much demand as the others, tracking will be run at a slower level to ensure more power to the more important products such as the Wii, GH3, Rock Band and Zune. If demand for DDR-HP picks up, I will adjust run times accordingly.

As I woke up this morning to the check out NowInStock.net’s status, I noticed at 2:58 A.M. this morning Wii alerts were shot off to everyone that Amazon had the Wii in stock. A little surprised and thinking that this might have been an error, I verified my cached snapshot (I store a snapshot every time I see stock available), and sure enough they had stock available!

The really odd thing about this was the fact it was 3:00 AM when stock was available. Amazon never releases Wii’s at this time of day. Their typical release time is around 12:00 PM or 1:00 PM. I assume this is to give the west coast equal opportunity at acquiring one. But 3:00 AM!

So I beg to question, why this was done? Was this left over stock from the day before?

Yesterday, on Thanksgiving, they began their 6 Days – Amazon Customer Vote deals. Were these the leftovers? It happened at 3:00 AM EST, which is 12:00 AM PST and when the Customer Vote deals would have expired. So all the unclaimed $79 Wii’s from Thanksgiving, might have been thrown back into the pot and released at standard cost.

The other option is that Amazon wanted to beat the majority of other stores that opened up early for Black Friday. JCPenny opened up at 4:00 AM! As a result, those early risers getting ready to crash the doors on Black Friday got a really early Black Friday surprise of Wii’s In Stock! (Thank you Amazon, now I can go back to bed.)

I like to think of it as a little of both. Some may think it was coincidence that Amazon ran their $79 Wii, $319 PS3, or $219 Xbox 360 Customer Vote deal on Thanksgiving, but I feel it was strategic and a good strategy at that. You knew the Wii would win, which it did. You also know that not all of those randomly selected to receive a Wii would claim it. It was Thanksgiving! All unclaimed Wii’s get released as soon as the deal expires which happens to be 3:00 AM EST or 12:00 AM PST on Black Friday.

I maybe stepping out on the limb on this one, as it does sound to be a little too good to be true, but it happened just like that. I guess the real question is how many Wii’s were available this morning and how many went unclaimed yesterday? Something we will never know.

Yes, Sears did have Wii’s in stock online. I have subscribers who thanked me already for providing them with the opportunity to purchase them. Remember, there are thousands of people just like you looking for the Wii; you have to be quick.

Here is a little more detail on the situation, and I hope everyone reads the following so they understand exactly what happens with Sears and NowInStock.net.

What you have just been subjected to, as well as NowInStock.net, is the infamous workings of the Sears’ website. Their inventory system is not directly tied to their web site. So, what happens is the site says they are in stock, when in reality they are not. I have dealt with this over the past year now. I can only read and alert people on what my spiders see, and that is exactly what my site did.

Currently, the only solution for NowInStock.net is to manually pull down Sears ASAP after stock has been sold out. The issue with this process is that I have to manually check the link frequently (add a Wii to my cart and try to check out) until I see it is sold out, at which time, I go into my system and deactivate the Sears tracking. So, if this occurs when I not at my computer, then indications continue to show stock as available until I get the opportunity to flip the switch.

Please note: I do work a day job and when at work that job takes precedence over this site.

Again, sorry for your inconvenience with Sears errors. If you feel cheated, depressed or just downright mad at NowInStock.net or Sears; please unsubscribe from the Sears alerts. By doing so, you will not have to deal with this in the future. I say this because it will happen again. Seriously, there is no need to get stressed out about these errors.

Remember, there will be plenty of alerts before Christmas. If you can hang in there and be quick with alerts, you WILL get a Wii!
Justin

Yesterday evening, I released a new tracker on the site. It is for the game from MTV Games and EA – Rock Band. While preorders have been hard to find, I can only think that the game itself will become even more hard to find. A report from a friend that works at the local Best Buy states that every day kids are coming in to play.

Just as the third edition of Guitar Hero remains one of the hottest items on the market for this year, I feel that the social/team aspect of Rock Band really takes simulation/music games to the next level. Reviews across the web appear to be above average for this game, and what is better than referrals for units from those very individuals that visited Best Buy everyday to wait in line to play the in store demo.

So, if stock sells out today, which I feel is going to be the case; make sure to sign up for the email alerts over at the Rock Band Tracker. And, as always, if there are errors PLEASE let me know. I now have more products being tracked than ever and ensuring that all the links work and alerts are accurate is becoming more of a challenge.

What do you guys think of the new design? I uploaded it last night, made some tweaks to get it running properly, and here we have it. Granted the blog/news area is not coded over to the new design, nor is the UK tracker, but they will come in due time. Let me know what you think of the design by using the contact form.

And, if you notice any errors, please do use the contact form to alert me.

UPDATE: Blog area is now complete. UK Tracker, I haven’t forgot about you, but time is limited and new products are releasing like mad!