

Got an I/O ticket...only to have payment gateway fail? - fallingmeat


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jechen
Can't say I didn't see this coming. It's been the same absurd registration
experience for several years now. What Google really needs to do is stop
throwing all this free swag around so the conference can really find its
intended purpose and audience again: developers. I've to most I/Os since its
inception, and damn has the quality of the actual conference gone down since
the first.

~~~
objclxt
Although I don't think the free stuff helps matters, WWDC tends to be a very
similar free for all - slightly less hectic, but that's only because Apple
don't give notice of when the tickets are going on sale, so it's more of a mad
scramble than a pre-planned thing.

Which is to say, in terms of registration issues I'm not sure making it more
technical and getting rid of the free swag would alleviate matters, if you
just go by what happens with WWDC.

~~~
jechen
Interesting. I've never gone to a WWDC, but I've been to the first three I/Os,
and while it could be the fact that the conference has become better known
since then (and increasingly at larger scales), you can definitely see the
effects that the free swag have on registration demand (and the effect on the
quality of the people going to the conference) over the years. It's been
really disappointing to witness the change, as personally I/O was my favorite
tech event back when it was true to its original purpose: a conference for
developers.

~~~
bkbonner
Agreed. Google Ticket Plinko, followed by Google Wallet Plinko.

Google can serve mail and handle search, but online registration and payment
gateways don't seem to be its strong suit.

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rplnt
Oh, it's I/O time again.. HN for the next few days will be nothing else than
blogs crying about not getting in (and various reasons for why it is not
fair). Oh well..

~~~
rjzzleep
and about students wanting free stuff leaving the good longtime cutomers in
the dust... or something like that

~~~
mrinterweb
I would wager that a fair chunk of the demand for Google IO is people wanting
to be showered in gadgets and then there are people who legitimately want to
learn stuff. Maybe I'm just being cynical. I have never been to Google IO so I
don't really know. Any previous attendees have impressions about this?

~~~
rjzzleep
yeah well, my response was a little tongue in cheek. i tend to watch the
videos online. people don't go there just to watch stuff. they go there to
network, and get free stuff.

contrary to what the current conference/technology trend may dictate,
technology is not a rockband where the live show is better than the studio
recording.

~~~
bkbonner
Yes, I've been to several prior events and the number of folks that used to be
Devs has certainly migrated to folks that are in for the free goodies.

I have to believe eliminating the "free goodies" will definitely return it to
a dev conference vs. an Oprah event. Maybe this will be the year. This year
the system said they found a ticket (actually several times), but apparently
they were just dangling it in front of my nose, because I couldn't get through
payment gateway, Google Wallet.

Each year registration is like a game of Google Plinko.

I'd be curious to know the # of user requests that brought the Wallet to its
knees.

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fallingmeat
I now think there are actually only five tickets available, being distributed
in chocolate bars around the world...

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robflynn
Same here. Got a "ticket" 6 different times and had wallet failures til
timeout. A friend of mine got his, though. I am no longer speaking to him. :)

~~~
robflynn
Looks like the final attempt ended up going through just as registration
closed. Confirmation e-mail received.

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mfkp
What a frustrating experience. Waited in line for an hour only to have a
broken checkout screen. You think they would have their shit together by now.

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lnanek2
Searches never got anything for me. Girlfriend got to buy button which never
returned from graying out after pressed. Wish I'd tried the dismiss popup and
retry or check wallet in another tab tricks people mentioned working here. As
it is, lost the ticket due to the 5 minute finish count. Oh, well, always next
year. :)

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nchlswu
Everytime it comes up, I'm always fascinated that online checkout under demand
is still unsolved, even by a giant like Google.

Obviously it's a small chunk of all online sales, but it always seems like the
process fails _somewhere_

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thomaslangston
This brings up a common problem I have with high demand ticket sales. Why not,
for at least the first portion of tickets, us a scaling price? When sales
open, the price is $10,000. Drop the cost by 1% of the starting price per
minute for the first 90 minutes. Recalculate the starting price at the current
price and begin again until we reach a floor.

    
    
      So if sales start at 9:00 am we have the following schedule:
      09:00 am  : $10,000
      09:01 am  : $9,990
      10:30 am  : $1,000
      12:00 noon: $100

~~~
Jabbles
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_auction>

Google doesn't necessarily want the richest companies/developers to attend.
Nor are they interested in extracting the maximum amount of money (though of
course they could do a few charity auctions). A good mix of small companies,
freelancers, corporations is probably what they're aiming for.

~~~
thomaslangston
If the goal is to spread tickets evenly over all potential attendees, then
lottery style ticket sales make more sense.

Although if they want to control the composition of their audience even more,
they can sell some tickets via Dutch auction and use the profit to pay for the
costs for attendees are specifically invited.

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CCs
Got ticket and now counting down on the Wallet page.

Console says "Failed to load resource: the server responded wit status 401 on
checkout.google.com/inapp/api/v1/purchase_options"

~~~
CCs
Timer ran out. I saw several 500 (Internal Server Error) messages in the
console.

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jstreebin
You made it further down the line than me. Clicked the signup within a second
of going live and still loading...

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tjs-mn
How irritating. I got as far as getting a ticket for Google I/O three times.
Google Wallet failed to complete the transaction all three times, although
once it got as far as creating a "pending" transaction. After the third Google
Wallet failure, Google I/O was sold out.

Geez....

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frankchn
I've got 2x $900 pending charges shown on Google wallet after attempting to
purchase the ticket.

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DrewRWx
Kind of happened to me. The first time, the modal didn't complete, but I
received an email that the charge updated. For kicks, I jumped into the queue
again and that time the page completed all the way to the reg form. I now have
two pending $300 charges.

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double051
I was able to get the Google Wallet options to appear and hit 'purchase', but
the the 'purchase' POST request timed out.

Trying again, but now I'm seeing this: "Try again. We couldn't find you a
ticket, but there still might be tickets left!"

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bkbonner
Another view of the ticketing process:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=4T2GmGSNvaM#t=39s)

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keithvan
I think this is definitely not a good first impression of Google Wallet. It
was my first time using Google Wallet and I think it was for many others as
well.

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fallingmeat
GOT ONE! Try opening a new tab an logging into Google Wallet after a ticket is
reserved...That might have been a coincidence, but it worked

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georgelawrence
Same here :(

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fallingmeat
<http://imgur.com/B7xRaPZ> sold out :(

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metajack
Ugh.

<http://imgur.com/opR63hx>

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saddino
Same here. Have a pending payment in my Google Wallet account. Ah well.

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kordless
The site says sold out. I just got up.

I hate to be obvious, but putting registration up in the morning for a bunch
of developers (most of whom are on the West Coast) isn't the best idea in the
entire world. Especially when it sells out in 15 minutes.

~~~
objclxt
I mentioned this in another thread: lots of engineers do live outside of
California. The majority of engineers in the world are not based on Pacific
Time.

Last year Apple put WWDC tickets on sale at 5:30AM PDT without notice...the
rumour mill suggested this was deliberately done by Apple to ensure more
attendees from outside the west coast. I heard something similar from someone
at Apple as well.

Whatever time you put tickets on sale, somebody is going to complain. There
are certainly two sides to the coin here...I'm not pretending to have a
solution, but merely pointing out a time that's convenient to you may well not
be convenient to, say, developers in Asia.

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cdjk
Happened to me twice. Trying for a third ticket now...

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Shenglong
All sold out.

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lagrz
exactly what happened to me got ticket payment processing..... timer runs
out.. WTF

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lugia
so I wasn't the only one...

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astrojams
Same error. Now sold out.

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banterability
Same thing happened to me.

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pshken
same here and Google Wallet still show it is processing... :/

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BHSPitMonkey
Better than I managed.

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BillySquid
got the ticket but my wallet throw an NoFundsFound

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sunils34
Same thing for me.

