Marshall Brain's Blog

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Today was not the very best day to use the Web for eCommerce. Around 6:50AM this morning I was trying to look up a price on the Best Buy Web site and got this message:



I'm not a coffee drinker and I had other things to do, so I did not hang around and wait for the "aisles" to clear.

Around 9:40AM I was trying to reserve a rental car at Triangle Rent a Car and got this message:



I tried a couple different times, and could not find a telephone number on their web site to make a reservation by phone so I decided to go elsewhere.

I next tried to reserve a rental car at Budget. I went through the 3-step process, selected the type of car, selected my pickup and drop off dates and times, entered my name and credit card number and got this:




I called the 800 number for Budget and had to make my reservation by phone.

The fact that a normal person can hit three roadblocks like this with three separate companies in one morning is probably telling us something. According to this article, Orbitz was also down most of the day.