Facebook!

Twitter

Tumblr


20071017

SAQ.com online vendor knows I'm making a wine mistake before I can even buy that bottle

en panne saq.com saq vin site de web ne functionne pas down

Does someone know something I don't?

Ever since the SAQ launched its crisp newly redesigned site that now permits user accounts, I seem to be persona non grata. I am always making invalid requests. Bad, bad requests. Like beyond Baby Duck, like the other side of YellowTail.

Is this profiling? Can't be. I don't even have an account on their site.

Still I make error after error, though I'm told and I should try again. Hmmm... It started when I was querying white wine in a cute travel-sized minibottle from Celliers des Dauphins. Blank stares. Did the SAQ dump that wine out so the dépanneurs could carry it? How about another Rhône that I know they sell. Perrin Réserve. Still nothing.

OK. Michel Juillot Mercurey... Nope. Allegrini Valpolicella? No. A Château Meunier St-Louis? Not that either. How about the Torus Madiran from Alain Brumont... I just bought it from the SAQ last week so it must be there... please? Denied.

OFFING A FAUX-PAS WINE BEFORE A WINE FAUX-PAS IS IN THE OFFING

This is particularly unfortunate for me because every wine I've reviewed on this site is currently linking to a bad request -- even the great value wines and wines of the year, not just prickly young Portuguese reds that I'd advise are wines to avoid until the next vintages appear.

Furthermore, I've recently redoubled my efforts to link to products from the SAQ online catalogue since the redesign by recoding all my URLs. They previously pointed to bottle listings within the SAQ.com database but when SAQ.com 2.0 was laucnched none of the old links continued to navigate to the right place. I'd like my readers to get to right place, and the new SAQ.com database listing, when you can actually get there is quite a swell place to peruse wine.

But for the third time in the last week, it seems the entire SAQ.com catalogue brings errors, making me think that I may have made more than a few of my own.

If someone knows something about this, let me know now before I finish recoding all my clickable bottle images that are featured in each Weingolb review.

5 comments:

Marcus said...

Update:

Well, for the time being at least, the site is a go.

SAQ Customer Support claimed to me that since their office opened at 8.30 am there have been no errors at all to report. None at all. Which is weird because that wasn't the case for me since late last evening. Finally, after 11 am this morning, I finally got through to uncover a new top-feature item on SAQ.com. It's a somewhat head-scratching promotion:

Exclusive Online Offer
October 17 and 18 only, save 15% on purchases of $300 or more.


Half of October 17 is already over, so this must be the first 2-day sale that is only online for a day and a half. Maybe I can make a case for only spending $225 to get the discount?

RougeAndBlanc said...

Marcus,
There could be these explanation:
1) SAQ uses MySQL as database caching and use Oracle to perform data warehouse tasks. Transferring data between these 2 DB software is a constant struggle. Sometimes race condition may occur whereby users are 'stuck'

2) You have a bad brower session cookies and cache. How often do you clear you browser's cookie and cache?

Just my 2 pennies

Marcus said...

RandB:

You are right on the money with your #2)

The site started working for me when I switched computers. The browser in question was retaining cookies "until they expire" which I'm assuming became a problem because I was repeatedly force quitting it and then restoring the previous session upon restart (at least I think that is the reason). In any case, as soon as I removed the saq.com cookie things worked again. Btw, cache is set to up to 50MB and I left as is.

Thanks for writing -- handy to have somebody who knows as much about networks as they do about wine!

Joe said...

Hmm, good thing we have Andrew around - I was going to suggest you stop linking to a commercial site that is not paying you! (Yes, I am guilty...)

RougeAndBlanc said...

Marcus - I am glad your problem is now solved. From my own experience working with web app. Bad cookies stale cache and spyware are usually the 3 major culprits causing connectivity issues from the user's end.
Joe - Thanks for the kind words. Much appreciated.