SparkFun Free Day is this morning

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This morning is SparkFun Free Day, make sure you claim your swag! I love the idea, SparkFun is obviously expecting a ton of traffic since they beefed up their servers for this special occasion but I wonder how well they will cope? If you get some stuff leave us a comment and let us know how it went.

Here are the details.

“For those of you unfamiliar with SparkFun’s Free Day (see the original post here), here it is in a nutshell. Starting at 9AM MST (that’s 11 AM EST) on Thursday, January 7th, 2010, each customer will receive $100 towards their order until we reach a limit of $100,000. You’ll have to take care of shipping.

There really are no catches, but there are a few rules for fairness’ and logistic’s sake:

  • $100 max per person (cheating kills kittens)
  • You pay shipping
  • Limit of $100,000 in giveaways for the day
  • Starts 9AM MST January 7th, 2010
  • Ends 11PM MST January 7th, 2010 (or when we hit $100k, whichever comes first)
  • Rainchecks for popular items will be allowed
  • There is no special code to type in. But you get only one order on Free Day, so spend it well!
  • Only one $100 credit per household. We ask that you respect this limit and don’t try to abuse this gift.
  • There is no minimum or maximum order. You can spend more than $100, the balance of which will be charged to your method of payment.
  • Only Credit Card and Paypal orders will be eligible for the $100 credit. We don’t want to have people tying up inventory with POs, wire transfers, checks in the mail, or lost faxes.
  • You will see whether or not your order qualifies for a credit in the checkout process.
  • Free Day does not apply to our distributors. Sorry!
  • Gift Cards cannot be bought on Free Day.
  • Any returns from Free Day will be exchanged for the same item.
  • Every order isn’t going to ship on Free Day, or for a few days after. We’ve got extra tape guns on hand, but please be patient and give us some time to catch up!
  • We are ratcheting up inventory for Free Day, but backorders (a.k.a. rainchecks) are allowed on most items (some items we simply can’t get anymore). We’ll get you your goodies just as soon as we can get them back in stock.”

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103 Comments


  1. Argh! That’s 3am Melbourne time 🙁 I’m going to be asleep by then! Hope you get yourself something cool 🙂


  2. damn, only time i wish i didnt live in australia, were in the same boat krusty.


  3. Got my cart all loaded up!


  4. I’ve had my cart loaded since 9am GMT, but its currently taking about 3 mins to refresh the page. I think the 1000 orders may take less 1000ms 😉


  5. Lol and down it went.

    Hopefully up in the next hour


  6. less than an hour till free day and sparkfun is b0rked as fizzuck.


  7. Ahhh! The server is inching at the speed of snail atm!


  8. It’s only 8:30 MST and their webpage is taking a “few” minutes to load the home page!


  9. i’m sure i already missed it 🙁 i over slept


  10. Looks like their servers are down. Sigh. I guess I won’t be getting anything… (this is at 10:38EST)


  11. I don’t think you will miss much. The site started crashing two hours before the start of “Free day”. Web servers are overloaded and I have not gotten a page returned in over 30 min. (14 min until start of free day).

    I think they underestimated the volume that this would drive to their e-commerce site.


  12. Spark Fun’s site is at a halt. 13 mins to sale.


  13. Well thanks for telling everyone…it’s 10 minutes until it starts and now the webpage is being slammed. Can’t order anything, can’t even browse 🙁


  14. Already looks like the site is having problems, and it hasn’t even started yet!


  15. Idiot, it didn’t even start yet. Starts in 5 minutes, but the site hasn’t loaded for me for the past hour.


  16. Ha, it’s 9 am and the server is down. This is what the SparkFun IT team gets for calling its server “indestructible.”


  17. Yeah. I can get a page to load (slowly) after about 10 refreshes. Cart’s not happening though, nor search…they are completely hammered.

    Maybe next year!


  18. I’ve been trying for the last 1/2 an hour. The site is *down*.


  19. LOL, so much for my plan of submitting my cart full of goodies… They are down hard. 🙁
    I guess a checkout system like Amazon doesn’t get built overnight!


  20. It’s funny that 11 minutes in and their live bar still says $0.00 given away. Think it means that no one has gotten through yet?


  21. Poor guys, they some new servers only to have them melt. I really love Sparkfun though and I wish them the best in this turdstorm!


  22. wow my cart just managed to load once and it showed $707.29 has been given away already… that’s only 7-8 people.. unable to go to checkout though


  23. Was on the site when things started. As soon as I added something to my cart, got “connection reset by server”. No soup for me! 🙁


  24. Hey SeBsZ ,

    I wonder how you got yours to load, must have been lucky. I have been refreshing my page every 15 seconds with no luck…

    I have a feeling that at the end of their giveaway time there may be money still available.

    The contents of your cart persisted okay?


  25. Just got the banner with $2800+ now given away…


  26. I know i was surprised too when suddenly I saw the page load… ive been refreshing for the past hour. Yes I saw the contents of my cart, but can not get to the next step. I am located on a small island in Europe…


  27. Almost there… but it seems to have ground to a halt


  28. Whoa, I just got a page load! ~$3.7k at 11:30 AM EST


  29. its now at $3,547.19 can not see the page though…


  30. Got to my cart…now waiting to get to the first step of checkout (shipping)…this is agonizing…


  31. To answer your question on how the upgrades will cope…. Fail


  32. i got to the choose shipping step, but can not get any further (this is before paying with credit card etc.). Problem is now that each time it fails to load, I have to go back to the start… (because POST data does not like being refreshed) arghh


  33. I think that the whole thing is a hoax. If only someone will post here that he/she actually placed a free order…


  34. I had the page load, everything was still in my cart, clicked checkout and there was no love. 🙁


  35. It’s like a self invoked DOS


  36. I should have registered before this. I’ve been waiting for the last month. Site says about $6k given away.


  37. What a joke.

    I could get some product pages to load. But that’s it.

    I’m a regular customer, maybe I should say WAS a customer. I don’t like being the butt end of a HOAX!


  38. HOAX HOAX HOAX


  39. I have put in my shipping and credit card info and then gotten to the page that says, “congrats, this order qualifies for $100 off for free day. do you want to continue to try to place the order with the discount?” Upon clicking that button, I get a timeout and have to go back a step, taking about 10 minutes for each failed cycle. Giveaway total listed at ~$6200 ATM.


  40. $8,367.52 so far


  41. Up to $11,300 so far. My best friend confirmed he did make it through the whole checkout process, though I am still stuck in a loop trying to get there.


  42. continuing to time out. got as far as shopping cart – no images getting through their server.
    over $12,000 gone at 1 hour into “free day”


  43. $14.224.23 now… made to the next step


  44. I just saw 12000 something, im at the point where im refreshing my credit card information each time… hopefully they wont charge my card each time i hit refresh


  45. So whats that about $10/hr. Not sure I have the patience. Good to hear that someone’s getting the deal!


  46. Good to know some people are making it through! I am just sad that it isn’t me…

    Looking at the stats and the time there are less than 2 people checking out per minute. That sounds very low to me. I guess it is all the other people clogging the series of tubes that is causing the havoc.


  47. $15700… had to type my credit card again :S


  48. 16k so far… the e-com app for the site is poor. with the hardware they say they have and the connection….it should be accepting more traffic.


  49. I got to the end where I click on the button for the free day discount and I eventually got it to load the checkout_process.php page but there is nothing on it, just a blank white page. I’ll keep trying though.


  50. For those of you that are complaining: Are you saying that you weren’t expecting this this happen? Of course it will! Thousands of people are going to try to connect. They won’t buy a whole server farm just for that. It’s all part of the game.

    ohh… this just in: I GOT IT!!!!



  53. What happened at the final page after clicking on the discount button?


  54. They had to expect this situation. Perhaps they have some kind of throttle in place to stretch the deal out as long as possible!


  55. After the final page, I had a blank page. Then i refreshed. It got me back to where I had to click the green button again. It did this about 3 times (45min) then finaly it got me directly to a page saying that the order is confirmed (after clicking the green button and waiting a bit)


  56. Thanks SparkfreeStuff. Hopefully it will eventually work for me.


  57. Been trying to just load the main page since 10:04 CST, but keep getting the “connection timed out”. It’s not fair, I say! Can’t even get to the main page.


  58. I have my entire order filled out..had it that way since yesterday..but i cannot get the page to load at all now, and at this rate, there will be no items nor cash left within another 2 hours or so..


  59. My cycle time has diminished down to < 5 per try, but I have hit the green “try for discount” button ~25 times and have not yet successfully made it to the confirmation page.


  60. Finally got to the shipping page after a solid hour of trying. a little over $25K at this point.


  61. My order went through, however there’s no discount in the order on the email I received. Is this normal? Thanks!


  62. Patience my friends. Patience.
    Run Wireshark and look at the status. It eases to waiting process (or makes it worst).


  64. $40144.71 so far, trying to checkout o_0


  65. I was able to load the order page. The email I received doesn’t include the deduction. It’s at 44k btw. Keep trying I went at it straight since it started!!!


  66. It finally worked. I got to the page and it confirmed my order but in the e-mail that they sent there was no mention of the $100 discount. Did anyone else see this?

    BTW it’s up to $33k


  67. W00tage! After 90 solid minutes of refreshing, I finally got a URL called “checkout_success_freeday.php” with an order number attached. The page timed out while loading (which is understandable), but after checking my email, I see they’ve sent me an order confirmation! The receipt does not show any indication of the $100 free day credit, but I think that is probably to be expected. After all, it also doesn’t show my credit card payment info either, so I presume it just shows the total value of the order. Now that I got my order, I can stop refreshing the page, which should free up a few hits for the rest of you.


  68. >50k$ now, one step from placing the order


  69. @Dustin they don’t include the deduction in the email, open the View Oder page.


  70. Just got through…$53,821.92 and counting…


  71. Good to know that I am not alone. While trying to check my order I noticed that it is now up to 58k. Good luck to the rest of you.


  72. $57K, tryin to checkout

    i don’t think i’ll make it



  74. advice: disable downloading of images


  75. 64k. My order detail shows the discount so no need to worry.


  77. This is bull, after wasting hours of my time I am not getting in. I wont be ordering through sparkfun again.


  78. its over, 100k given away in 1:44:50


  79. It’s not fair to complain about sparkfun. They just gave away 100,000.00. If you didn’t get in, it’s mostly luck. I’m happy for the people who got their order through. I’ll probably still order my ethernet shield.


  81. And it’s over. 3 solid hours of refresh for nothing. They definitely need to hire a network admin. I am not a happy camper at this point.


  82. I wish they would’ve devised a random method whereby I don’t have to waste hours of my life for nothing.


  83. Don’t hate on SparkFun.. hate on the script kiddies that eat up all the connections… SF has been very generous and i hope they do it again.. even though i spent 1.5 hours attempting to get an order in with no luck.. it happens


  84. I realize they were doing something nice, but failing so miserably at setting up their webserver really was annoying. What a waste of time.


  85. So anybody know of any other companies offering GPS modules and shields? It’s obvious I’ll never be able to place an order through sparkfun.


  86. Darn, I got close a few times… Even got to enter in my credit card info but just couldn’t make it to the end.

    Congrats to all who got some free stuff, and even though everyone didn’t get what they wanted this was a real cool gesture on the part of Sparkfun. I am just imagining all the new projects that will be built from these free parts.


  87. A big fat thanks to all the tech blogs like this one who thought it’d be a great idea to announce this right before the event took place. It was supposed to be a thank you for past customers, not for a bunch of new people to go poking around just to see what they could get for free from a place they’ve probably never even heard of.

    But hey, what’s that matter when you can put up a story that’s likely to attract a few more hits to your blog that day?

    At least I know what news feeds I’m dropping.


  88. I do not believe it was a configuration issue here… merely capacity. A server can have the best config on the multiverse.. but if you slam it with 100k contiguous connections… something has to give.


  90. Damn, i feel so butthurt…
    Stayed for one hour on the site, got to the last checkout screen in time at 86k and then?

    “Sorry, the 100k limit has been reached”

    Where i live i starve for electronic equipment and the best site here doesn’t even sell 1/20th of what SF has to offer.
    Better luck next time 🙁 .


  91. @WaitingToReload – The fact that you didn’t get in during free day doesn’t mean you can’t still place an order. Now that it’s over, their site is up and running just fine with no timeouts or problems that I can detect.

    @WaitingToReload and NoMoreSparkFun – I’ve been a SparkFun customer for many years and I know several of their employees rather well. Please believe me when I say that I KNOW they tried very hard to tune their servers and networks to handle the traffic. I think the fact that they sold out in under two hours is a testament to just how well the system did work, even if it wasn’t seamless or easy. Please don’t let the fact that you didn’t win the lottery (as it was essentially random) turn you off of the company. After all, they did just give away $100k of free stuff with no strings attached to those who got through. How many other companies have ever done something like that?

    @George – Thanks for keeping a positive attitude about it.


  92. sucked when I did make it to the checkout it timed out every time while processing the card….


  93. What a waste of my time. How many manhours were wasted trying to get in on this scam? Just order somewhere else.


  94. “@WaitingToReload – The fact that you didn’t get in during free day doesn’t mean you can’t still place an order. Now that it’s over, their site is up and running just fine with no timeouts or problems that I can detect.”
    What a joke, that’s the whole point, so you end up just impulse buying something, and so their advertisers get enough hits for them to get a bonus. What a ploy, I wasted hours today.


  95. I wasted 3 hours of my precious time reloading screens. Spent a couple hours familiarizing myself with the site last night, and getting my cart ready. Am new to the hobby, but getting in deep. Would have become a very loyal customer. I disagree with Sore Loser, this wasn’t about rewarding loyal customers, it was about generating publicity. If the gave away $100K, their cost was $50-$75K (there is some margin, after all, in their pricing). They absolutely wanted to attract all of the press they could get. So, for less than $75K, they got an ad campaign and increased site awareness hugely. However, and here’s the part they failed to consider, I will never, ever, visit their site again. It’s like a neighbor offering to pick up your kids – nice gesture, but you better make damn sure you are there on time.


  96. Uh, I spent 2 hours refreshing like crazy. Managed to get to the page just before the CC page. Am I mad at SFE, no. But I’m not sure I’m going to be buying from them anytime soon. That was 2 hours of fool time I’ll never get back. They spent a lot of time crowing about how they had really upgraded their capacity but in the end is was clearly still IT amateur hour. Learning pains? sure. 500 transactions per hour – that really doesn’t sound very impressive.

    I suspect the 1000 or so people that got though the process are way happy but how many like me got left at the altar with a foul taste in their mouths? I’m pretty sure that this has more bad than good will.


  97. Wow! It sounds like it was a bit of fun for everyone! I’m glad I didn’t set my alarm clock 🙂

    I can understand the frustrations with the site being slow and people missing out, but 70,000 bargain-crazed geeks pounding the site is always going to make things run slow.

    I think it’s very cool of SparkFun to do this – $100,000 is a lot of money (and especially in the current financial climate) for any company to simply give away. They can’t please everyone – but is it worth the anger that seems to have stemmed from people not getting something for free? There are many more important things in life to get upset about, this isn’t one of them.


  98. I started trying to log-in at 08:40 Mountain Time, I never even got the Log-in page to load until about 10:50; by then it was over. Why did some people get better connectivity than others?


  99. I can’t believe the people that are mad at SparkFun; they did it with good intent, and they certainly didn’t owe you anything.


  100. some people are such ingrates…

    accept that sparkfun (a business) has tried to give away $100k of gear, if you didnt get anything then stop your bitching. i was up at 4am (in aust here) and got nothing. its not the end of the world, it doesnt mean you dont ever have to buy from sparkfun again becuase your angry you didnt get anything for free!

    if this day never happened then you still wouldnt have got anything for free, and you would still be a customer…

    how many business’s these days give away $100k of bits for free to its customers? i think that its pretty rare and sparkfun are unbelievably generous!!

    thanks sparkfun!


  101. Krusty, Almost_There, oddz, and everyone else who think that this was an altruistic gesture by Sparkfun – businesses that wish to stay in business aren’t altruistic. They are in business to benefit their stakeholders, especially their owners. They could have spent the same money (something less than the $100K in retail value that they gave away), but they would have driven much less traffic had they done it in a more conventional way. In that sense, it was a brilliant PR concept. And, the customers who get the free merchandise truly benefit from it. But that’s not why Sparkfun did this – it was only to drive traffic. My bone is that their commerce engine should have been sufficiently ramped up such that those of us who clicked on checkout at the very moment the countdown clock reached zero should have been able to process and get out of the system reasonabley quickly and without having to reload and repeat the process endlessly. As it happened, someone who clicked in an hour into the giveaway had just as good a chance of getting their stuff as I did after an hour of constantly refreshing, reentering, and refreshing again.

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