{"id":3537,"date":"2014-04-02T11:22:15","date_gmt":"2014-04-02T15:22:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zombiegift.com\/zombie-blog\/?p=3537"},"modified":"2014-04-02T11:22:15","modified_gmt":"2014-04-02T15:22:15","slug":"open-letter-to-spacelab9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zombiegift.com\/zombie-blog\/open-letter-to-spacelab9\/","title":{"rendered":"How SPACELAB9 Nearly Made Me Cry: An Open Letter Revealing One Walking Dead Collector\u2019s Story of Tenacity, Determination and Epic Failure"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Open<\/a>
Come with me on a journey. A quest to obtain Walking Dead collectible rarity, and an odyssey of human emotion.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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 <\/p>\n

Dear SpaceLab9,<\/p>\n

I hate you. I hate your limited edition, vinyl pressing guts. Now before you go and sic your lawyers on me: relax. Have a seat. I\u2019m only partially serious. Tell your attorney this isn’t \u201cslander\u201d, \u201clibel\u201d, \u201cdefamation\u201d or any of those other legal terms I can never keep straight. I\u2019m getting off track. I should probably start from the beginning.<\/p>\n

It all started when I heard SpaceLab9 was bringing The Walking Dead Original Soundtrack: Volume 1<\/span> to vinyl. How cool! As a single parent on a budget I\u2019m trying to be responsible though. \u201cYou don\u2019t need it\u201d, I told myself. \u00a0I was prepared to let things go and carry on with life. Then it happened. I discovered there was a super rare limited edition \u201cZombie Flesh Green\u201d colored version. Oh Sh*t. I could feel my palms sweat and my eye twitch. No problem. I can control myself. \u00a0I got this.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t any ordinary \u201climited edition\u201d that consists of a few thousand pieces though. No sir, this special variant is limited to just 200 copies<\/i>. To make matters worse it is, or better stated, was<\/i> available only via spacelab9.com. The OCD Walking Dead<\/i> collector in me went ballistic. Two hundred copies? Green? Limited Edition? Although I knew this could only end badly, I decided I had to own at least one copy.<\/p>\n

So I did my research. I discovered I had no idea how much a super ultra-rare pressing of The Walking Dead on vinyl limited to only a couple hundred copies would cost. I also discovered I have no idea what \u201cZombie Flesh Green\u201d or the final product even looks like. None of it mattered by this point. By now the collector in me was rabidly foaming at the mouth. I knew well ahead of time the Spacelab9.com website opened for pre-orders at 1:00 pm EST on April 1st. Target acquired.<\/p>\n

Fast forward to April 1st<\/sup> at approximately 11:00 am. \u00a0I know what you\u2019re thinking. I\u2019m fully aware when the pre-order starts. I know they said 1:00 pm EST but . . . \u00a0better safe than sorry. I checked the Spacelab9 website just to be sure. Of course there was absolutely no early start on the pre-order sale. I wasn\u2019t expecting one, but you know. . . better safe than sorry. I checked back more times than I care to admit after that. Clear through the noon hour the Spacelab9 website worked like a charm.<\/p>\n

Shortly after noon things started to go downhill. All the other collectible hungry fans bombarded the site. Right around 12:45 pm or so the floodgates opened. \u00a0Or at least that\u2019s when I first noticed it. I could see your website servers taking the blow and buckling at the knees from the start, Spacelab9. What started out as \u201cthis page sure is loading slowly\u201d got worse in a hurry.<\/p>\n

Let me point out this isn\u2019t a criticism of you or your site. I run websites. I get it. Your server was taking a beating from a horde of vinyl hungry freaks. \u00a0Believe me the server where this humble little site limps along probably couldn\u2019t handle a fraction of the traffic you saw that day. You seriously underestimated the power of thousands of crazed Walking Dead<\/i> fans tearing at one another in a frantic and desperate effort to actually pay a fair retail price for a rare Walking Dead<\/i> collectible. We\u2019re Walking Dead <\/i>collectors. You have NO idea to what lengths we will go. Your little website didn’t stand a chance.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m pretty sure we brought your server (and at least one IT guy) to tears. I\u2019m convinced he simply unplugged and huddled in a shaking, weeping mess in the corner. \u00a0I’ve never seen such a brutal assault on one unsuspecting domain. We frantically clicked refresh and mashed our F5 keys. We opened multiple tabs on multiple devices. We. Just. Wanted. Our. Damn. Zombie. Flesh. Green. Vinyl.<\/p>\n

I will say your little slice of real estate on the World Wide Web put up quite a fight.\u00a0 Your site and server chugged, churned, huffed and puffed. I think I can. I think I can. There were brief spurts of functionality. I held out hope. After all, I did everything<\/i> right. There was no possible way for me to miss out on this.<\/p>\n

I was there the very instant the site went live and started accepting pre-orders.\u00a0 There was no way I was going to let some newbie show up late to the party and get the girl. I just knew I could mash in my order between timeouts and crashes.<\/p>\n

There it is! Like the hunter I am, I found my opening and took it. I clicked \u201cAdd to Cart\u201d and then it started: the endless spinning of loading icons and the infinite, \u201cwaiting for spacelab9.com\u201d messages. Then came the 503 error messages, the timeouts, and even a couple weird messages I’ve never encountered before. At one point I even saw a message that I was logged in as username I’ve never even seen before. I could almost smell the server sizzle.<\/p>\n

After about 45 minutes of retrying, refreshing and waiting I managed to get the site to cooperate enough to get all the items added to my cart successfully. Yes! Still in the game.<\/p>\n

I fought tooth and nail and managed to get everything in my cart before things sold out. Now it\u2019s time to check out. Or so I thought. I gleefully clicked the checkout button only to encounter more waiting and more watching of endless load icon animations. My new miniature enemies would mock me for what seemed like an eternity. They would spin, whirl and tumble enticingly. All the while showing just enough action to keep me believing.\u00a0 Ultimately they would just load to a blank white page or the dreaded 503 server timeout message. \u00a0Eventually (well after 2:45pm EST by this point) I managed to get through the first checkout pages.<\/p>\n

I was finally<\/i> on to the next checkout step and I quickly added my shipping information. I have never seen my fingers type so fast. They flew across the keys like blurred Vienna sausages hungry for limited edition goodness. The site was starting to respond quickly again and I was excited at the prospect of making it through this traumatic experience with my zombie flesh green trophy.\u00a0 Now it was just time to finalize things by simply clicking \u201cContinue to PayPal.\u201d<\/p>\n

At this point I\u2019m sure I have it locked down. I’ve ordered hundreds of items online. I know this is the last step.\u00a0 I know what happens next. All I need to do is click through and my order and I will be whisked away to the safety and security of Paypal\u2019s beefy servers. That\u2019s what was supposed to happen anyway. Instead what happened was. . . nothing. It was Spacelab9 limbo.<\/p>\n

I ran this marathon all the way to the end only to sputter out and collapse two steps from the finish line. So *bleeping* close. By now I knew it what was over, but the Rick Grimes in me refused to give up. I refreshed and reloaded. I went back to my saved cart and re-tried. The items were still there so game on. \u00a0Nobody puts baby in a corner.\u00a0 I will not take NO for an answer!<\/p>\n

Then I saw it: the dreaded message that confirmed there weren’t enough copies of The Walking Dead Flesh Green Vinyl to fill my order. I won’t repeat the profanities I spewed at this moment. My mother would be so ashamed. \u00a0Over three hours after it began, the fiasco was over and I had nothing to show for it. The mighty zombie collector had struck out.<\/p>\n

Although I\u2019m not much of an optimist, I decided we could all learn some valuable lessons from this. Here are some bullet points to take away from this experience:<\/p>\n