Monday, December 01, 2014
FedEx Crashes Under Cyber Monday Load
FedEx Webservices API has been crashing under heavy Cyber Monday traffic - knocking out many ecommerce web sites on the busiest online sales day of the year. 3Gstore noticed customers complaints around 1pm CST and we confirmed the issue. FedEx normally takes 5 seconds or so to return the shipping rates to display to the online shopper while they are checking out. Those times jumped to 8 minutes or more - causing many shoppers to abort. Luckily at 3Gstore, we use both FedEx and UPS. UPS didn't have the problem - so instead of displaying both rates, we are now only displaying UPS rates - so we don't disappoint our customers (and lose sales).