Founders KBS Sale Crashes Brown Paper Tickets Site

This from Founders:

We are aware of the issue that many of you are having/had with the KBS release tickets this morning. We have used Brown Paper Tickets for ticketing service in the past and were assured multiple times that their servers could handle whatever traffic we might bring their way. We are actively looking into this issue. Please accept our apologies while we investigate further. Stay tuned…

Here’s a message from Brown Paper Tickets about their servers this morning. We plan to discuss a future course of action for KBS releases as a team and will post an update, and respond to all of your emails and messages, next week. We appreciate your patience and understanding.

Yikes! We messed up. Our servers went into maintenance as higher than normal ticket sales spiked on our site this morning. As a result, our support center is also backed up with calls to help customers through the problem. Our dev team is working feverishly to get things up and running. We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused you and thank you for your patience.

UPDATE 17 Feb 2013 from Brown Paper Tickets:

Brown Paper Tickets would like to apologize to Founders Brewing Company, and its customers, for a 25 minute delay in our ability to sell tickets to the event. We experienced a rare set of circumstances this morning that caused the delay, and we are taking protective measures now to ensure that our customers are not inconvenienced in the future. However, we realize that this isolated incident has caused many ticket buyers disappointment and that is not acceptable to Brown Paper Tickets. We are working with Founders Brewing now to try to find a way to make fans of the KBS Imperial Stout release satisfied customers. If you experienced a problem in purchasing your tickets this morning, please call Brown Paper Tickets at our 24/7 customer service hotline at 1-800-838-3006 and we will ask for your contact information and keep you informed on our progress with finding a way to help. Again, our most heartfelt apology for this isolated incident, and as always, we welcome your personal call.
(end of FB post)

As background, a database maintenance was scheduled to take place on Saturday morning during what is typically a period of low traffic, and we were caught  by surprise when sales began for this high-demand event at the same time.  With 12 years of experience, (the most of any free online event registration and ticketing site in the world), in selling tickets to events of every size, including many with dramatically higher numbers of ticket sales happening at the same time on our site, we can assure Founders Brewing and all of its customers that this is truly an isolated incident. We are currently taking steps to better predict high-demand events scheduled for off-peak times and to re-schedule our site maintenance when necessary to avoid any future recurrence.

However, as you can see from our Facebook post yesterday afternoon, we do realize that this incident has caused disappointment for many Founders ticket buyers, and that is not acceptable to Brown Paper Tickets.  We are working with Founders Brewing now to try to find a way to make fans of the KBS Imperial Stout release satisfied customers. 

If any of your readers experienced a problem in purchasing their tickets Saturday morning, please ask them to call Brown Paper Tickets at our 24/7 customer service hotline at 1-800-838-3006, and we will ask for their contact information and keep them informed on our progress with finding a way to help.  Our most heartfelt apologies, and as always, we welcome the personal call 24/7 from any and all ticket buyers or those who desired to buy a ticket and missed the window due to the incident.
Thanks for helping to spread the word,
Sincerely,
Barb Morgen
Chief Storyteller
Brown Paper Tickets
The Fair-Trade Ticketing Company