The US Mint on Friday "sincerely apologized" to customers who experienced difficultly and frustrating moments Thursday when attempting to order the newly issued Lincoln Coin and Chronicles Set.
As we relayed on CoinNews yesterday, the US Mint Web site was either down or sporadic in behavior for several hours following the launch of the new Lincoln set.
The collectors here at CoinNews experienced the same frustrations in ordering — and excitement in the hunt. But we can offer no grounds to blame the Mint considering our own CoinNews.net site went down for a time as collectors used our ordering links as gateways to the Mint’s Lincoln Chronicles page. And we had just over 9,000 visits in the afternoon while the Mint likely had that during the first minutes of issue.
The Mint should be commended for its apology and recognition of the problems. Here is the Mint message in its entirety:
To Our Valued Customers:
Unfortunately, the United States Mint Web site did not perform as expected when the popular 2009 Lincoln Coin and Chronicles Set went on sale at noon Eastern Time on October 15. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and frustration many of you may have experienced while attempting to purchase this and other products using our online catalog.
We did not meet the standards of excellence we have set for serving our customers. You deserve a better online shopping experience, and we are committed to resolving these issues quickly and permanently.
Thank you for your patience and continued support.
For reference, an image of the apology follows:
I don’t think the U.S. mint has to worry about the unprecedented traffic at their website they had from the Lincoln chronicles set. I see this as a one time event.
What do they have in the near future to match this?
this has been going on since 2006 when a popular product goes on sale the phone center seizes up and the usmint website too from the shop at home channel employees ordering so they can sell it on their own website and double the price
I expected the problems taking in the fact of 50,000 mintage and millions of collectors. Have never experienced phone calls not taken or website “service unavailable”. I went online Thursday 10/15/09 at 11:45: “serv unavail”… tried to call: eventually got “call can not be taken”, to that effect. Had other things to do that afternoon. At 3:00 PM Thursday, got immediately on the website, placed order for the Lincoln Coin and Chronicles Set and other items. Order Number 33191xxx. No problems at all.
This problem was very similar to the problems encountered with the launch of the UHR Double Eagle in January. In January it took nearly an hour to order and on Thursday last it took me twenty minutes to complete my order and this was AFTER I had logged onto the site. But hey, the products are superb and I can put up with a bit of hastle. Mike (In London, UK.)
The Mint website and there staff is a complete joke. The Mint Director should be fired as well as his supporting staff. Over the last 3 years there have been many incidents of the web site failing and phone lines clogged. They have also been many many errors on the web site that have errors. And how could they not have 2009 Silver Proof Eagles? Their apology is like Janet Reno taking full responsibility for Waco, means nothing.
Nice kiss-up job on Coin News’ part. You obviously have to because they are your main source of informaton.
Sounds to me like they need to upgrade their servers/network hardware to handle the volume.
with several thousand calls/online hits to order the lincoln chronicle set within the first hours was exciting i have to admit. The “chase of the hunt” was worth it. The US Mint does ok despite all the flak it gets.
carry on!