Am I the only one who is disapointed?
When my clock reached 1AM and my wife was sleeping by my side I started to think about the auction and I felt so idiot.
Everyday I wake up at 6:50amt o work and get at home at 9pm. Yesterday I saw everyrhing form the beginning, servers going down and units sold for 4k.. took an hour so it get restarted and really “begins”... I saw everything while I was working, going back home, at the shower, while cooking the dinner, putting my baby doughter to sleep.... sitting, waiting and wishing some opportunity to have a good deal but nah... at the end I realised every unit will be sold at 961 and at 1 am the most people was buying at 971.. that means after 6 hrs waiting I was fighting for a 3% discount and than I gave up...
probably they (fanatec) knew that this was going to happen and this makes me feel even more disapointed.
My last hope was the BF deals.. but no.. at least for me.
It's not just you. I accidently 'won' an auction at €991 because they suddenly started randomly closing auctions. It was the first one that closed below €1000. That's less than 1% discount. And the worst part is that they are blaming us(!) for this fiasco.
This was the fourth public auction. Discounts in AUS anderen US were a bit higher but not much. We were always transparent.
Demand was higher then expected. If we knew that we would have put more units on auction.
And for all people who complain that they won an auction with a price too high I have a question. Why do you place a pointless bid if the counter is above 30 seconds? Did you not read my instructions?
Those bidders who did not follow the rules spoiled the fun for the rest but perhaps it was not their intention so please explain.
Seems to me this auction system is getting a lot of bad feedback on here, facebook, reddit, twitter etc. In two minds whether i want to part with any cash at all.
Really hope the units don't get delayed for anyone and they they don't make a hash out of Black Friday
This was the fourth public auction. Discounts in AUS anderen US were a bit higher but not much. We were always transparent.
Demand was higher then expected. If we knew that we would have put more units on auction.
And for all people who complain that they won an auction with a price too high I have a question. Why do you place a pointless bid if the counter is above 30 seconds? Did you not read my instructions?
Those bidders who did not follow the rules spoiled the fun for the rest but perhaps it was not their intention so please explain.
Lets be clear. I´ve been naging a lot about the auctions but.. things clear, if users are "crazy" and want to pay no matter what to get their DD1.. Its not fanatec fault. People was bidding like there was no tomorrow. I was the first interested in a big discount (150€ or 200€) but... if people want to pay 961€ on a bid... they just can!!! Its their money. If you´re not agree just wait, buy some othe wheel, go to a church and pray, etc. But it´s not Fanatec fault. And the people complaining to pay 961€ ... why in the earth did you even bid?? :-/
^^^ I agree with the above statement and would like to add for those looking for a Black Friday discount on DD1/DD2 wheels don’t complain when that does Not happen....If Fanatec would give Black Friday Deals on DD1/DD2 wheels every 1 who pre ordered would Complain and Cancel their orders to get a discount!!! I know I certainly would... It is what it is... Every 1 wants or Looks to get a discount but some time that’s just Not possible... if Fanatec gave every one a discount they would go out of business and there would be No more Fanatec products to complain about.
Bottom Line is if you feel Fanatec Products are worth it then No reason to complain accept the fact that Huge discounts are Not possible at product launch because Fanatec Needs to recoup research and development cost... If you feel the products are Not worth it then why are you here???
A Discount is a discount!!! Where is it a Rule that discounts Have to be 10, 20, or 50%??? Any discount savings is still a savings No matter how you look at it.
This was the fourth public auction. Discounts in AUS anderen US were a bit higher but not much. We were always transparent.
Demand was higher then expected. If we knew that we would have put more units on auction.
And for all people who complain that they won an auction with a price too high I have a question. Why do you place a pointless bid if the counter is above 30 seconds? Did you not read my instructions?
Those bidders who did not follow the rules spoiled the fun for the rest but perhaps it was not their intention so please explain.
Hello Thomas,
I'm one of the winners @961 and believe me it took me a battle plan to manage winning a bid at the highest discount.
I began with inspecting the AUS auction results.
Then I have spent half a night without sleeping to observe the US auction very closely, I have recorded it, I was inspecting the bid history while the auction was going on, and then I have made a spreadsheet to fill in all the US results to further examine it and optimize my chances for the EU session.
Battle plan prepared for the EU session:
- a spreadsheet to fill in the result in real time and have an automatic counter for units sold bellow 970 (this info should have been displayed on the auction page) - a paper spreadsheet to have a hand written backup of the remaining units - a 2nd PC monitor (to display the spreadsheet and auction page on dedicated monitors) - video recording of the auction page - closing all unecessary windows apps to get the system as reactive as possible - a tablet to be able to browse this blog without affecting the auction running on the PC - clean desk with drink (I knew this was going to last for long^^)
Auction began and I was of course not surprised at all after I had closely followed the US session. I have just let the time pass, meticulously writing down the results in my spreadsheet to keep track of the remaining unit to be sold under 970.
I think I began bidding somewhere between 15-20 units sold below 970, as I knew those first ones wouldn't be the best deals (and they were far more risky because with the high number of remaining bidders the auctions were not slowing down enough when getting close to 970 to not risk placing an accidental bid way over 970 due to the latency).
When I began to bid it was not with the intention to win, it was just to train. That was needed to learn what happens when the bid button is clicked and to estimate the latency of the system.
So I began by placing some bids at the low prices (200, 300) because I had just read here about that guy who placed a bid at 400 that was registered above 900. I was placing fews bids then inspecting the history to check the registered bids VS my input and writting down the results of those tests to try to calibrate myself with the system latency.
There was indeed a high latency, my bids were registered higher than what I clicked. But that was not the only issue, the bid button was also bugged as hell. Many times it was not registering the bid when clicked, and it seems I then got better results by first clicking outside of the button before clicking the button to bid (and yes my browser window had the focus, this wasn't the cause of the not working bid button). I also noticed my bids could be regitered multiple times despite taking great care to only click once (doing the click as proper as possible, using a quality mouse). Sometimes the bid button was displaying "lost bid", sometimes "please place a higher bid", sometimes displaying nothing, and when there was a message like "lost bid" it was staying there, so you couldn't be sure if next click was registered or not.
As the remaining units to be sold under 970 was starting to reach the 30-35 mark and the difficulty to bid the desired amount was not improving despite the auction had been slowing down a bit, and because I still was having this bid button missing plenty of clicks, I decided to switch to another browser (was initially using firefox). I have first tried with microsoft edge and then quickly installed chrome and I have continued placing my bids with that one (chrome). But I still had plenty of clicks not registered by the bid button, and still had to click outside the button before to improve the bid registration chance.
I finally managed to win a bid at 961 but that wasn't easy. It seems I have been several times the 961 bidder despite my bid button was saying I lost the bid. And that was by bidding below the 951 mark, I was bidding at like 851 to get this 961 bid registration (unless that was another user with the same first/end bidder numbers than mine, but looking at the bid history each time I'm not sure this was the explanation). Those several times I was the 961 bidder I ended being out-bidded while the timer had already significantly decreased below 60s.
In the end, would I say I'm happy with the rebate I managed to obtain ?
Well, let me make a concrete comparison: when I was young I bought a pair of loudspeakers at a physical store. Those were not super expensive, it was less than the price of this DD1. I asked the reseller if he would offer me some rebate and after he went discussing with his boss he came back offering me a similar rebate (in percentage) than the one I managed to obtain through this DD auction.
So compare the hassle in both cases to obtain a similar rebate. This auction really stressed me. In the end it is not the rebate itslef that made me the most happy, it's the fact the efforts I have put into my battle plan seem to have paid, it's the fact I seem to have managed to take control over this very uncertain (risky) auction system and managed to obtain the best possible rebate by using a strategy rather than by pure luck.
The more I was inspecting the auctions as it was going on, the more I was wondering about the reason for deciding to stick with this system. I'm not accusing of anything in the following suppositions, this is just what came to my mind as I was trying my best to place bids of the amounts I decided and as I was reading other comments here in the meantime. Take it as a simple transparent feedback about how I felt due to the pressure induced by this somewhat scary auction system:
- less devil supposition: those guys have difficulty to aknowledge when they are wrong. There is no doubt about their honnesty concerning their will to offer a nice opportunity to get some rebates on DD1 units but they won't admit the auction system is not the right one to achieve that goal without unecessary frustration for the participants.
- super devil supposition: this system has been chosen on purpose. The goal is not to offer nice rebate opportunities that would solely depend on bidders behaviour but to generate sales by promoting an opportunity to make nice deals while still keeping the rebate under control, as this system would allow to place artificial bids to ensure the auction will never end below a given amount the seller decided (any neutral reliable authority to control that ?)
Again, I'm making no accusation here, I'm just sharing with you what kind of bad ideas such auction system could have generated in some people minds.
Conclusion:
Of course you can still argue that with a much higher demand than the 45 units limit it was granted the rebate could NOT get higher than what we have seen in those auctions (and that suffice to counter-argue there would have even been a need to make artificial bids to prevent auctions from ending too low).
But here is my answer to that:
Building the system in order to make it create greater rebates DESPITE the high demand was precisely the MAIN issue to solve. That is if your goal was really to make some of your customers happy to get some nice rebates and not just generate sales and make some buzz.
You have been focussing on solving (improving) other issues (initial rush for example) but you have missed the main issue. I'm not claiming I have a solution about how this could have been achieved but there is certainly one.
A last suggestion could be to decide to offer something like 50€/$ additionnal rebate on top for all the winning bids. For EU auction that would make all current 1-4% rebates become 5-10% rebates. That could be a not so expensive solution to make those auctions perceived better by those who participated, or at least by those who were able to win. And given such an artificial rebate bump may increase the ratio of winning bids that will transform into real sales, you may not even be losing anything (am I negociating something here ?^^). But for future auction I still think the system should be rebuilt differently (unless you think big hassle for small rebates is ok, but reading the forum feedback it doesn't look that positive for your image).
Frédéric, what a perseverance! Impressive and congrats with obtaining the desired result. I've also monitored the whole happening from 7 to 2am, hoping that an opportunity would present itself.
Your experience shows that the system of bidding, registering valid bids and providing insights into current bids wasn't functioning as it should. How any blame can be put on the bidders is beyond me. Bidders must have been pretty confused.
Why did people bid like crazy? My theory is that the system breakdown in the very first auction that led to a few auctions going for crazy low prices played a role in that. I can image people were secretly hoping for something similar to happen again. When there's a possibility to f*ck the system, people will try to. IMO this could have been anticipated as it is typical human behaviour. There is no fair play when people feel there's a bargain to be had. Look at the yearly Black Friday crazes..
Imagine though that people would have waited 30 seconds every time before bidding - the auction wouldn't have ended even by now (which could be a good thing though?).
Imagine though that people would have waited 30 seconds every time before bidding - the auction wouldn't have ended even by now (which could be a good thing though?).
Exactly, you need a flurry of bidding to get to the pointer where there is a potential of closing the auction. Given that any discount is better than no discount, this means the final price was always going to be 961 as long as there were people that would still pre-order in the absence of the auction.
Now when you have 200 or 300 people, if they all hit bid with in a few miliseconds, while some got the bid denied error if even 50 bid count that jumps the price $500.
If anything the auctions were too popular to function. Add in that the demand for the product even at MSRP was far more than the number of auctions being held, there was no incentive for a customer not to try and get at least some discount which set the price at the minimum discount number.
Quote "If anything the auctions were too popular to function. Add in that the demand for the product even at MSRP was far more than the number of auctions being held, there was no incentive for a customer not to try and get at least some discount which set the price at the minimum discount number" End Quote..........
Exactly this... this is why I just pre ordered the DD2 on Day 1!!! Even without a discount I feel Fanatec products are just worth it...and the pre order Bonus is i get 5yr warrenty for Free =D>
It would have taken a week for the auctions to complete if everybody had waited 30 sec to place a bid. To get to 961€ from 1€ takes 96 bids, that's 48 minute, with over 200 units sold at 961€+, that would take about 1 week. So it is not reasonable to ask people to wait until the counter is under 30s to bid...
I am grateful to get these auction opportunities but there is no denying that they are not very well thought out.
Thomas, hows about programming the auction so it rejects any bids made whilst the timer is above a set time, instead of expecting people to obey guidelines that are likely impossible to adhere to. ie the auction rejects any bids made 50 seconds or over, this way the system can only accept 1 bid every 10 seconds maximum, then its down to luck of user timing and latency only to get a succesful bid.
By the way there is a bug in this blog, where do I report it to.
Quote "If anything the auctions were too popular to function. Add in that the demand for the product even at MSRP was far more than the number of auctions being held, there was no incentive for a customer not to try and get at least some discount which set the price at the minimum discount number" End Quote..........
Exactly this... this is why I just pre ordered the DD2 on Day 1!!! Even without a discount I feel Fanatec products are just worth it...and the pre order Bonus is i get 5yr warrenty for Free =D>
I had held out of the pre-orders in the hopes that these auctions would've had a meaningful discount. Especially since they were suppose to run at the end of July. The marketing of these auctions kept making the claim that there would be significant discounts. The reality is that the system as designed does not do that. The experience of being a customer waiting hours for the system settling down to where you get $40 or $50 off was not enjoyable. The logic of the auction didn't turn it into a game to be played.
Great product.
Good company.
Bad promotion idea.
Terrible execution of the event.
All that said, I did manage to get $50 off and took it. I'd much rather have had Fanatec not had the autction and I would've plopped my money down in July. The whole thing made me feel strung out and stressed out for something I wanted to buy.
thank you for this excellent writeup and congratulations for the 961 bid. It clearly showed that with some patience it was possible to get the lowest price.
Regarding the "issue" that prices were too high I can say that we live in a world where demand and supply determines the price. The only way to get down the price to a discount of 10 or 20% would have been to offer more and more units without reserve so that there are no more buyers left which are willing to pay a higher price.
But the normal pre-order price of 999,95 is already considered by many to be an absolute bargain and worth every penny. This is why we already got so many pre-orders at full price.
So how much profit should we sacrify if we can sell the units easily at full price? How many more units should we have put on sale?
I want to be honest with the following:
1. We definitely did not manipulate the auctions to our advantage. Actually we stopped them earlier to reduce the prices.
2. Fanatec is not a charity. If we are giving a huge discount on a super hot product like the DD1 none of our shareholders (including myself) would feel comfortable.
3. It was an event to bring some entertainment with the intention to give some customers at least a small discount and make them happy.
You were well prepared and you knew what discounts you could have expected. I hope you are happy that you got the biggest discount which was possible yesterday.
Is the Podium QRs the same as the one for the CSL GT3 rim? Unfortunately missed the QR weekend deal a while back due to family bereavement that weekend. Will the QR be discounted again anytime soon? As want to get one for my GT3 rim so can use on the DD base I won last night.
With regard to the auction...Didn't abide by the rules initially and had about 6 attempts through the night. When it slowed down and people stopped spamming at the 961Euro mark and the counter dropped below 30seconds I decided to try and get one at 961. Ended up paying 971 due to lag bid but its still a discount that will cover the postage. So like most who won am grateful for the opportunity to get one at a discount price albeit small.
Not a fan of the auction style but then again it hyped up sales for you so guess it was a great success. (well done).
Also is it ok to wait till the 23rd before checkout the DD1 as may add other stuff in the BF sale, or is it best to pay and then request combined shipping if do purchase other items later before shipping?
Another exploitable flaw with the auction method, you can bet your bottom dollar, or euro that many who bid but did not end up with a 961 bid again to push it over so that unit failed to count in the 45 units to go under 970, probably with fake accounts.
Thomas you did not answer where I report a bug in ths blog comments system to.
Quote "If anything the auctions were too popular to function. Add in that the demand for the product even at MSRP was far more than the number of auctions being held, there was no incentive for a customer not to try and get at least some discount which set the price at the minimum discount number" End Quote..........
Exactly this... this is why I just pre ordered the DD2 on Day 1!!! Even without a discount I feel Fanatec products are just worth it...and the pre order Bonus is i get 5yr warrenty for Free =D>
I had held out of the pre-orders in the hopes that these auctions would've had a meaningful discount. Especially since they were suppose to run at the end of July. The marketing of these auctions kept making the claim that there would be significant discounts. The reality is that the system as designed does not do that. The experience of being a customer waiting hours for the system settling down to where you get $40 or $50 off was not enjoyable. The logic of the auction didn't turn it into a game to be played.
Great product.
Good company.
Bad promotion idea.
Terrible execution of the event.
All that said, I did manage to get $50 off and took it. I'd much rather have had Fanatec not had the autction and I would've plopped my money down in July. The whole thing made me feel strung out and stressed out for something I wanted to buy.
Sorry if you took My post the wrong way... was I was 100% Agreeing with everything you said =D> ... I’m posting from My phone and it’s hard to edit the Quotes Correct.... I also watched the US auction and it was crazy!!! The Bids breached $1,000 in less than 60 seconds!!! After the 1st 5 Auctions I shut My PC down and went to sleep I-) feeling Good that even though I pre ordered and paid full price I got the 5yr warranty for free =D> ... that’s still at least 10% savings because I didn’t have to pay for it.
The pre orfers are still getting the dd2 motor or thats just for the auctions? And the podium racing wheel? Does we have a date?
DD2 motor is running indeffinately. I believe they said they'll make an announcement when they introduce the DD1 motor. When and if that happens is unkown.
Anyone having a problem checking out using a credit card? Tried 5 times today. 2 different browsers(including chrome) and 2 different pcs. Is it just Fanatic site as my credit card supplier says card is not blocked and no money requests are being shown on there system.
Paid ok on previous purchases with the same card .Last was the GT3 rim. Think it maybe the secupay AG system. As it fails the verification. Sure secupay is a new payment system.?
Have emailed support awaiting reply. Just wondered if anyone else had a problem paying for won auctions?
@Thomas when are the new Podium rims being launched?
hi i took part of the US auction and won one but since then try many time to pay unfortunatly your web site don t let me pay for i don t know Reason why ??????
Hi Thomas, I won an auction at 961 euros and I already paid it, i have one important question:
I already have a rim and a button box with usb cable, if i buy a QR, is it going to work well ? Some people tell me not !
If it doesn't work, i don't want to buy a clubsport wheel because i really wanted to buy a podium steering wheel, so please could you tell me: will the podium steering wheels go out before the DD1 or not ? and if not, when is it going to come out please ?
And if not, will the adapter be at least released before the DD1?
Comments
I'm one of the winners @961 and believe me it took me a battle plan to manage winning a bid at the highest discount.
I began with inspecting the AUS auction results.
Then I have spent half a night without sleeping to observe the US auction very closely, I have recorded it, I was inspecting the bid history while the auction was going on, and then I have made a spreadsheet to fill in all the US results to further examine it and optimize my chances for the EU session.
Battle plan prepared for the EU session:
- a spreadsheet to fill in the result in real time and have an automatic counter for units sold bellow 970 (this info should have been displayed on the auction page)
- a paper spreadsheet to have a hand written backup of the remaining units
- a 2nd PC monitor (to display the spreadsheet and auction page on dedicated monitors)
- video recording of the auction page
- closing all unecessary windows apps to get the system as reactive as possible
- a tablet to be able to browse this blog without affecting the auction running on the PC
- clean desk with drink (I knew this was going to last for long^^)
Auction began and I was of course not surprised at all after I had closely followed the US session.
I have just let the time pass, meticulously writing down the results in my spreadsheet to keep track of the remaining unit to be sold under 970.
I think I began bidding somewhere between 15-20 units sold below 970, as I knew those first ones wouldn't be the best deals (and they were far more risky because with the high number of remaining bidders the auctions were not slowing down enough when getting close to 970 to not risk placing an accidental bid way over 970 due to the latency).
When I began to bid it was not with the intention to win, it was just to train. That was needed to learn what happens when the bid button is clicked and to estimate the latency of the system.
So I began by placing some bids at the low prices (200, 300) because I had just read here about that guy who placed a bid at 400 that was registered above 900. I was placing fews bids then inspecting the history to check the registered bids VS my input and writting down the results of those tests to try to calibrate myself with the system latency.
There was indeed a high latency, my bids were registered higher than what I clicked. But that was not the only issue, the bid button was also bugged as hell. Many times it was not registering the bid when clicked, and it seems I then got better results by first clicking outside of the button before clicking the button to bid (and yes my browser window had the focus, this wasn't the cause of the not working bid button). I also noticed my bids could be regitered multiple times despite taking great care to only click once (doing the click as proper as possible, using a quality mouse). Sometimes the bid button was displaying "lost bid", sometimes "please place a higher bid", sometimes displaying nothing, and when there was a message like "lost bid" it was staying there, so you couldn't be sure if next click was registered or not.
As the remaining units to be sold under 970 was starting to reach the 30-35 mark and the difficulty to bid the desired amount was not improving despite the auction had been slowing down a bit, and because I still was having this bid button missing plenty of clicks, I decided to switch to another browser (was initially using firefox). I have first tried with microsoft edge and then quickly installed chrome and I have continued placing my bids with that one (chrome). But I still had plenty of clicks not registered by the bid button, and still had to click outside the button before to improve the bid registration chance.
I finally managed to win a bid at 961 but that wasn't easy. It seems I have been several times the 961 bidder despite my bid button was saying I lost the bid. And that was by bidding below the 951 mark, I was bidding at like 851 to get this 961 bid registration (unless that was another user with the same first/end bidder numbers than mine, but looking at the bid history each time I'm not sure this was the explanation). Those several times I was the 961 bidder I ended being out-bidded while the timer had already significantly decreased below 60s.
In the end, would I say I'm happy with the rebate I managed to obtain ?
Well, let me make a concrete comparison: when I was young I bought a pair of loudspeakers at a physical store. Those were not super expensive, it was less than the price of this DD1. I asked the reseller if he would offer me some rebate and after he went discussing with his boss he came back offering me a similar rebate (in percentage) than the one I managed to obtain through this DD auction.
So compare the hassle in both cases to obtain a similar rebate. This auction really stressed me. In the end it is not the rebate itslef that made me the most happy, it's the fact the efforts I have put into my battle plan seem to have paid, it's the fact I seem to have managed to take control over this very uncertain (risky) auction system and managed to obtain the best possible rebate by using a strategy rather than by pure luck.
The more I was inspecting the auctions as it was going on, the more I was wondering about the reason for deciding to stick with this system. I'm not accusing of anything in the following suppositions, this is just what came to my mind as I was trying my best to place bids of the amounts I decided and as I was reading other comments here in the meantime. Take it as a simple transparent feedback about how I felt due to the pressure induced by this somewhat scary auction system:
- less devil supposition: those guys have difficulty to aknowledge when they are wrong. There is no doubt about their honnesty concerning their will to offer a nice opportunity to get some rebates on DD1 units but they won't admit the auction system is not the right one to achieve that goal without unecessary frustration for the participants.
- super devil supposition: this system has been chosen on purpose. The goal is not to offer nice rebate opportunities that would solely depend on bidders behaviour but to generate sales by promoting an opportunity to make nice deals while still keeping the rebate under control, as this system would allow to place artificial bids to ensure the auction will never end below a given amount the seller decided (any neutral reliable authority to control that ?)
Again, I'm making no accusation here, I'm just sharing with you what kind of bad ideas such auction system could have generated in some people minds.
Conclusion:
Of course you can still argue that with a much higher demand than the 45 units limit it was granted the rebate could NOT get higher than what we have seen in those auctions (and that suffice to counter-argue there would have even been a need to make artificial bids to prevent auctions from ending too low).
But here is my answer to that:
Building the system in order to make it create greater rebates DESPITE the high demand was precisely the MAIN issue to solve. That is if your goal was really to make some of your customers happy to get some nice rebates and not just generate sales and make some buzz.
You have been focussing on solving (improving) other issues (initial rush for example) but you have missed the main issue. I'm not claiming I have a solution about how this could have been achieved but there is certainly one.
A last suggestion could be to decide to offer something like 50€/$ additionnal rebate on top for all the winning bids. For EU auction that would make all current 1-4% rebates become 5-10% rebates. That could be a not so expensive solution to make those auctions perceived better by those who participated, or at least by those who were able to win. And given such an artificial rebate bump may increase the ratio of winning bids that will transform into real sales, you may not even be losing anything (am I negociating something here ?^^). But for future auction I still think the system should be rebuilt differently (unless you think big hassle for small rebates is ok, but reading the forum feedback it doesn't look that positive for your image).
I want to be honest with the following: