The Super-Duper Cheap Bargains Thread

[Ken B]

Your explanation sounds plausible. The caches would not change despite some refreshings.

But the bakery is a very poor comparison. In the bakery I can obviously either see what's in their shelves or ask the salesperson if there is some of X left. And otherwise I would find an offer that changed within a day fairly strange, unless clearly advertised. Unless I enter as the first costumer at 7 in the morning and a board might still have yesterdays's special on it I would expect advertised offers to be correct and would be mildly annoyed if they weren't.

Precisely because such things are not possible in online dealings, it is confusing if lists of offers or shopping carts show strange behavior.

A person in front of you can buy the last scone. The chalkboard will still show the price for scones. They will change it when they get around to it, but unless they erase the board before they sell that last scone to the guy ahead of you in line the board will incorrectly offer unavailable scones.

[Ken B]

Do you mean caching in the browser? I guess it is possible, but my experience is that my browser always knows to explicitly reload a listing from a commerce site (probably there is some flag buried in the protocol saying 'this is fresh'). If this is not working for the JPC site I'd definitely call that a bug.

Caching in a browser but also caching in servers on the net. When you request Bob's bakery's page you do not talk to the actual server hosting Bob. You talk to a server that talks to a server that ... that talks to the final host. Any intermediate server can and will cache. The cached data will have metadata indicating if and how long it can be cached, and the request will indicate if cached data is acceptable. Most non transactions allow caching. So you purchase the CD, (transaction) no caching. You browse the site,(not a transaction) some caching. So it is possible to get out of step. Especially if there is a sudden rush of transactions.

[mc ukrneal]

C'mon, this is JPC. I ordered from them once on a previous sale, order goes through, they only sent half the stuff. They silently canceled the stuff they decided was no longer on sale without even notifying me. If you want to actually get the stuff you order, you forget about JPC.

The key to jpc, and all the sellers for that matter, is buy things that are in stock. I've never had a problem with any of them (jpc. mdt when they were alive, abeille when they were alive, importcds, etc.) when ordering items that were in stock. My problems always arose when items were not in stock.

[Ghost of Baron Scarpia]

The key to jpc, and all the sellers for that matter, is buy things that are in stock. I've never had a problem with any of them (jpc. mdt when they were alive, abeille when they were alive, importcds, etc.) when ordering items that were in stock. My problems always arose when items were not in stock.

With JPC it was not clear what was in stock and what wasn't. But hey, when a huge discount is involved, you take your chances and hope you get lucky.

I remember a few years back an Amazon Marketplace seller suffered some sort of failure in its automatic pricing algorithm. Everything was reduced basically to zero. People went ballistic because the 20 CD set they ordered for 10 cents was not fulfilled. 

[Ken B]

With JPC it was not clear what was in stock and what wasn't. But hey, when a huge discount is involved, you take your chances and hope you get lucky.

I remember a few years back an Amazon Marketplace seller suffered some sort of failure in its automatic pricing algorithm. Everything was reduced basically to zero. People went ballistic because the 20 CD set they ordered for 10 cents was not fulfilled. 

Years ago I was looking for a hotel in Venice. A similar thing happened and I was able to book a large room at $9 a night for 2 nights. Absurd price.  I was expecting them to cancel but under Italian law they have to honor it. I ended up cancelling as it was out  on the Lido and we had only one night there.

[JBS]

But sometimes you don't know are out of stock until afterwards. This is a continuing problem for me with Arkivmusic. I order something clearly labelled in stock (which means according to them they have at least 3 or 4 units on hand: less than that is supposedly labelled low stock), and next day check on the order to find it's backordered.  This includes recordings they feature as weekend specials, which one would think they would prepare for higher demand. To date, I have received everything  eventually, but it means waiting 4-6 weeks for an item that supposedly was available for shipment within 24 hours.  I ordered 4 things last weekend, including a "weekend special". One was an advance order, but the entire order is now labelled "back order", including the two labelled in stock when I placed the order. I am starting to get highly annoyed....

[Pat B]

But figuring out when a cached bit of data is stale is very tricky.

Not really.

A person in front of you can buy the last scone. The chalkboard will still show the price for scones. They will change it when they get around to it, but unless they erase the board before they sell that last scone to the guy ahead of you in line the board will incorrectly offer unavailable scones.

Not a valid analogy for database-driven websites in 2019.

Caching in a browser but also caching in servers on the net. When you request Bob's bakery's page you do not talk to the actual server hosting Bob. You talk to a server that talks to a server that ... that talks to the final host. Any intermediate server can and will cache. The cached data will have metadata indicating if and how long it can be cached, and the request will indicate if cached data is acceptable. Most non transactions allow caching. So you purchase the CD, (transaction) no caching. You browse the site,(not a transaction) some caching. So it is possible to get out of step. Especially if there is a sudden rush of transactions.

I can't even make a non-secure connection to jpc.de. Not just checkout, but every page. If I manually type an address using http it automatically switches to https. With a secure connection, intermediate servers cannot see the page content or even the full URL.

[Ghost of Baron Scarpia]

Years ago I was looking for a hotel in Venice. A similar thing happened and I was able to book a large room at $9 a night for 2 nights. Absurd price.  I was expecting them to cancel but under Italian law they have to honor it. I ended up cancelling as it was out  on the Lido and we had only one night there.

Once I was placing an order with several CDs from a now defunct web site, cdnow.com. I'm trying to check out, I've hit confirm, and the site hangs up. Can't log back on for several days. When it comes up again, my order is not there. Damn, have to get around to reproducing ordering it all again. Except a day or so later, the order arrives. My credit card was not billed. Now that was perfect timing.

My other stroke of luck, the Levine Ring comes out on DVD. Das Rheingold, $29.99, Die Walkure, $39.00, Seigfried, $39.00, Gotterdamerung, $39.99, Complete Ring, $39.99. I pounced. Next day they put the price up, but they still fulfilled my order.

[Ghost of Baron Scarpia]

I can't even make a non-secure connection to jpc.de. Not just checkout, but every page. If I manually type an address using http it automatically switches to https. With a secure connection, intermediate servers cannot see the page content or even the full URL.

Anyway, the disc in question is no longer on the list. Sounds like they had to manually update that page and their system didn't deal elegantly with the contingency that the sale item was sold out.

[Pat B]

Anyway, the disc in question is no longer on the list. Sounds like they had to manually update that page and their system didn't deal elegantly with the contingency that the sale item was sold out.

FTR I like jpc. I've had consistently good experiences. Nothing cancelled that wasn't marked backordered (or something similar).

[PerfectWagnerite]

My other stroke of luck, the Levine Ring comes out on DVD. Das Rheingold, $29.99, Die Walkure, $39.00, Seigfried, $39.00, Gotterdamerung, $39.99, Complete Ring, $39.99. I pounced. Next day they put the price up, but they still fulfilled my order.

A great cycle. I was in high school when PBS showed it. I didn't know anything about Wagner but I stayed up late and watched all of them for some unknown reason. James Morris is Wotan personified, as if Wagner wrote the role for him.

Going off topic here.

[Ken B]

Not really.

Not a valid analogy for database-driven websites in 2019.

Yes really. Google cache invalidation. The whole difficulty is knowing what strategy to use to balance the benefits of caching against the glitches, and at what cost. "Just don't cache" is a strategy but it's not a solution.

And actually a *perfect* analogy for database driven websites in 2019. The issue is when the chalkboard is updated, and when any cached data is updated. Example. If there is a cache which is a few minutes out of date and several purchases were made on the last few items, then a browse of that data will contain wrong data. Just as looking at the chalkboard will mislead. (It's technically a race condition.) And remember, there is a massive amount of parallelism here, with thousands of products being updated all the time.

Really your remarks are foolish. I have an MSc in computer science, and decades of experience.

[Christo]

FTR I like jpc. I've had consistently good experiences. Nothing cancelled that wasn't marked backordered (or something similar).

Same here.

[king ubu]

Same here.

Yup, me three - usually also during sales their stock seems to be big enough for what happened yesterday (if it was indeed not a technical glitch) not to happen.

[DaveF]

Perhaps not quite SDCBs, but Priory Records are offering half-price or more reductions on box sets: https://www.prioryrecords.co.uk/box-sets.  The Howells complete Mags & Nuncs are tempting me, a few critical reviews notwithstanding (reviewers not liking the use of women's voices, mainly).  (N.B. only 5 CDs, not 6.)  The complete organ music likewise.

[André]

New bargains at JPC: from Orfeo, Brilliant etc. Best of the lot might be this one:



8 cds for 14.99€ (or less if purchased outside of the EU). Comes with the Myaskovsky, Prokofiev, Schnittke, Weinberg fillers.

[Ghost of Baron Scarpia]

A great cycle. I was in high school when PBS showed it. I didn't know anything about Wagner but I stayed up late and watched all of them for some unknown reason. James Morris is Wotan personified, as if Wagner wrote the role for him.

Amazing that it is really the only DVD production (that I am aware of) that tries to follow Wagner's stage directions more or less literally, rather than turning the ring into some weird allegory about people from outer space, etc.

[PerfectWagnerite]

Amazing that it is really the only DVD production (that I am aware of) that tries to follow Wagner's stage directions more or less literally, rather than turning the ring into some weird allegory about people from outer space, etc.

I am surprised that today in this quest for authenticity where every ornament is scrutinized no one has staged a Ring as close to what Wagner wrote as possible. The stage directions are very detailed. You can argue whether they are feasible but should at least be attempted.

[Pat B]

Yes really. Google cache invalidation. The whole difficulty is knowing what strategy to use to balance the benefits of caching against the glitches, and at what cost. "Just don't cache" is a strategy but it's not a solution.

Google cache revalidation.

Really your remarks are foolish. I have an MSc in computer science, and decades of experience.

Great! With your credentials, you should be able to examine the http header, and see that jpc has disabled caching altogether for item pages (but not for images).

[Ken B]

Google cache revalidation.

Great! With your credentials, you should be able to examine the http header, and see that jpc has disabled caching altogether for item pages (but not for images).

Sigh. That means your browser won't cache, right? You realize that caching can occur behind the reverse proxy your https connects to? The simple fact is without a boatload of work and access to the systems no one can tell what happened. For example, do you know what kind of locking they use in the database?  But stale data is a likely cause. And despite your assurances, there really are complexities here.