Despite the Central Epidemic Command Center having eased mask rationing in light of sufficient production and Taiwan’s COVID-19 situation being under control, people are still racing to buy masks, with major online platforms, such as Yahoo, PChome Online and Momo.com yesterday reporting almost near-instantaneous server crashes after they started taking orders for masks.
Yahoo said its online shopping site began sales at 10am, with its servers quickly becoming overloaded and reporting errors when people tried to access them.
By 10:09am, its entire stock of more than 10,000 masks procured from Taiwan-based China Surgical Dressings Center Co (CSD) was sold out.
Yahoo reported that its first batch of CSD masks sold out within five minutes of being placed on the site at 10pm on Tuesday.
The company said it would work with suppliers to keep its stocks filled, adding that it has completed repairs after its servers crashed due to a high number of people trying to log in.
PChome reported a similar incident after it began selling masks at 4pm, with all of its stock shown as sold out once its server came back online.
Other online platforms have reported similar incidents.
Internet users were unhappy at the speed at which the masks sold out, leaving comments on various platforms, such as “I saw it, but I was not able to purchase,” and “It was in my shopping cart, but I could not get to the payment page.”
A woman wrote on Facebook that she was poised to purchase masks three minutes before PChome began its sale, but was unable to make the purchase due to a slow-loading Web site.
“By the time the Web site returned to normal, it was all sold out. Who could have gotten anything,” she wrote.
One person reported being unable to buy masks from three separate Web sites.
Internet users left comments saying they wondered about the Internet connection speeds of people who could successfully purchase masks online.
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