15 April 2013: “We’re just about to do some testing so the site won’t be functional for a little while.”

12 April 2013:
“Hi everyone, we’re just waiting for the finishing touches to be put on the Draw so will give a proper update about that as soon as we can. Whilst we’re waiting we have a few lovely items to give away as part of a charity draw and also a charity auction, details to follow very shortly.”

1 April 2013:
“We will not be listing using our current system again until we have done some serious testing and re-working in order to try and avoid the upset and frustration of recent listings.

We have been working on a new, fairer and more just system for listings based on a random draw system and this is close to being ready. We hope that this will give those with internet issues and time constraints a better chance and generally make a more relaxed experience. Because so many people had problems during this listing any left over items we may have of the Willows and Blackthorn will be listed in this way.

However we also recognize that many people like the current way of listing and so we will look to re-build this to be more streamlined and less buggy (!) so that ultimately we can have a mix of ways of listing.”

“Here’s a bit more info about our (clearly popular ;)) new random draw system.

The plan is that each draw will be open for 24hrs. You will need to have an account set up with us and we will have methods in place to avoid a single user having multiple accounts.

To enter you will select the sizes that you want to go for as if you were making a purchase. Once the time is up a custom random generator will select the ‘winners’ and send an invoice. …

Whilst you can enter for multiple sizes you can only be selected to purchase one. If we have two or more different types of wraps you can enter for each and have a chance of being selected to get one of each kind (postage would be worked out accordingly).

You would have 24hrs in which to pay the invoice, if unpaid it will be automatically cancelled. A new ‘winner’ would then be selected and an invoice sent to them. Any left over items will be listed back on the website at a random time.

We recognise the desire to have the timed listing system continue and having the random drawing in place will give us time to really work on the issues we were having with the old system whilst still carrying on the business. And we’re sure that as much as some may like the timed listings, you don’t want loads of errors!

We hope that the random draw will be a fun system and know that you have just as much chance as the next person of being selected.”

26 March 2013:
“Dear Oscha Customers,When we released the Braid pine and Starry Night Aspen lines, as you know, we had major problems with the web site which caused a number of basket failures.We initially thought the number of orders matched the number of items available, so we honoured the orders of those customers who had contacted us up to that point. Regrettably, we then discovered there were many more checkout failures than stock items. This has understandably led to a great deal of distress and disappointment for which we deeply apologise.The website is currently being revised to ensure such situations do not occur in future. We look forward to announcing a date for the release of more of the Deep Forest Collection soon.”

21 March 2013: “Dear Oscha Customers
Our website has been compromised by malicious spamming software. We are working hard to rectify the problem and are deeply sorry for the inconvenience and distress caused. We will keep you posted of developments.We appreciate your loyalty and patience”
Off to look into draw options…

18 March 2013: “just to confirm a couple of things…we have semi- reverted to the ‘items reserved buttons’, if there are still wraps not yet sold. (but in baskets). If all stock in a particular size is sold out, then the item in that size will no longer show on the product detail page…..so you’ll know when they are all definitely gone. You’ll need to refresh the page every so often to update the info. Also, we have to do a server kickstart just before listing time, so it is best to log in maybe no more than 15 minutes before listing time…the kickstart can sometimes log people out. (boy this gets complicated!! ) We have made some more changes behind the scenes to hopefully iron out some of the glitches….”

11 March 2013: “We have identified a site issue that can affect the contents of your basket, so please log in before trying to buy….hopefully fixed soon “

19 January 2013: “We have been asked if we are penalising any people who use page monitoring software systems by blocking their IP addresses…..no we haven’t. However, we must point out that we have asked people to stop using page monitors, though. They massively overload our servers to such a degree as to make them inoperable…they force the system to rebuild the pages from scratch with every call they make, unlike a normal page request which draws from the server’s cached version efficiently. So I beg you, for the sake of all customers and the Oscha team as well, to ask all those that are using such technology to stop…if not we will have releases with crashes, unfulfilled sales and all the other nasties we have had recently….I cannot overstate how much impact these things have had…..and it has been a nightmare for us to solve this issue.”

15 January 2013: “Ladies and gents…are there any? we have got to the stage where we think that we have a working system…yay…BIG SMILE….but I need to test this new setup to ensure a smooth ride for you and me! That means I’m off to my bed, and spend tomorrow testing, and if all goes well, then we will give it a go tomorrow evening…..thanks again for your patience, and as always, fingers crossed.”
“We are continuing to configure and test the systems, and will not be listing anything until further notice…sorry for any inconvenience.”

18 December 2012: “When we said we would give release times we also said it was dependent on the site working properly, clearly that has not been the case. We did say we were going to list the pre-order items shortly, we just didn’t give an exact time. This is because we are still working on the website issues but in the meantime we need to be able to list some of the backlog of stock without causing the site to crash and the subsequent customer frustration when it gets heavy traffic at one time. The pre-order items seemed a good choice since they are not new. Also some changes had been made and we had to test the site gently, which was clearly a good thing since there are some glitches that need to be ironed out. Please bear with us, we really are working on things and are simply trying to manage the best we can in the meantime.”
“We have found that things will work much better when you clear your browser cache… if you are unsure how to do that, google ‘clear browser cache’ for firefox, chrome, IE8 etc and you will see instructions. We have changed quite a lot of the site code, and if your browser uses the old code that it remembers from past visits, you will get errors. We’ll keep you posted with updates!! Thanks again for your patience…..between us we’ll get this thing licked into shape….hopefully before it kills me!”

8 December 2012: “Hi everyone, thanks for your feedback. We’re looking into the issues we had at the beginning of the listing, thanks for your patience – especially those of you who were up in the middle of the night!We are going to make the website show whether an item is instock/reserved/out of stock. So you won’t have to click on each one to see whether or not it is available to put in your basket.We will also make it so that you can edit the numbers of items in your basket more easilyWould everyone prefer a 10 minute reservation time to hold items in your basket for? It is 15 minutes at the moment.”

6 December 2012: “The new website is live now if you wish to set up accounts and take a look around (let us know if you spot anything that needs attention!).”
“You need to create a new account for this website.”

22 Nov 2012: “Our new website is almost ready and we’d like to tell you about some of the changes….Items placed in the shopping basket will be reserved and protected for 15 minutes. You can add other items, but only 2 of any one particular product style. We’re doing this to allow as many customers as possible to purchase items. We will see how this works out and consider any feedback if there are any issues. The basket timer starts when the first item is added, so please allow enough time to finish your checkout within the allocated time.We’ve chosen to use the Realex/HSBC payment gateway in future, where you can check out using a debit or credit card. Whilst we know that PayPal is convenient for many people we have found them very difficult business partners. If you wish to use your paypal balance there are a few options or you can simply transfer the funds to your current account and use your debit card.Originally we had planned to make a website feature that would allow customers to group orders together, whether several purchases by one individual or purchases from different customers. However we’ve found this presents many complications, not least if items go missing in the post. Therefore, unfortunately, we are unable to offer this service. Because items in your basket are protected for 15 minutes, this should allow enough time to add more items if you wish, rather than making several separate orders, and ensure you get the best shipping rate. If an item is to be sent to another person we would kindly ask you to decide this in advance and take care when entering the shipping address to avoid any problems.We hope that these changes will help to streamline things and make shopping on the website a more pleasant experience.”

16 Nov 2012: “Phew, we’ve finally surfaced from the pre-order… Hello everybody! Our new website is tantalizingly close to completion and we have some tasty new things to add to it, including the Fades we previewed a few weeks ago, a new Collection and several solo pieces (loadsa different woollies!). We also have a new design coming, which has been in the works since Oscha was first conceived so we’re really looking forward to sharing that with you all soon.”
“Quite a few questions about listing times: we are planning to preview most items and give a time that they will be on the website but that is all dependent on the new website and our server functioning as we hope they will! If we have problems then we’ll need to revise the plan.”

4 Okt 2012: “We have found that the site change monitors that people are using to discover if new items are available are putting our server under significant strain! We’ve decided to announce in future when we’ll list items, so that you no longer need to watch the site all the time….and thanks for your continued enthusiasm for our products.”

14 Sept 2012:
“So sorry for the server crashing – we’re on the phone to them right now to see why this is occurring and if we can do anything about it.
Braid Rosehip and SN Vespers are sold out. If you have them in your cart and are trying to check out you will not be able to do so unless you remove them from the cart.”
“We have now moved hosting sites 4 times in the last three months to find a server to support the sudden peaks in visitors. We thought we had it sorted as it seemed to work really well with the last Roses release so there was no way we could have anticipated the site would crash this time. We have been working non-stop to make more wraps to meet the demand. We do really appreciate people’e enthusiasm for our products and are trying our best to make enough and to make systems that work – unfortunately it seems to be the case that we have to learn by trial and error. If we kept back all of our stock until we had the new website we would have a huge backlog and would not have the means to deal with it all at once. To do a lottery system would require a massive amount of admin work as there are hundreds of wraps to deal with, but we are thinking if there’s other ways to deal with things in the meantime.We really do understand the frustration but hope you can understand this was unforeseen and was not for the lack of trying on our part.”

12 August 2012: “Well the server is fixed (we hope!!) so that means it shouldn’t crash when lots of people go on at once. The website isn’t fixed so there may well be overselling, but as these are higher volume than in the Collections we are praying this won’t be too much of an issue.“

8 August 2012: “The website is down right now as we’re upgrading our server again – HOPEFULLY this will stop the crashing!! (it won’t stop overselling though – need to wait for the new shmancy website for that ;))”

6 July 2012: “We wanted to give a current update again about our website for those who haven’t seen them before and are wondering why our website is working so poorly for our releases.
Our site was set up to deal with smaller numbers of customers and as issues with crashing and overselling became a problem we tried several changes to sort that. Obviously they were unsuccessful! We then upgraded to a dedicated host to stop the crashing but have just found it’s still not sufficient for the numbers.
We are currently working to build a new website that will retain items in peoples baskets and work faster. This will take a few months, watch this space for updates. We will also investigate a new server to handle the increased number of visitors.
In the short term, the next few releases will probably still encounter the same problems so we ask you to bear with us. We appreciate your feedback and letting us know the problems you’ve encountered and we hope that in the grand scheme of things this will be considered a blip in the evolution of Oscha.
We realise not having release times is difficult but we worry that giving them will increase the site crashing and overselling problems. We do intend to issue release times once our resources can cope.
o bear in mind though that we are still a small business and can only produce so much so even with giving release times and having a cart that will hold items there may still be some disappointment. To help with this we are doing a pre-order which will guarantee you get to buy a wrap.
Hope you got to the end of that! Once again, thank you all, we are absolutely thrilled about the enthusiasm for our products and we will continue to offer lovely wraps and ring slings that hopefully you will love to look at and enjoy using

28 June 2012 To all those of you who are disappointed by the naff way our cart works, I can only apologise. We are designing a brand new site from the ground up, as we speak, designed to ensure that there will be reserved items in a persons cart…that is, if you manage to get one in your cart, it will be guaranteed for a certain time…probably ten minutes or so. I do understand your frustration and we are working to overcome this as soon as possible. we are also looking to grow ourselves so we can handle more volume, ie make and send more wraps with each release…but it will take time, so please be patient and thank you all so much for your lovely feedback and enthusiasm for what we do!”

8 June 2012: “Happy Birthday to us! Look, we got a lovely bunch of Roses!”

7 June 2012: “We are busy sorting a new website system that should allow items to be held in your shopping cart for a short while and give you time to check out.
This might take a while, so in the meantime, bearing in mind the problems with overselling which doesn’t really work out for anyone, we’ve taken the decision not to give dates and times for releases. We will just list the items and then announce here about it.
We hope that this will avoid a rush and the minus numbers. We realise its not so convenient for lots of people and do aim to change once we have systems in place to deal with more traffic at once, but until then we hope this will make things a bit less frustrating for you all and a bit easier administratively for us.”

5 June 2012: “Its the same site but now on a fast dedicated server, and the new domain pointing can take a while for all ISP’s to get the new server address…”

April 2012: “Improvements have been made to the site to reduce crashes – usability has been improved.”

21 June 2012: “We realise random listing times is inconvenient for many but until we update our website we feel it has to be this way, so we ask you to be patient as this will probably be months rather than weeks as its a big job since we’re building from scratch and developing new software.
I’m afraid that we’d rather not commit to listing within certain hours as our customer-base is world-wide and we’d like to change times around so that it will suit people in different time zones.
We are working very hard to make the numbers we do, unfortunately we don’t currently have the capacity to make massive numbers, if you look overall at the Collection though there is a lot of wraps! We can’t list them all at once as it takes us a while to process things (from making to checking to posting), hence the release in batches.”

25 January 2012: “Please be aware that whilst adding Paypal express has sped things up and lessened the problem with allowing items to be oversold it hasn’t solved it. If this happens then you will be refunded asap. We’re still looking to see if we can change the system but its quite complicated so taking some time. Thanks for your patience and understanding :)”

12 January 2012: “We’re looking to up-grade the server so it can handle larger numbers of visitors but that hasn’t happened yet. We have made some changes and hope that no items will oversell.”

25 June 2011: “It looks like we’re gonna have problems getting this online quickly, so here’s the new plan:
We have such limited quantities of this wrap (only a couple each in sizes 5, 6 and 7) and we’ve received a number of emails asking to reserve one. So in the interests to fairness if you would like one, please email us (stating the size you would like) and we will draw names out of a hat this evening.
If there are any left after this we will list them on the website. Prices are listed below.. thanks everyone for your enthusiasm 🙂
Size 7 – £93
Size 6 – £89
Size 5 – £84″

24 June 2011: “Japanese Knot Zen (ooki) 20% linen. Ecru cotton/linen threads and a black cotton thread gives a subtle silvery shimmer. Available in extremely limited quantities later this afternoon or evening on our website (barring further technical problems!).”
“Hi everyone, really sorry it looks like technical difficulties did arise: you can blame my business partner who does the web stuff and is on holiday on a boat in Greece with a dodgy internet connection!”

8 June 2011: “Store opening tonight at 8pm – I just put a wee announcement on NMs. [Redactional note: NMs stands for Natural Mamas forum.]”

3 June 2011: “Looking for some willing volunteers to offer feedback on our website, let me know if you’d like to help”