Hacking B&Q's virtual queue

[zazou]

Has anyone looked into hacking this silly virtual queue blocker?

[northernladuk]

Has anyone looked into hacking this silly virtual queue blocker?

Yeah. I use something called patience v2.1. Log on to the page, go get a coffee, carry on with work in the background and hey presto I'm in. Sorted.

Not sure it's silly. An IT bod should understand why it's there more than anyone surely?

[Paralytic]

Has anyone looked into hacking this silly virtual queue blocker?

Go in via this link. http://www.diy.com/itsallaboutme/VIP

[Hobosapien]

I read elsewhere that changing the browser agent to a google bot allows normal access as they don't want to stop the bots that wil affect search rankings.

Not tried it myself so it may be bollox or require too much faff. Also, they may get canny to that bypass and disable the checkout process so bots not ordering all their stock for delivery to a null address.

[Hobosapien]

Not sure it's silly. An IT bod should understand why it's there more than anyone surely?

Depends why and how well they implemented the queue.

If it's to genuinely throttle demand so their (if that's necessary) obviously crappy unscalable site can handle the traffic then fair enough.

But if it's just some hack to put off people ordering 'non-essential' stuff by putting an unnatural delay on advice of the rozzers so they don't have to patrol the 'non-essential' aisles, then it's our duty to fight for freedom to buy whatever we want if the store is selling it in the first place.

[northernladuk]

Depends why and how well they implemented the queue.

If it's to genuinely throttle demand so their (if that's necessary) obviously crappy unscalable site can handle the traffic then fair enough.

But if it's just some hack to put off people ordering 'non-essential' stuff by putting an unnatural delay on advice of the rozzers so they don't have to patrol the 'non-essential' aisles, then it's our duty to fight for freedom to buy whatever we want if the store is selling it in the first place.

I very much doubt it's the latter. The rozzers won't get involved and even if it is what company puts the rozzers advice first over the potential of going bust?

I used the B&Q click and collect service about 2 weeks ago and it was 3 days behind the allotted pick up space back then.

[Scruff]

I read elsewhere that changing the browser agent to a google bot allows normal access as they don't want to stop the bots that wil affect search rankings.

Not tried it myself so it may be bollox or require too much faff. Also, they may get canny to that bypass and disable the checkout process so bots not ordering all their stock for delivery to a null address.

The Googlebot hack - I couldn't get it to work...

[LondonManc]

The cheek on this man. I think zazou needs decking.

[vwdan]

If it's to genuinely throttle demand so their (if that's necessary) obviously crappy unscalable site can handle the traffic then fair enough.

I don't mean to pick on you personally here, but I really hate this attitude and it's so frustratingly prevalent in IT. We know very little about their architecture, but given the fact that Azure themselves have been struggling in some DC's it's not really fair to just pin blame on things being crap. Like anything, stuff is built to balance cost, timescales, ease of maintenance and the other billion things they have to contend with.

Why would B&Q spend however much designing and deploying a fully geo-redundant, super scalable website to fulfill unprecedented demand during a once in a generation pandemic that they can't even fulfill on a physical level? You can scale the site to allow the entire worlds population in to order if you want, but it doesn't magic up the warehouse space, pickers, packers and trucks.

I suspect the throttling is a combination of all those things - keeping the cadence to a manageable level, especially given their physical throughput will be lower than normal and managing costs.

[d000hg]

Last two times I've looked, the queue was over an hour. I struggle to believe their website is getting that scale of traffic (even though it's a pretty slow, crappy website) and even if it were, they can surely scale it unless it's a single-server setup.

I would propose it's possibly about putting people off buying, but probably about their supply capacity rather than website capacity. If they restrict orders roughly based on how many slots they have to deliver/collect it will reduce issues where people go through and then find they cannot get a delivery slot.
A bit like online groceries - though it makes sense perhaps to make you pick your slot first then do your shopping.