Black Friday might be a traditionally American institution but it has crossed the ocean, first to the UK but eventually making its way to South Africa. It seems that the sales extravaganza claims a few victims every year — mostly shoppers — but this year it’s also claimed Takealot, in a manner of speaking.
South Africa’s largest online retailer has been unable to take the strain of what appears to be most of the country attempting to buy items at once. The Takealot website is largely inaccessible, featuring a custom message asking for patience as South Africa (basically) executes a Distributed Denial-Of-Service attack on the online retailer on the site in hopes of snagging an awesome discount. That’s right, you’re responsible for this… though some extra preparation on Takealot’s part might have alleviated the problem too.
At present Takealot has a Please Be Patient message up, as well as an option to go directly to your shopping cart if you happen to have items in it. Even this option is loading a lot slower than usual, occasionally crashing — a testament to how popular South African Black Friday sales have proved to be this year.
It’s not just Takealot having issues. Other websites we’ve checked, for Incredible Connection, Dion Wired, Superbalist, and others, are experiencing crashes or loading slower than usual. Amazon, however, is doing just fine.