It's hard to feel sorry for Australian retailers threatened by Amazon when you're stuck in a queue experiencing the contempt that local retailers have for their online customers.
Australia's last pre-Christmas batch of Nintendo Mini NES consoles went on sale at 8am today, although after 90 minutes it was difficult to say whether anyone had actually managed to purchase one after Target's website collapsed under the load.
![Target's Nintendo Classic Mini NES sale was the kind of disaster that will see Amazon eat Australian online retailers alive.](/web/20161212055336im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/8/w/9/k/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gt8w0j.png/1481504264662.jpg)
Even if you managed to place the console in your shopping cart, the website would let you get tantalisingly close to paying for it and then spit out an error or present a "busy" page promised to tell you your place in the queue – leaving you wondering whether it was worth persevering considering that you seemed to have one in your hand but were getting no-where.
Target's Twitter feed insisted that some sales had gone through and units were still in stock but it was experiencing "a really high volume of traffic".
![You've finally got one in your basket, all you need to do is pay.](/web/20161212055336im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/8/w/9/m/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gt8w0j.png/1481499133834.jpg)
Target insists that there is a queue and the website keeps promising to update you on your place in the queue after 30 seconds yet it never gets there. Occasionally you'll get back into the site only see the "busy" page again. Other times the site will spit out an error and you need to reload – hoping the console is still in your basket.
While there will be plenty of disappointed shoppers today, few will be surprised – the same thing happened when EB Games offered the Mini NES for sale online a few weeks ago. Both sales were always going to be a disaster because Australia takes a "she'll be right" approach to online services expecting to experience heavy load, even the government-backed ABS census was a total disaster.
![Staring at this page for 90 minutes, wondering if someone else has pinched the console from your shopping basket, isn't ...](/web/20161212055336im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/8/w/9/j/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gt8w0j.png/1481499133834.jpg)
What's perhaps more surprising is that the looming threat of Amazon's arrival isn't enough to convince local retailers to throw more resources at their online sales to avoid leaving customers in the lurch.
The king of online retail is expected to announce its Australian plans any day, shaking local retail to its core. Yet local retailers will put more effort into complaining about Amazon then they will into ensuring that their websites can cope with peak demand.
![You think? Time to try again.](/web/20161212055336im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/8/w/9/h/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gt8w0j.png/1481499133834.jpg)
Once Amazon brings the pain, Australian retailers might finally realise that they can't take their customers for granted. Have you been let down by online retail in the lead up to Christmas?
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