Virginmega.com crashes over holiday period

NEWS Virginmega.com suffered an embarrassing failure when its ecommerce site went down and stayed down over the holiday weekend in the US. Offering holiday savings of up to 50 per cent, the site went down on Friday and despite briefly resurfacing over the weekend was still having problems as this story was written. A Virgin spokesman in the UK claimed the problem was caused by the offer being sent round special interest email groups. He claimed that one such email advised readers to get onto the site before the offer started, choose the products they wanted and put them in their 'shopping basket'. Then, once the offer started, it instructed readers to return to the site and pay for the goods - at the cheaper price. The spokesman said this was why they had so much demand first thing on Friday morning - before the offer started - and why the site went down. In response, Virgin extended the offer until Saturday evening and is currently offering 20 per cent off purchases - provided customers can get in.