I know you want this eh, but I own a Morrow by TMBR in both Cherry and Spectra Ply and they are both amazing!! And available at TMBR store…
Just saying
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I understand the frustration, but if we had a timer or set it to reserve once it was added to the cart we would get just as many complaints from the other side. Better for some is always going to be worse for others.
There’s really no situation with a limited release to make everyone happy unfortunately. When there’s 15-20 of a product available, and way more than 15-20 people interested in said product, you’re going to have a good amount of disappointment from people who missed out.
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So interestingly enough when we first switched to our current point of sale - they did reserve items in baskets for a period of time. Overall we liked this feature (though it wasn’t an option for us to turn off or on). However - as happens with good things people abuse it and unfortunately people found it was a great way to ‘attack’ a website release byusing bots or people to load up carts and prevent everyone else from checking out (this actually happened a few times to us and that was even more frustrating for people trying to checkout and just getting errors even though the page showed in stock). Apparently the point of sale had so many problems with hackers abusing this they instead went back to the method that we used to have which is the item is reserved only once the payment is completed. I know its totally frustrating in the moment - but its totally beyond our control as its the programming of the system.
With all that said - I just spoke to Ed and Colin and they both were in agreement we could do another small run I think… Colin is checking to make sure he can get proper supply. So feel free to reach out to us via email and we can maybe get a ‘hold’ list running for people who missed it. Contact@YoYoExpert.com
This was a smaller release because we had a pre-release at the World YoYo Contest too - so the drop here was cut in half basically. Again apologies for the frustration - none of this is to purposefully create a frustrating experience - promise! 
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Also… This is no longer the case in most online stores… Even Amazon holds true to an item is not reserved and only purchased during checkout.
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Again, I hear you. I’ve been there. I’ve been bit by the issue before. As has most everyone who shops online for anything that isn’t stocked in massive quantities. This issue isn’t yoyoing, it’s how online shopping works. As @YoYoExpertGarrett points out, there’s no way to make everyone happy.
If a store pulls something out of inventory to reserve it as soon as anyone puts it in a cart, then they are risking a sale every time that inventory shows “zero” to anyone who comes to the page even seconds later. Thus pissing off a different set of users with information that may not even be accurate, those items MIGHT be in stock still. The average person puts something in a cart FAR more than they actually buy the items. A store can’t have 10, 50, 200…etc items pulled out of inventory just because people have tossed it into the cart.
So then the other option is to make the cart time limited and clear it after X minutes/hours. But then you get people like my wife who fill up a cart with clothing outfits (for example), decides to think about the order (or gets distracted or has to go to work), comes back a few hours later to purchase, and then is upset because she would have to add everything back to the cart again, so she gives up and says “screw this”. Or, perhaps more in line with this particular Eh situation, people abuse the system to hold items when they shouldn’t be able to. This happens across the “collectables” market. Google “sneakerhead bots” sometime.
Given that there is no perfect solution and X% of people are going to be annoyed no matter what, a store’s goal has to be whatever system allows them to sell the most product as painlessly as possible.
EDIT: Annnnd I see that while I was typing out my rambling post, @AndreBoulay has done a better job of explaining the situation as far as how it affect YYE’s systems. Cool to hear about an additional run maybe being possible.
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Well, unfortunately my takeaway from this is to avoid items with drop countdowns like the plague. 
At least that’ll keep my blood pressure in check. 
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I definitely appreciate both André and Garrett’s comments and explanation. As someone who missed out, I try to not focus on missing the yoyo but saving the $80.
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It’s a Limited run, you either get lucky, or you don’t. No need to grunt and complain about the damn webstore…And to be fair the webstore works the same for everybody, it’s not like the store is being unfair to some and privileging others…
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I like a countdown, as opposed to a surprise drop, because it gives you time to deliberate. Most everyone who buys one wants one for the price. Impulse buys lead to people buying something they later regret, which means that limited item is somewhere where it isn’t most appreciated. It might end up on the BST, or it might be on a shelf. That model might be better for the seller in the short run, but I think it’s clearly worse for the buyers (and wanters).
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Yeah, that’s part of the problem, it’s like a lottery, which if I’d remembered beforehand I wouldn’t be playing. And you’re right, no need to grunt and complain because it doesn’t do any damn good. I didn’t say it was unfair to some and not to others, I just said it was broken. And it is!
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anybody consider… interesting trades for theirs? i just remembered right now… doh!
Needless to say, pretty surprised that this would be the yo-yo to reignite that old discussion. I’m sorry to anyone who wanted one and didn’t get one. I don’t want people to have bad feelings about a yo-yo I have good feelings about. But I’ve been around a minute and know how it goes. Thanks to everyone.
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It is as much a philosophical debate as much as it is a technological debate at this point, the question being how to choose which 15 people from a larger pool of people who wants to buy it. Many schools of thoughts, and they all work “fair” to varying degree in different situation. The usual default situation is let supply and demand figure it out, so you price the yoyo higher so that only 15 people want it at that price. This option is less popular for “limited” runs and may create negative feelings of artificially gaming supply and demand. You can choose who you want to sell to because of some criteria, or simply select them randomly. In the end there will be a pool of people disappointed.
I think the current way of letting people know within minutes whether they were the the lucky few is the best way to minimize the disappointment. No method could change the final number of people who would be disappointed, so the method should just be minimising the amount of disappointment, by not keeping people in suspense for a longer period than necessary.
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Apropos to this, many of the respondents are focusing on the disappointment of not getting the item in question. That’s not really what’s at issue here for me. Sure, I’m bummed I didn’t score the yo-yo, just like I would be bummed if I got outbid by a sniper on Ebay. But there, I have some control over the situation, e.g. I can always bid up a higher amount to potentially foil a sniper. My beef is more psychological, having to do with the purchasing experience. YoYoExpert has wonderful service and great selection, but to have a point-of-sale system that reports that a certain quantity is available, then lets you put one in your cart and actually complete the payment process, then reports “oops, just kidding” and removes it from your cart, well, that’s a crappy buying experience. Sure, just like in the Ebay example I could have been more defensive by having a card on file with YYE instead of using PayPal, but that’s still no guarantee I wouldn’t see the same behavior.
Photogeek’s points are cogent, and I understand where Andre is coming from, although “the programming of the system” can be changed if a customer (e.g. YYE to POS vendor) is unhappy with it. I don’t really understand how a purchasing queue driven by a cart timeout is hackable, but I suppose anything is. I guess what I would prefer to see is, if you get an item in your cart you get a 2-5 minute purchasing window. If all available items are in carts, you get a queue position instead. Your queue position can change as cart timeouts expire without a purchase. If you reach the head of the queue then you likewise get a 2-5 minute purchasing window. If you’re still in the queue and all items are sold, then you’ve never put anything in your cart and you’re notified the item is sold out. Still a bummer, but it beats a basket snatch. Oh, and I assume there was a 1-per-customer limit on this particular item, no?
These are all really good points. Your frustration with a basket snatch is completely valid. Alternatives that would minimise this disappointment would of course be great.
I feel that yye’s approach is trying to minimise the number of times buyers needs to act and the length of time of buyer’s involvement. Most “random” draw system would lengthen the period when participants sign up and wait anxiously for the drawing and announcement, and then have a second engagement where they check whether they won. Current system basically turn it into a high engagement burst over a short amount of time. I personally prefer this, as waiting a week only to find out you didnt get it is really frustrating.
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I’m not sure how 2-5 minute timeouts could stretch out to a week, but I realize you’re citing an example. The key is to have a queue indicator that’s updated in real time so the potential buyer knows where he or she stands. So if there are 15 items for sale and you end up with a queue position of 80, you might decide to relinquish your position in the queue. However, someone with a queue position of 5 might decide to stick around to see if any purchases either don’t happen or fall through.
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The one per customer;’thing’ has always been a source of amusement to me.
I want 4 of something… which means I just need to bring in 3 friends to buy the dupes of what I want; lol.
I seriously gave up process that has a tendency to Piss me off…
I don’t need anything bad enough to make a board game out of it.
I know the releases have to be done somehow. And if I knew the magical solution; I would certainly share it.
But I have been through the ‘its In your cart’; and then stock is zero.
I’ve done the countdowns… paced around… shook my head(about why I am doing this?)…and in 1 minute; got Posteriored directly to the outhouse.
Homie don’t play that… anymore. In my mind; I just wish people the best. They might as well get a little more luck. I certainly can’t use mine.
Most of you guys can probably run circles around me on this subject.
But I do know a few things…
Tom(Oldyoyoguy) is absolutely one of the nicest guys you could meet if you live 500 years.
And if this situation gets Tom so upset; something is seriously wrong.
Seriously…
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Thanks, Mo. 
So… make more? Easy solution m’man
I have no idea how the system works timing wise, and I don’t believe in luck (although some people annoyingly have more than others).
It sucks that people can’t get what they want. I’ve been cart snatched on plenty of things on plenty of formats.
Living in the UK, I had to stay up until 1am on a work night to try and grab this yoyo. Where I live the internet speed isn’t the best, refreshing a page can take about 30 seconds sometimes to load up so I had no hope. As soon as I saw there was 15 seconds to go I refreshed it, and it came back up saying add to cart, so I did. About a minute later I got a confirmation email saying that I got one. I honestly couldn’t believe it and I don’t think I will untill it actually gets dilivered in a couple of weeks. Living hundred of miles away and a crawling internet collection was enough, so I honestly can’t complain about the system.
Then I saw the reactions on this thread and I felt guilty. It’s a shame that there weren’t more for everyone who wanted one but on this unique occasion it looks like more might be getting made and that would be great.
It’s probably the fairest purchasing system that can be had at the moment. I suppose an alternative could be that everyone puts their name in a hat and 15 names get chosen at random by a machine, but that might just make things worse.
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