BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news
Industry sources tipped BikeBiz with the news that Halfords, the UK’s largest cycle retailer, had made an embarrassing and potentially costly blunder yesterday, resulting in Halfords.com going ‘down’ for over 24 hours.
According to those sources, and computerworld.uk, customers visiting www.halfords.com were met with the following message: "If you are the current registrant for this domain name and wish to continue the registration on the domain, you must immediately contact the domain name provider and renew the domain name to ensure the name is not deleted."
Online records confirm that Halfords renewed the Halfords.com domain name yesterday (January 20th), lending weight to the theory that Halfords had forgotten to renew the domain name.
On social media site Twitter the retailer admitted it had been faced some ‘web difficulties’: "There’s been an administrative issue with our website. The issue has now been resolved and the site should be accessible again shortly."
The online retail site has been a key part of Halford’s strategy, recording it’s busiest day ever at Christmas.
Owen Cole, UK technical Director UK at IT vendor F5 Networks, told computerworld.uk: "Letting your registration lapse online is like putting up the shutters on your shop and taking down the sign. People know where you are but they can’t buy anything."
