If you noticed some strange behavior in your price watches recently, like duplicate alerts popping up out of nowhere, you’re not losing it. That’s on us. We had a little hiccup (okay, a big hiccup) with our system, and here’s the story.
What Happened?
On January 9th, around 11am EST, a bug caused us to accidentally recreate price watches for all wishlist items. That’s right — instead of staying calm and organized like a good camel should, our system decided to double up on price watches. For some users, it meant duplicate price watches and confusion. For others, it meant... well, more emails than you probably wanted.
This bug affected about 158,000 users (our bad, we know). Thankfully, you spoke up — sending us feedback, complaints, and plenty of "What the heck is going on?" messages. We really appreciate your patience and honesty, even if it came in the form of frustrated caps lock.
What Did We Do?
The moment we realized what was happening, we fixed the bug. By January 13th, around 6pm EST, the issue was resolved, so no new duplicate price watches were being created. However, the duplicates that were already in your account didn’t disappear on their own.
So, starting on January 21st, around 9am EST, we began carefully deleting all the extra price watches. This is a big cleanup effort, and it’s expected to take about five days to fully complete. Once it’s done, your price watch page should look a lot less... crowded.
What Should You Do?
Honestly? Not much. If you noticed weird price alerts or saw duplicate entries on your price watch page, that’s why. As we clean things up on our end, everything should go back to normal. If you’ve already taken matters into your own hands and deleted the duplicates yourself, don’t worry — we won’t delete them again, and it’s fine too. If you still see issues after January 26th, feel free to let us know so we can take a closer look.
We’re Sorry (and Grateful!)
We know this was frustrating. Nobody likes unnecessary clutter, whether it’s in their email inbox or their price watch page. To those of you who reached out to let us know about the problem: thank you. Your feedback helped us fix the issue faster, and we’re genuinely grateful for your patience.
As part of our commitment to transparency, we’re emailing everyone who was affected with a link to this post. Because, let’s face it, you deserve an explanation. We’re camels, not ostriches—we don’t bury our heads in the sand when things go wrong.
TL;DR
- Bug date: January 9th, 11am EST.
- Fix date: January 13th, 6pm EST.
- Cleanup date: Started January 21st, 9am EST. Expected to finish in ~5 days.
- If you saw duplicate price watches or got extra alerts, that’s why.
- We’re fixing it, and everything should be back to normal soon.
Thanks for sticking with us, even when we mess up. We’ll keep working hard to make sure camelcamelcamel.com stays the best tool for tracking prices and saving you money—without the duplicate alerts.
Stay awesome, The camelcamelcamel Team