Listing updates bug
Late last week we hit a bug with our listing update e-mails. Fortunately a few of us are addicted to them and experienced the bug first hand. Tonight I sent out an e-mail to our affected listing update subscribers:
Dear Listing Update Subscriber,
Late last week you likely received a number of duplicate Redfin Listing Updates. The reason this happened is that we had a glitch in our listing update code that caused us to send out listing update emails but failed to record the fact that the emails were sent. As a result, we ended up sending the same emails to many people every hour.
Thursday evening, Redfin installed a bug fix release of the database platform that powers Redfin.com to prevent a data corruption issue we were experiencing. This upgrade caused our listing alert email system to suddenly stop recording that it had already sent an update to a user. That, in turn, caused the system to continually send out the same update to each user until we caught it and halted the system. On Friday we addressed the problem and restarted our listing updates back to normal.
In a few weeks, we will be releasing out a new version of the listing update system that will greatly improve the reliability of this feature and ensure that you receive your listing updates on time and at the same time each day.
Thank you for your understanding and patience.
Matt Goyer
Product Manager
Redfin
Strange tidbit, we refer to them as listing alerts internally but listing updates externally.