Talk:Overselling

Start of talk page
"As so many hosting companies oversell I think names of any specific ones should be removed" I agree, especially since every single web hosting company in the world oversells, otherwise nobody would make any money. Also, I removed the link to overselling.com because as we see by the WHOIS of the domain:

Administrative Contact: CirtexHosting John Xie ******@cirtexhosting.com)

And of course overselling.com has a link to cirtex's website, and they sell, what else, web hosting. LOL

No wonder Dreamhost and Hostgator were mentioned by name. Honestly this page should probably be deleted cause I don't think it was serving any purpose other than advertising for cirtex. - —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.25.92.182 (talk • contribs) 06:17, January 18, 2007

Is this not a link advertising article? Seems odd that it should mention two specific companies and have hyperlinks to them. I think they were originally placed there with affilliate links.

As so many hosting companies oversell I think names of any specific ones should be removed, or at least the hyperlinks. - —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.187.43.159 (talk • contribs) 05:11, January 1, 2007

I agree - no specific names (unless they're cited as legal cases or other mass-media reporting), as the page should discuss what Overselling is. I don't think it should be merged with Overbooking, but a link to it would make sense. - —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gbjbaanb (talk • contribs) 08:40, March 31, 2007

Please sign all comments to talk pages. Thanks, Jaguara 05:08, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Cleanup needed badly
Pardon my wikithumping and pedantry but I re-razored the article since portions of it still came across to me as sneaky advertising. It'd be great if someone who is more knowledgable about the subject can write a clear article, provide references and resources and the like. - Jaguara 04:48, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree. It's important to reveal the pros and cons of overselling. Indicate what an oversold host looks like, but no names. For some, overselling is bad, and for others it has absolutely no effect. So it's important to make that clear. I don't believe this should be merged with overbooking, although they are similar,.. not enough.

I, too, agree. It should NOT be merged in my opinion, because the term "overbooking" is generally used in a different context. However, we need to connect this to something to make it not so much as a dictionary definition a.k.a. we shouldn't be able to only say "Overselling=over-distribution of web sites" and have nothing else to follow it up. Root2 03:58, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Merge request removed
The merge request (overselling/overbooking) had been on both pages since March, so I removed it. I agree with an earlier comment that these are different terms. There are similarities but they refer to very different lines of business. Retaining the clarity of having separate articles will ensure that the two words are not treated as identical. JamminBen 05:22, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Examples appropriate
Are the examples with links to the companies really appropriate? Isn't this spam? —Preceding unsigned comment added by NaturalBornKiller (talk • contribs) 21:38, 18 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I added them to give some real-life examples. I deliberately chose a few well-known companies so it didn't come across as spam. Surely it isn't spam simply for mentioning a company? It's relevant to the article - it's not like I said "here's a company that doesn't oversell, use them, they're great". That would definitely be spam. I'm not sure that this is, but that's just my opinion. JamminBen (talk) 22:10, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I removed the link to Dreamhost to make it less "spammy". JamminBen (talk) 01:20, 19 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I really don't feel it is appropriate to single Dreamhost out without mentioning every single example of overselling in web hosting. Obviously that is not practical so I am removing Dreamhost from the article. Kidane 19:06, 26 December 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kidane (talk • contribs)


 * I think that completely defeats the purpose of the Examples section. The statement was fine until you removed the mention of Dreamhost. Now it just doesn't serve a purpose at all.
 * Why not mention a few companies who do it? Surely that's better than only mentioning one or trying to mention them all? If you're going to remove Dreamhost, does that mean we should also remove the companies mentioned in the Webmail example?
 * It would help to try and expand this stub. If you don't think the Examples section is appropriate (and I fail to see how it is worth keeping without the named examples), it might be helpful to discuss other content that would be useful to add to this page. JamminBen (talk) 00:52, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Other industries
The practice described is also used by ISPs when they provide more traffic volume than can be sustained in reality. I am not sure if it is called the same.

--- Arancaytar - avá artanhé (reply) 12:51, 4 April 2008 (UTC)


 * That's true, but I'd just lump it all together as "The Internet." Just about everything is oversold and even when someone claims they're not doing it, it doesn't mean it's true, or that someone above them isn't doing it.  S600 (talk) 10:11, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Aren't passenger airlines notorious for overselling? __meco (talk) 12:50, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Yahoo email example
The article states: "In 2007, Yahoo! Mail announced unlimited storage[2], which would be unsustainable if every user pushed the limits." This makes no sense. What does it mean to push the limits of the limitless? Is this an encyclopedia entry or a Zen koan? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.86.59.70 (talk) 19:32, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Just Cleaned Up The Mess
Other than the definition itself, just about everything about this article was either wrong, irrelevant, or unprovable either way.

For one, the Google & Yahoo mail examples were pointless because they're free. You also can't prove that they couldn't back their claims anyway, especially since they have hundreds of billions of dollars. Until you can show they cannot provide it, saying they can't is a false accusation and probably shouldn't be done here.

Examples of hosts are nothing more than free advertising for them, also not necessary. The definition alone gives someone all the guidance they need--if they want to base their hosting choice on a meaningless buzzword that is nothing more than a marketing gimmick.

I'd suggest keeping this type of drama at places like webhostingtalk.com, where it's mostly just used for competitor-bashing anyway.

The reality of it is that the biggest hosts in the world are ALL oversellers. They're not forcing customers to stay at gunpoint, which puts into perspective just how insignificant the topic and its related drama really is.

You could also argue that all bandwidth is oversold from the top down, making it impossible for any data center to truly claim zero overselling, or any of the hosts within it. This variance can also occur throughout the chain at any point: Upstream provider -> Data Center -> Hosts' Servers -> Reseller Accounts -> Shared Hosting, etc...

It's really just a marketing gimmick regardless of which side of the fence you're on. Oversellers use it to draw people in and the smaller hosts have to make it look like a bad thing to justify charging more for less. There are great oversellers & horrible overchargers, so hosting decisions are better based on things that matter and can actually be verified. S600 (talk) 10:07, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Mobile Networks
It would be apt to add Mobile Phone Networks to this definition, such as Vodafone changing from "unlimited" mobile broadband to a small cap because they are unable to support users on their network. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.105.115.195 (talk) 14:59, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Unsourced
"It is not economically practical, environmentally reasonable, or technically feasible to provide dedicated access for every service to every customer"-how about some actual citations/proof for this biased statement(biased in favor of the isps who oversell their bandwidth). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.50.89.172 (talk) 05:17, 21 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Also, what do we do when an outside link is to a video? Or in the Deccan case, the video isn't even available? --Uncle Ed (talk) 14:46, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Remove United 3411 from the article
United Flight 3411 should be removed from this article. Flight 3411 has nothing to do with overbooking. The flight was fully booked, but not overbooked. Rather, Flight 3411 was an example of the aviation industry's "must ride" condition. A passenger was forcibly removed from Flight 3411 due to the need for a United crew member to be at the destination airport to staff a later flight. This is not overbooking, it is "must ride". --Westwind273 (talk) 08:48, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Don't sell past the close
The wiktionary definition of "Sell past the close" includes "overselling" as a synonym. This article addresses "overbooking" rather than "overselling" in the sense of selling past the close, or promising more than can be delivered. It would be helpful to address this ambiguity. Thanks. --Lbeaumont (talk) 13:29, 27 June 2019 (UTC)