Instead, the ultra hyped Click Frenzy experience crashed.
After teasing online bargain hunters of massive discounts across a number of online retailers, the website went down at 7pm AEDT when it was supposed to launch.
Some people saw a blank screen, other luckier surfers were directed to a 'virtual crowd control'.
After logging in again around 930pm, I managed to actually enter what seemed to be a working website, but was quickly directed back to the holding pen when I tried to create a search.
Click Frenzy did issue an apology to anyone who was inconvenienced and frustrated by the technical issues relating to the inaugural 24 hour online sale, but didn't offer any other explanation at the time of publishing this post.
It's an embarrassing blunder for the organisation behind the event, after a heavy marketing push over the past 24 hours which even saw some free-to-air television stations promote the sale in their news bulletins and current affairs shows.
Either, Click Frenzy underestimated just how popular the promotion was, pointing to great consumer online demand for goods and services, or the site was hacked.
This shouldn't have been a surprise though.
Earlier in the day, David Jones which wasn't part of the promotion launched its own nationwide online sale, only to experience technical issues itself.
Last year, the Cyber Monday campaign, a similar concept in the United States, also experienced technical glitches.
Despite record online sales on $1.22 billion, many of the top 55 retail websites crashed throughout the day.
Here, bargain shoppers were told by participating retailers to go directly to their own websites, many of which were working to access the discounted offers.
