Customers locked out of Virgin Megastore's online sale

Virgin Megastore Online remained inaccessible throughout the weekend, it?s servers apparently unable to handle a surge in shoppers looking to take advantage of a 50-percent-off Labor Day sale.

The site crashed Friday morning, according to a company spokeswoman, and visitors received "server error" messages throughout the day. The site also was inaccessible during repeated attempts yesterday and today.

Because of the server overload, the half-off sale, which was originally scheduled to end Friday evening, was extended through 8 p.m. PT yesterday. The discount was then lowered to 20 percent through midnight Monday.

But as of late today, it appeared that most visitors were unable to take advantage of either discount, which could leave Virgin Megastore with more disgruntled customers than happy ones.

Throughout the weekend, visitors to the site received this message: ?Thanks for visiting Virgin Megastore Online's Labor Day Weekend Frenzy. Due to the enormous turn-out, the check out lines are currently full. Please try again a little later.?

VirginMega.com is the online branch of the Virgin Megastore music retailer. The site's troubles echo those of Amway site Quixtar, which has struggled to get up-and-running this week.

Persistent outages also have plagued online auction leader eBay this year.