Apologies to anyone using our Bulk UPC tool – due to unusually high server load at the moment our (free) resources are being severely stretched and it is impacting the site as a whole. Therefore we have been forced to slow down the rate of indexing by about 3x in order to ensure that our core service (UPC and reverse-UPC lookups) continue functioning.
This means that indexing will take a lot longer than before – although when you submit your list you will immediately be able to access an initial list, it just won’t be complete for quite some time.
We will have to look at some way of limiting user lookups as the service is getting quite popular and we do not have the server resources to keep servicing such a large number of requests – we have a backlog of some 300,000 lookups right now and it’s impacting the operation of the rest of the site.
The Bulk UPC tool has been a free service up until now but unfortunately the likely solution to this problem is to introduce a small fee for it going forward.
We will keep you posted.