DVDealer

They just ended their 25 off sale an hour early before midnight central time, which they'd always been located in before.

pilot

They can end the sale any time they want. Sometimes it would run a few hours later than scheduled. This happens every time the sale runs. Someone waits until the last possible moment, no more sale and they are unhappy.

DVDealer

Most places either list an explicit time when the sale ends on the last day, or one can usually assume that it ends at midnight in their headquarters location.

I tried to allow myself well over an hour before their CST closing time, which is more than I've done for other shops in the past, and part of my problems of getting in before midnight EST was their site navigation was broke for Safari browser on the Macintosh. It was a real chore trying to select items on their pages with their broken code.

I've never head problems with them in the past with this sort of thing. I guess this is the side effect with companies running leaner staffs in these leaner times. They must be given more flexibility when they do site changes at night. Even if that were the case though, it wouldn't take too much on the promotions to note that customers can't be guaranteed that their site will be opened up until midnight the last day, so that customers will get their orders in earlier. I think I submitted mine in right around midnight EST with discount pricing in my order listed, and I got a server error back. Tried again and no longer could get my cart with discount prices.

I wonder if this means we can call their CS line at 8:00 AM EST tomorrow morning and expect them to answer the phone then?

DVDealer

Hmm... My guess is that they must have recently moved their server farm to the east coast. If you do a server IP lookup on this page:

http://www.81solutions.com/server-location.html

... you'll find that they are listed as having their servers in Cockeysville, Maryland.

My guess is that if they've done that recently, they haven't got their time zones switched on these machines, and that they are in effect operating in EST instead of CST where the company is headquartered. Not really an excuse, since hosting services should be able to provide server farms with time zones set to where a site is officially located, but this is probably the explanation for what happened...

So in the future, unless our calls in to DeepDiscount trigger an apology and "We'll make sure and correct this" response, we probably should add note on any future coupon deal periods for them that people should make sure their orders are placed well before midnight EASTERN standard time to ensure they don't get messed up.

sandman007

^^^Or place your order before the eleventh hour of the last day of a 2 week sale.

zombeaner

This. I don't think you could find something more ridiculous to complain about if you tried.

DirkUSA

DVDealer

Just wanted to follow up on this. DeepDiscount.com CS handled my situation very well, and a patient CS rep took my order of 111 items over the phone. As noted, I think they must have relocated their servers to the east coast recently, which likely caused the "early" shutdown of the special. DD wasn't intentionally trying to cause us difficulties. I think the wise thing in the future is to get one's order in before midnight EST and allow plenty of time before that, especially when using browsers that might not be supported well (like Safari on a Mac).

He made a note to his supervisor that given that they are a CST timezone company that if they do close at midnight EST in the future, that their sales promo content (images, etc.) should be more explicit on the closing time of the sale to avoid problems like this in the future.

So I'm still a happy customer of DD and will return for more more business in the future. Others who got caught in this, please call too. I think there was at least one person that tried to get an order in right around 9 PM in the DD DVD thread. They should be able to help you.

Kevin M. Dean

I've had no problems using their site with Safari on a Mac. They were more likely having problems with overloaded servers at that time rather than browser specific issues.

DVDealer

There was definitely a content page code problem. Perhaps it was due to them being starting to update their site at that point to shut down the sale... Notice that the first table doesn't seem to be sized properly. After the sale code was pulled down though the tables then did look proper. You can see how selecting free shipping here is problematic with this going on...

davidh777

Is this why your handle is "DVDealer"?