Sales during timezone DST changes
Sensual Art
Posts: 645
I bring up this discussion because I was caught unawares of the recent summer DST changes. Had Daz customers been limited to their local time zone it would not affect so many of us. Instead many of us folks are international customers who do not regularly keep a tab on what timezone (MST or MDT) Daz is following. So here's my suggestion, if it has not already been brought up:
1) Announce the sales end time in UTC (there's a reason UTC exists) instead of MST/MDT. Let people from different geographies interprete it based on their current local timezone or local DST settings. OR
2) Implement a simple javascript countdown timer on the sales page which displays how much time is left before the sale ends irrespective of timezones or DST settings (Ever been to Steampowered.com during holidays?). OR
3) Allow users to specify their timezones in their user account section. Then use this information to transparently convert and display the time across the website based on the users local timezone This approach is used by most bulletin boards. OR
4) Assuming most DST changes are effective by an hour at max, silently accomodate an additional hour before closing the previous days sales. This may be followed for a week to "acclamatize" non MST/MDT users about the DST changes in place. This may be the least acceptable option ... just for the sake of consideration.
In any case, please bear in mind that there could be several international customers who do not have DST settings in their countries so it is natural for them to be taken by surprise when a DST change is implemented silently in the background.
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Comments
Announced ending time or countdown clock for DAZ sales has been a frequently proposed and equally frequently ignored idea. Linking it to time zone changes seems even less likely. So despite it's general appearance as a good idea, I wouldn't hold my breath.
I was going to take part in the sale, but suddenly the day started an hour earlier.
I very much second your suggestions. And also, I hope there is a similar Genesis sale coming up in the next few months.
Anyone seen the dead horse?
The Daz forums and help desk system does take the user timezone in consideration. All they have to do is extend it to their shop. How difficult would that be?
Normally I wouldn't comment on something that is quite obvious, but let's for a moment suppose you own a business in Germany are you going to run your business and sales by local time or by say Pacific coast time zone.in the US. A business runs by the local time and not by people who are in completely different times zones Part of the year I live in Kiev Ukraine and other half in Central time zone of the US do a time conversion like I do how difficult is it to google time.conversion. Just isnn't feasiblte to accomodate every time zone..
I dang near tripped over it
Converting a time zone from one to another is NOT the issue. The issue is about keeping track of DST changes for folks who are not accustomed to DST. For example, in my country we are very lucky to follow a single timezone without any DST settings throughout the year. So when we see a different timezone we mentally note the difference in hours from our timezone. Subsequently, we do not have to rely on Google or timeanddate.com or any phone app to do the conversion everytime. We just add/subtract the hours .... mentally.
The DST changes breaks this pattern.
Moreover, Daz 3D is no longer doing business only locally. The bakery near my street corner has the luxury to follow only local timezone but a merchant who sells internationally always runs the risk of confusing and alienating its global customers if they follow the same practices back at home. I am not expecting a company like Daz to deal with multiple languages or multiple currencies (which would have been great BTW) but at least address the DST change issue which is not standardized across the world. Neither, I am expecting Daz to run business as per my local timezone. I am only expecting Daz to follow some of established industry practices while dealing with international customers.
What established industry practices? Daz is hardly the only online business that operates by their local timezone.
Just because some companies (mostly ones much larger than DAZ and able to staff 24 hours) do things like that doesn't make it a standard practice.
The bottomline here is to calculate how much time does one have before a sales runs out.
All options in OP above are just different means to achieve that; atleast trying to make it less painful for some of us.
It should be no trouble at all to put a little spot in a prominent place in the site header displaying the current local time to those of us who are elsewhere. Not that it would be a lot of good if Daz neglected to mention what time each sale was ending, but they do seem to be getting a bit better about that lately.
With regard to how difficult it is to google a time conversion, sales already mean lengthy bouts of mental gymnastics to figure out what a lot of the offers mean, time spent running up calculations because the cart price can never be relied on, and very often time spent going through a dozen or more pages of sale items because they're not marked as such in the wishlist. There aren't enough hours in the day already.
The industry practices I am referring to are the various successful approaches that different websites take to accomodate international customers. when I say successful, I mean where you won't find customers complaining about such issues.
Operating by their local timezone is again NOT the issue here. Local regulations may even mandate that they follow local timings for business. I don't care if the sales date in the invoices are specified in UTC or MDT/MST timezones as long as the timezone used is clearly mentioned in the invoice. I am just saying that it doesn't have to be painful for international just to follow the sales.
No one mentioned anything about the need for staffing 24 hours. I can't even expect that level of commitment from Daz (towards international customers) when they don't even follow simple multiple timezone handling techniques. Just let me know if I am expecting anything unreasonable here. Or am I expecting anything that doesn't provide appreciable value within reasonable costs.
Speaking of costs - it may be helpful just to check the support queue about how many tickets they have to handle to accomodate customers who missed sales due to the DST changes. Does this not involve easily avoidable costs at Daz's end?
How much would it cost to implement a simple ticker on the sales page than to handle so many disgruntled customers?
Given that I haven't shopped anywhere that has these industry practices, I'm just not seeing the need for Daz to do anything different. I get all kinds of 'flash sale' emails from various companies including large chains that don't feel the need to say anything more than a start time, time zone, and sometimes duration. They don't give UTC, just 'Flash sale starts 7:00 AM PST'. They don't alter their store pages beyond showing the discounts. No timers, no timezone conversions. Part of it is a common sales gimmick of making the offer something a customer has to rush to get.
I don't think it'd be unreasonable to request such things, but expecting them is a bit much. And as has been pointed out in many many other discussions on the forums, we don't know the number of customers contacting support about this or any other issue so assuming there's 'so many' disgruntled is just speculation.
Agreed!
Your best bet is to fill out a support ticket with your percieved issue and maybe even your ideas for solutions so DAZ can respond to it.
I did raise a support request for my transaction which happened during the DST change and Customer Support have responded favorably for my request of refund. Its just that I had to go through the loop of customer support which increases the turn around time of resolution due to ... again timezone difference. This issue probably would not have been there for me (and probably many like me) in the first place if simple measures would have been put up.
As far as the gimmick of sales is concerned - it is rather the criteria for the discounts - "Items have to be in cart simultaneously" that forces us to delay the checkout until we are convinvced that we have leveraged the full potential of the offer. There aren't many offers (except that Girl 7 Pro bundle one) which factors items already purchased. If Daz followed more offers like this, atleast I would have settled for individual item purchases rather than multiple item purchase in single transaction and then facing the DST low blow during checkout.
P.S.: The quality of customer support here is one of the major factors why I am still spending my cash here.
I highly recommend you to spend sometime at the Steam website especially during holidays. Probably then you would understand the background I am coming from. If the Steam folks would have been complacent towards international customers they wouldn't have been what they are today. Their support for international customers do not just end in supporting multiple currencies but extends to adjust the prices as per the inflation rate (due to lack of a better term) of the individual countries.
While it may not be fair to compare Daz with Steam, but even simple forums and bulletin boards whose source of revenue are solely ad based are able to address multiple time zones very effectively using one of the approches I mentioned above. Even these Daz forums display the time of the posts as per my local timezone and not as per MST/MDT. So I believe the tools to handle multiple timezones are already in place. They just have to extend it to their sales and promotion pages.
For the countdown timer there are several freely available "jQuery countdown scripts" which can be directly incorporated in the sales page without requiring much development or testing and make the life much easier for all of us.
On Windows 8 + 10 click the little clock/date on bottom right corner, choose 'date/time preferences' (might be named different as I translate from german language here). Don't know about Windows 7, but might be there as well. On Windows 8 there is a tab 'additional clocks', on Windows 10 it's a similar link at the bottom of the window - go there, add another clock set to '(UTC -07:00) Mountain Time' (it's not called MDT or something, but should show up correctly), name it DAZtime and save. Now you can click the clock/date or hover mouse over it and you'll see what time it is in DAZland beside your local time.
Note: Actually I think it is Mountain Time respective MDT over there, but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. I've read Utah few times here on forums.
Silly Rabbit!
I see one item with a countdown timer on Steam, the rest of the stuff has an end date,and only few items indicate an end time. Those that do, indicate it in Pacific time zone time.
I've been on a number of sites where the forums keep time in their local time zone setting. I've also shopped at plenty of foreign sites without feeling any need for them to have to adjust prices to suit exchange rates or even support my currency at all. If a site chooses to accomodate these things as a courtesy, that's wonderful, but it's not something I demand of them.
I've also slept through plenty of short term sales because I was on a shift that made being awake for those sales impractical.
edit: I also think that rather than the offering of convenience features for international customers getting Steam to where they are, it's more that getting to where they are has enabled them to be able to offer those conveniences.
Yes, a Daz local time clock would be much appreciated and simple to implement.
I prefer not to have to contact customer support, so when something unexpected happens in a sale, I may prefer not to bother with it, which I suppose a lot of other people do as well and that doesn't translate into suport tickets.
My my, I never knew you could do that! I'm on Windows 7 and it's there too. I now have my own time and "DAZ-Time" (currently 6 hours behind) Thanks so much
You should probably check during holidays when the discounted sales volumes are at their peak. 4th July would be the next best time I guess. Also, there is often something on sale during Wednesdays and weekends. You can track any of the item on sale to get a feel on how they handle timezone difference. I assume you have logged in and set your time zone preference there. The only thing that remains consistent across timezones is the countdown timer which shows up only if there are less than 24 hours (or may be the coutdown begins at 48 these days) before the sale ends. Timezones matter only during the last 24 hours of a sale. Rest of the time only a date is sufficient.
Let's see it this way: The issues that any international customer faces dealing with timezone differences are gated through the same support team which deals with domestic customers as well. And given the present circumstances, I assume, they are already stressed to their capacity. So it doesn't help Daz or the domestic customers if the international customers face issues. We are all drinking from the same well.
I am NOT asking to change the timing of offers. They can continue to start and end the offer based upon their local timezone - MDT/MSt or whatever. Just help the international customers calculate the exact start and end times so that we don't have to bother Daz in turn. That's all.
The additional windows clock only shows the current time and automatically compensates for DST changes. I am not sure if that notifies users in advance when the DST changes are going to kick in. Let me know if it can do that? But thanks for the tip anyways!
The issue that I have raised here is about knowing in advance when the DST changes get applied and impact sale timings. The countdown timer approach addresses this exact issue.
Actually, there are several items on Sale each ending at different times. Use this link https://steamdb.info/sales/?merged=true to sort the items by the "Ends In" column. Then click on the tiny black icon (visible on hover) on the extreme left of the row to go to the Steam page to see the countdown timer for any item whose sale is ending in less that 2 days (48 hours). For other items only a sale end date is displayed.
You can even see countdown timers at Amazon if you checkout the daily deals: http://www.amazon.com/gp/goldbox/ref=nav_cs_gb
And I say: So? Daz should in no way feel obligated or expected to do what Steam or Amazon do. Like any convenience, if they choose to offer it, that's nice, but it's not something that should be required.
Then I hope you don't mind if your support tickets get delayed while they are addressing issues which could have been easily avoided.
From what I've seen, there's no change they could make that wouldn't lead to just as many complaints for some other random thing they should do to make things easier for some segment of the customer base. Much like every other store on the internet. I'm pretty sure Amazon and Steam get plenty of complaints about how the way they run their sales is inconvenient in some fashion.
Yes you can set up additional clocks in WIn7. I have one for my time zone and one for Daz. As soon as you click on your time both clocks come up so you can always tell when that deadline is approaching.