Be careful of orders at 11:57 Utah time
winmath
Posts: 140
I placed and order around 11:57 DAZ time 4/1/2014. Each checkout screen showed the price at 30.48. I guess I pressed the final "place order" button at midnight ( or a few seconds before) since the price on the screen was 30.48 but I was charged $57 dollars. I was even charged full price for the April fools day item although it was free the next day. I got a punch for one of the items since it was "still" punch worthy but not the discount.
I'm still waiting for DAZ to straighten this out. They so far have offered to give me a refund for the "free" item and a 30% (instead of 55%) discount on two of the items that were part of the March Madness sale on 4/1.
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Comments
Set your clocks 15 minutes ahead that way you have time to finish the order, or better yet, don't wait till midnight, LOL. .
Nice of DAZ to help on this since they really didn't do anything wrong in the first place.
Not everybody's computer clocks are set to the correct time. I think it would reduce troubles if we could see the "Official DAZ Time" in the upper left or right corner of all DAZ shopping cart pages.
Alternatively, DAZ could synchronize to EBAY time +1 hour.
Or NIST.
Or my workstation. I'd be happy to set that up. :P
Actually they have not helped, or issued a refund yet, and they did several things wrong.
1. They showed me one price through all of the checkout screens including the order review screen and when I confirmed they charged me another price. Instead they should have re-displayed the order review screen with a new price so I would have a chance to reconfirm or cancel the order.
2. They don't use web sessions on the server. Instead they check the price of the product against their database each time a customer submit a checkout screen. However while they are messing with their database the price that ends up on the customer's cart can widely vary. From other postings I've seen in the forums this sometimes results in drastic discounts or over charges. Most likely but not exclusively at midnight. In my case I was charged full price for items that were still on sale.
3. The DAZ servers are sometimes slow and it takes several minutes for the transaction to complete. Again good web practice would be to use session caching on the servers during sales transactions. That way the price the customer agrees to at the beginning of the transaction will not change as long as the customer completes the transaction before a timeout period (up to 30 minutes).
Is #3 customary (from web transaction and accounting standpoint) and how does it mess up the accounting?
For example, sale ends at 11:59:59.9999, but some orders came in at 00:00, 00:01, falling into the new day.
Heh, and even if it were me, and I was going to employ #3 in the face of certain internal accounting rules, I'd probably be tempted to change the end of the sale to 23:29.59.9999999, with that same 30 minute timeout. :roll:
But I only partially jest because then all you've done is shorten the sale "for most people" and made it harder for EVERYBODY to know when the end of the sale REALLY occurs.
And the upshot is, youse takes you's chances when nearing the end of the accounting day. But at least they've said they're going to fix it. And they will, I'm sure. I've never heard of them saying they'll fix it and then ignoring it...
Actually they have not helped, or issued a refund yet, and they did several things wrong.
1. They showed me one price through all of the checkout screens including the order review screen and when I confirmed they charged me another price. Instead they should have re-displayed the order review screen with a new price so I would have a chance to reconfirm or cancel the order.
2. They don't use web sessions on the server. Instead they check the price of the product against their database each time a customer submit a checkout screen. However while they are messing with their database the price that ends up on the customer's cart can widely vary. From other postings I've seen in the forums this sometimes results in drastic discounts or over charges. Most likely but not exclusively at midnight. In my case I was charged full price for items that were still on sale.
3. The DAZ servers are sometimes slow and it takes several minutes for the transaction to complete. Again good web practice would be to use session caching on the servers during sales transactions. That way the price the customer agrees to at the beginning of the transaction will not change as long as the customer completes the transaction before a timeout period (up to 30 minutes).
DAZ Customer Service does not work weekends. CS works Monday through Friday 9 to 5 Mountain Time US (most states and counties are on Daylight Savings now). Depending upon any number of factors, you may get a response in as little as one business day or as many as 5 (though if the backlog is large it has taken up to ten business days on one occasion).
The store prices tend to glitchy during change over. The products you were buying, were they due to go off sale at midnight DAZ time or were they supposed to remain on sale the entire weekend? If they were on for the weekend, it's usually a good bet to avoid making purchases when the severs are trying going through change over.
Sometimes the completion of a transaction is not the fault of the DAZ servers but the issuance and receipt of confirmation code from your payment method. As for session caching, I doubt DAZ is going to give buyers a 30 minute window after a sale ends to make their purchases.
If the product you were charged full price for are currently on sale, take a screenshot of the pages showing the sale prices and add them to the ticket you sent to DAZ. I've had this happen a couple of times over the years. DAZ issues a store credit for the difference without a problem.
If the items you purchased went off sale at midnight DAZ time, I can only suggest you open a ticket if you haven't, explain what happened and see if CS can help you in any way.
I've had a ticket in since 4/2 (Wednesday). I asked for a order cancellation or to be charged the original sale price. The only reply I got was asking if I want slight discount. Which would have amounted to me paying more than the 4/1 or 4/2 pricing.
As for session caching. It's per customer web session, not for the whole server. If any customer starts the a checkout transaction before midnight, that customer has a certain amount of time to complete the transaction at the starting price. If they don't they get a timeout message not a higher price. This does not mean the sales price in in effect for anyone who starts the checkout at midnight or later.
Another option is to halt all order transactions or take the server down for maintenance during price changes. My agency and a number of banks, credit cards companies, and other business follow this method.
Last night I kept refreshing the March Madness page. It took about 20-25 minutes for all the sale items to appear. So I guess it's a crap shoot to order between 11:57 (11:50 if using paypal) and 12:30 MST.
Daylight saving threw a lot of us people on the other side of the globe out of whack as to what Daz time is.
I always avoid midnight mountain time
Somehow in 50 years of driving I've learned that if I slow my car down before I reach the stoplight I have less chance of unnecessary panic or accident. Just sayin'... 8-o
The prices and total cost on the last form submitted by a customer should not be changed and processed without the customer's approval.... the order should be reshown to the user with the changes indicated and whatever explanation so the user has the option to cancel or proceed with the order.