DDD 20% Off Sale? (1 Viewer)

[Jeff D]

I don't agree that what DDD was right. True the sale ran for many days, but as often is the case this sneaks up on you. When you discover there's a big sale you spend some time creating your shopping list and getting it right. This often takes many days for those of us who lead busy lives.

You sit down at your computer hours before you expect the sale to end and halfway through your ordering the sale ends. I didn't see they had a Central Time listed as the end time. Maybe it did, but I've never run into this problem in the past. Lucky for me I only had three items in my cart... robots, wizard of oz SE and Cinderella. Cinderella was cheaper at target today. Robots was kinda an impulse buy, so I'm only really missing out on wizard of oz. But, I'm still upset I'm missing out on that. Time to find it cheaper elsewhere!

 

[Random Hero]

RyanAn, you've got great taste. Lots of good stuff in your orders.

 

[Doug Pyle]

OK, here's the vote so far on Fair / Unfair.

Was it fair for DDD to expire the coupons at about midnight in their specific time zone, for customers, in all time zones, without stating in the announcements what time zone would rule?

FAIR: 5 votes
New York - 2 votes
Vermont - 1 vote
Georgia - 1 vote
Indiana - 1 vote

UNFAIR: 4 votes
California - 3 votes
Hawaii - 1 vote

Midnight arrives sooner in the East than the West, so everyone east may order to midnight. Westerners must figure out which time zone DDD does business in, then consider if it follows daylight savings, then calculate when midnight comes out East.

Curious, the East thinks it is fair, the West unfair. Wonder why that is?

(Tally based on member profile of posters. Though I think it unwise for a business to forget its customers from all time zones they serve, I did get my order in on time. Great sale. Thanks DDD, and looking forward to the next sale!)

- Doug

 

[David Ruiz]

I live in California and I think that what DDD was totally fair. The fact is that the sale ran for a very long time and just reading everyone's posts in this thread, almost everyone placed 3 orders or more (I too, placed 3 orders). So how is it that most of us can get 3 orders placed well before the sale expired and some can't get in, a single order?

I agree with everyone else that said that people who waited until the last minute were "asking for it" because of the many things that could happen, for instance, the internet not working, or the site crashing or whatever.

Doug, please be sure to edit your post with my vote.

 

[JohnRice]

I'm in Colorado, which should be far enough West, and I think people have to take some responsibility for themselves. Count me in as one who would never wait until the last minute, particularly if I lived on the West coast. OK, sure, DDD should specify the time zone the sale ends. Still, as was already mentioned, waiting until the last minute is foolish. There are just too many things which can go wrong. And if your life is so packed with things to do, as was also mentioned, that you have no tiime to go to the sale before the last couple hours, then there would be no time to watch movies in the first place and you wouldn't care about the sale. If getting things on this sale is so incredibly important, than it is incumbent on YOU to make a little effort to be certain you make the deadline. If a specific time zone isn't mentioned, take it upon yourself to be a few hours early. I did as someone else suggested. I looked through possible things to buy before the sale started and put them in my wish list, then making the purchase was easy. It was a good suggestion.

 

[Brook K]

I gotta agree, a 9-day sale, don't wait until the last minute. Plus at least for me, this is the DVD buying event of the year. I already know what I want well in advance of them announcing the sale. It was just a matter of how much I wanted to spend.

The Brown Bunny
The Bird With the Crystal Plummage 2D
Firefly (Christmas present for wife)
Criterions:
Fighting Elegy
M
Tunes of Glory
Ugetsu
Harakiri
Crazed Fruit
Le Notti Bianche
Hoop Dreams

 

[David Ruiz]

Me too. As I stated in my first post (in this thread) I already had a very long list of about 150 titles that I wanted to buy way before the sale was announced and from there, it was quite easy, since I already knew what I wanted. All I had to do then was just put them in my shopping cart and check out.

I ended up buying 12 DVDs in the 3 orders that I placed (4 DVDs in each order). We all had plenty of time to place orders.

 

[Citizen87645]

This has been an interesting debate. I'm in the camp that says it COULD have been more clear, but if it was so important why wait until the last minute? Usually when I'm ambivalent about making a purchase I will wait until the last minute. If something goes wrong, then it's my out and part of me will feel relieved. Oh, and I'm on the West Coast.

 

[Dah-Dee]

I agree!

 

[Dah-Dee]

My orders:

LE SAMOURAI (CRITERION) SHIPPED 1 $17.24 1 11/17/05 $17.24
UGETSU (CRITERION) SHIPPED 1 $23.00 1 11/17/05 $23.00
POKEMON MASTER QUEST-QUEST 2 BACKORDER 1 $21.11 0 ~11/25/05 N/A


THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA IN PROCESS 1 $26.57 0 N/A N/A
CHRISTMAS IN AUGUST (SE) BACKORDER 1 $7.88 0 ~11/26/05 N/A


GREAT ADAPTATIONS (CRITERION) IN PROCESS 1 $57.56 0 N/A N/A
REBEL SAMURAI-60'S SWORDPLAY (CRIT IN PROCESS 1 $57.56 0 N/A N/A


SHORT CUTS (CRITERION) BACKORDER 1 $23.00 0 ~11/29/05 N/A
THE SWORD OF DOOM IN PROCESS 1 $17.24 0 N/A N/A
HARAKIRI (CRITERION) IN PROCESS 1 $23.00 0 N/A N/A

 

[Mike Frezon]

My son was given the topic for a paper at the beginning of his school year in September. It was due at October's end on a Monday (basically two months to read the book and write the report). He got desperately sick the week before it was due. He ended up handing it in two days late. The teacher heard nothing of his argument that he was seriously ill and docked him severely for lateness. The teacher's point: he shouldn't have left it for the last few days. I didn't necessarily agree with the teacher's hard stance, but I really hope my son took away an extremely valuable life lesson.

I STILL hope that a customer service rep. at DDD gives John his order...but, if they don't, that's fully within their rights.

 

[Steve_CC]

My order was placed back on the 15th and is still listed as open. At least my card hasn't been charged yet but I'm really wondering what the hold up is.

 

[nolesrule]

You mean besides the fact that everytime they have one of these sales, they get slammed with orders?

 

[RyanAn]

Thanks! I vary from Clarrisa to Jake the Snake to Cirque du Soleil to Zombies,


-

Regardless of whether I live in the East or Midwest, I still am responsible enough to realize that sales are only temporary. I managed to get three orders in on time - the last being early morning on the final day. For all we knew, the sale was going to end at 12:01 am midnight - after all the sale actually began half a day early.

I am sorry that you missed the wicked awesome savings, but don't worry, DDD is nice and we should have another sale soon.


Ryan

 

[David Ruiz]

This is a little bit different than what we've been talking about, or at least, it is in my opinion. Most people that I personally know are all procrastinators, so when we were given a paper to write for school and we had two or more months to write the paper, we'd all wait until the very last minute to write it, BECAUSE IT WAS SOMETHING THAT WE DID NOT ACTUALLY WANT TO DO. That's a very, very important reason to account for. The fact is that writing a paper on a topic that you hate, for school, is not very fun, so of course you're going to wait until the last minute to start working on it because you don't want to do it at all.

The sale was something different. One doesn't (or at least one SHOULDN'T) procrastinate on a sale, if they honestly want to buy stuff. Shopping for DVDs is a hell of a lot of fun and I can't imagine why anyone would wait until the last minute to place orders. I was so excited about the sale, I couldn't wait to place my orders in. I wasn't going to wait until the last minute of the last day to place it.

It was kind of "hinted" at, by someone up above, that maybe the reason why the person who didn't get his order in on time, didn't really want to order the DVDs in the first place, which would make perfect sense to me. I mean, how long does it take to place an order when you already have a general idea of what you already want? 2 minutes? If you really, REALLY want those DVDs, you'd take 2 minutes out of your day to place the order.

 

[EmmaAU]

Well, I live in Calif. and I think the sale was totally fair. Whoever it was that complained about his last-minute order not being accepted needs to take responsibility for his own actions. I'm sure that in the back of his mind he knew there was a possibility that the sale would be over before midnight Pacific time, but he took a chance and unfortunately lost. Next time he'll know better. I got my two orders in the same box today:

CARRY ON COLLECTION (7D) $ 31.89
HOUSE OF ELIOTT-1ST SERIES $ 31.20
EERIE INDIANA-COMPLETE SERIES $ 16.78
LAW & ORDER CI-1ST SEASON $ 23.89
LAW & ORDER CI-3RD SEASON $ 23.89
PIRATES OF SILICON VALLEY $ 11.51
FOYLE'S WAR SET 3 $ 31.20
NICHOLAS NICKLEBY (SE) $ 7.29

 

[Patrick_S]

Wow I never thought my comments would generate so many misguided responses.

First of all let me clarify that I did not miss getting an order in due to the early West Coast cut off so I have no personal stack in what happened. As business consultant who goes into companies and evaluates their lines of business operations so that “best practice” procedures can be put into place I simply found what happened to be a fascinating case study.

Since I’m evaluating this purely from a business practices stance, I’m not going to bother addressing any of the comments that concern “personal responsibility” because they simply are worthless in that they are irrelevant to the topic.

In a previous post I used the word “unacceptable” and considering the relevant facts I stand by that as a fair description of DDD’s implementation of the sale.

I agree with everyone that DDD, like any other retailer, has the right to end a sale when ever they choose. Since their market place is the entire world I do consider it a mistake not to clarify exactly when a sales ends. It is that kind of oversight I expect from start ups, but DDD is far from a start up so such a mistake is unacceptable as a business practice because it reeks of amateurism. In retail you just can’t take the chance of alienating any potential customers simply because you failed to think things through. It doesn’t take a Six Sigma belt to understand that concept since it is as old as the retail business itself.

I will address some of the comments that were made concerning business operations.
Not to pick on Pat but this quote clearly shows a real lack of knowledge concerning the e-commerce business model. It assumes that someone was actually at DDD processing orders until 12am Central time. E-commerce is all about cost efficiency through automation. It’s highly unlikely that anyone involved in order processing was still in the building at 12am. Most likely the only ones there were the IT people who have to be there in case something goes wrong. Who knows? There might not even be IT people there 24/7 if they are comfortable with their warning notification systems. (A cost cutting practice I often advise the retailers I work with to avoid.)

That being the case the logic of stopping a sale as stated in Pat’s comments really doesn’t hold weight since it’s unlikely to have affected anyone’s work hours.(By the way isn’t Hawaii only four hours behind Central time?)

It was an arbitrary decision to stop the sale according to Central time. A decision, that if executed properly, I don’t have a problem with even though I do find it to be somewhat provincial in this era of e-commerce.

I suggested to John that he call the customer service line because I was interested to see what their response would and I’m hoping that he reports back on what happens.

 

[Mike Frezon]

Sorry, David, I disagree.

Procrastinatin' is procrastinatin'...whatever the motivation. And some people procrastinate even if what they're doing is fun and gives them pleasure.

Hopefully my son learned the lesson that the best way to proceed on a big paper is to get started early--not only to meet the deadline, but also to end up with a better product. If he had done this, he would have gotten a better grade because it was a better paper and becaue it would not have been late. A better grade would increase his chances at a better semester grade which could actually have an impact on whether he gets into the college of his choice when that time comes (which is coming fast!).

If you put anything off to the last minute, you are playing with fire and likely to get burned.

My son got burned by getting sick just before the paper was due and by not putting in the proper amount of effort early in the window of the project.

John got burned by waiting until the last minute to place his order with DDD. We don't even know his motivations for not placing the order earlier. Speculating that maybe he didn't really want to order the DVDs seems silly. He's furious at DDD for shutting him out of the discounted order. Furious enough to call customer service and give them a piece of his mind. And, I don't think any of us want to pretend to reach deep into his psyche to see if there was some deep, dark reason why he knew he shouldn't order those DVDs. That would be irresponsible and foolish seeing as to how much time we've spent discussing this. Maybe he just found out about the sale on 11-19 and was rushing to place his order. We won't know until he tells us.

But, whatever the case may be...the whole problem would have been avoided (for both my son and for John) if they had finished their task well ahead of the deadline. That's the simple lesson in both cases.

 

[Patrick Sun]

For DDD, it's very likely their servers are on CST, so when it turns 11/20/05 at midnight, their servers refused the coupons. End of story.

BTW, as I work in the IT world, I was looking at it from an IT POV w/r/t to DDD employees getting to bed at a decent hour (i.e., making sure the DDD servers are up and running while the orders rolled into their servers).

I just can't see DDD turning off the coupons another 8 hours past midnight CST just to satisfy the entire world in terms of the 11/19/05 expiration date. In a dream world, that might happen, but DDD has no obligation to do so, even in e-commerce.

 

[David Ruiz]

Point taken.