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Extended Sale Due to Downtime?

tacticalrooktacticalrook Member Posts: 810 Arc User
Would this be the right thing to do if the game were to be unavailable during the final couple of hours of the sale?
/channel_join grind

Comments

  • soulxsinosoulxsino Member Posts: 30 Arc User
    But the sales were around for the past few days already. If it was a 24hr only sale maybe.
  • alcyoneserenealcyoneserene Member Posts: 2,414 Arc User
    For this reason it may be a good idea to aim to acquire goods in the in-between advertised period: too early and the bonus on whatever may not have been applied yet, too late and outages can happen (and this applies to your own internet, and PC, and unexpected real life events, not just the servers).

    I've delayed getting the fleet versions of the new science cross-faction pack because of problems with cloak on the klingon one, and apparently a skin issue, which if/when they get fixed may or may not translate into the fleet one which cannot be dismissed without deleting it and re-buying it all over again.

    Prudence.
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  • tacticalrooktacticalrook Member Posts: 810 Arc User
    Seems the hardest hit were the patient folks who bought zens just before the disruption, but weren't able to spend them while the sale prices should have been available.
    /channel_join grind
  • marcusdkanemarcusdkane Member Posts: 7,439 Arc User
    soulxsino wrote: »
    But the sales were around for the past few days already. If it was a 24hr only sale maybe.
    And if someone has only just been able to get round to making their purchases due to other circumstances? Genuinely missing out is one thing, missing out due to a premature and unannounced server outage cutting the sale short, is something entirely different... ;)
  • ltminnsltminns Member Posts: 12,573 Arc User
    They have extended the C-Store Sale to 12 Noon PST. In fact the C-Store Sale was supposed to run on Friday (to early on Saturday) and stop and then again on Monday (to today), but it seemed that it went straight through from Friday to now. That was a heck of a long Black Friday Sale. And I am not speaking about the Zen Bonus, which was supposed to go straight through.

    I am really surprised there were no tinfoil hat posts about the amount of the Sale (25%) and its length means that they were in big financial trouble. :)
    'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
    Judge Dan Haywood
    'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
    l don't know.
    l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
    That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
    Lt. Philip J. Minns
  • nccmarknccmark Member Posts: 1,084 Arc User
    edited November 2016
    Nvm
  • marcusdkanemarcusdkane Member Posts: 7,439 Arc User
    nccmark wrote: »
    "due to circumstances"

    That's nonsense. I agree that a posted sale should last at least as long as posted. But this idea that your circumstances should give you special considerations is sheer nonsense.
    If you're going to quote me for the sake of discussion, please do so completely, and don't try and put words in my mouth...

    I never said that anyone's circumstances merits them getting 'special considerations'...

    I said:
    soulxsino wrote: »
    But the sales were around for the past few days already. If it was a 24hr only sale maybe.
    And if someone has only just been able to get round to making their purchases due to other circumstances? Genuinely missing out is one thing, missing out due to a premature and unannounced server outage cutting the sale short, is something entirely different... ;)

    Some people will have had things to do over the weekend... Some people will have had things to do today... For example, I had to travel to a dental appointment, then get groceries and do banking to put cash into the account I use for online transactions, and then I had to help my mother in law (recently moved) move some stuff around... The earliest opportunity I was able to log on today, because I took a few minutes to sit down and have lunch and a coffee, was about 5 minutes before the outage hit... Had I known that there was an outage coming which could have prematurely ended the sale, I would have skipped the coffee and postponed lunch...

    I was just lucky that my Zen purchase went through onto my account prior to the outage; some people's payments seem to be in limbo...

    Cryptic have extended the sale in compensation for the downtime... That is NOT giving anyone 'special considerations', it's simply providing people with the timeframe of offer which they promised... I WAS NOT saying that circumstances (mine or anyone's) merited 'special consideration'; I was pointing out, that people's circumstances may have prevented them from getting online during the rest of the promotional period, in response to the irrelevant comment that the sale had been on for a few days... It doesn't matter if the sale has been running a day or a year... If someone is only able to access it within a certain timeframe, then that is the only time they can have to access it, and so it's understandable why people in that situation, would be frustrated that there was an outage while they were trying to make transactions (involving Real Money) And that if someone simply misses out on the sale because they left it late and the timeframe expires, then that's frustrating, but that's life, but if they are prevented from taking advantage of the offer (for other reasons) then that is a different matter entirely...

    Example:

    Apple announce a 25% off sale which has to be collected in-store, and will only run 24 hours...

    Twenty two hours into the sale, they turn off the lights, lock the doors, and take the phones off the hook, meaning that the people queuing outside can't buy anything...

    I'm not saying that one person in the queue deserves to be let inside over anyone else in the queue, I'm saying, that if they were only get to the store in Hour 23, it sucks that the store is locked up two hours early...

    Cryptic have said they are extending the period of the sale to make up for the downtime, so those last-minute purchases can indeed be made...

    So to go back to the store example, if the store has to close because there's a power-cut, a reasonable company would honor the remaining two hours of the sale, once the power comes back on, allowing them to continue trading... And if the store closes two hours before the end of the sale due to a power-cut, that is a huge difference to the staff simply closing the doors early and ignoring the people queuing outside...

    Big Difference to what you've tried to imply I was saying...

  • leemwatsonleemwatson Member Posts: 5,602 Arc User
    Simply put, Cryptic can and will only extend any promotion if there is a geniune issue on their end only, which they do. However the ability to do so is at their descretion, not the players.
    "You don't want to patrol!? You don't want to escort!? You don't want to defend the Federation's Starbases!? Then why are you flying my Starships!? If you were a Klingon you'd be killed on the spot, but lucky for you.....you WERE in Starfleet. Let's see how New Zealand Penal Colony suits you." Adm A. Necheyev.
  • marcusdkanemarcusdkane Member Posts: 7,439 Arc User
    leemwatson wrote: »
    Simply put, Cryptic can and will only extend any promotion if there is a geniune issue on their end only, which they do. However the ability to do so is at their descretion, not the players.
    Precisely...

    It's not even so much a case of them having an obligation to provide an extension to the offer, but a decent company would acknowledge that circumstances (essentially of the company's causing*) prevented people from accessing the offer withing the original timeframe, so they extended the offer to provide that time... The reasonable thing to do B)




    *Coincidental that the PC server goes down at the same time as scheduled Console maintenance? I think not... I suspect someone 'flipped the wrong switch'
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  • marcusdkanemarcusdkane Member Posts: 7,439 Arc User
    azrael605 wrote: »
    From what I've been gathering the PC going down was not scheduled or intentional & had to do with a weather related issue.
    So purely coincidental that it coincided with the scheduled maintenance for consoles? Heh, that's pretty ironic :D

  • salazarrazesalazarraze Member Posts: 3,794 Arc User
    Would this be the right thing to do if the game were to be unavailable during the final couple of hours of the sale?
    No. The sale is 3 days long, in part, because of the possibility of this happening.
    When you see "TRIBBLE" in my posts, it's because I manually typed "TRIBBLE" and censored myself.
  • meimeitoomeimeitoo Member Posts: 12,594 Arc User
    Black Friday ended on Monday, right? The small outage occured Thursday afternoon. Timezones don't count, as the sale ended at the same time, everywhere. Way I figure this, Cryptic doesn't owe anyone anything.
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  • marcusdkanemarcusdkane Member Posts: 7,439 Arc User
    edited November 2016
    meimeitoo wrote: »
    Black Friday ended on Monday, right? The small outage occured Thursday afternoon. Timezones don't count, as the sale ended at the same time, everywhere. Way I figure this, Cryptic doesn't owe anyone anything.
    It's not about Black Friday, or Cyber Monday, or when those culturally-dictated price-reductions occur, but a case of Cryptic's offer running for a set time (which they gave the time-frame for) and for whatever reason, the server went down unannounced, meaning that people who were trying to make transactions were unable to...

    Like I said with my shop example... If a store has to close due to power cut while running a time-sensitive promotion, a decent company will honor the lost time from the closure by extending the sale-window accordingly... A sh*tty company will just close the doors two hours early, and laugh at the people queuing outside who weren't able to get there sooner, and say it's out of their hands, because the power went out...

    Cryptic honored the time lost due to the outage, so they behaved honorably in this instance B)

    What I didn't like to see, was "What can we expect to see Black Friday?"... The entitled presumption that there would even be offers, I thought was distasteful...
  • marcusdkanemarcusdkane Member Posts: 7,439 Arc User
    Would this be the right thing to do if the game were to be unavailable during the final couple of hours of the sale?
    No. The sale is 3 days long, in part, because of the possibility of this happening.
    And as I pointed out above, people's RL commitments may have prevented them from spending in the sale until the very end... My own circumstances prevented me from doing so, because although I was able to log on all weekend, I wasn't able to do the necessary banking until after my dental appointment yesterday morning, due to a combination of i) not knowing how much spare cash I would have to potentially play around with ii) needing to put said cash into a specific bank account, of which there isn't a branch within walking distance iii) The distance to said branch is one I wasn't willing to undertake before my appointment, because that was my only reason for going there, and I knew the timeframe of the sale allowed me to schedule thus... Other folks would probably have their own reasons for why they were unable to partske in the offer till the last few hours, but the circumstances are irrelevant; If people believe that an offer is running for a set time period, they make their schedules accordingly, so when their ability to access the offer is then cut off without announcement, it's an understandable frustration...

    On a personal level, I didn't lose out... My Zen transaction went through and was acknowledged by the account before the outage, so I haven't had the limbo-period which others have reported with their transactions... Yes, I did think I might miss out on the opportunity to make a discounted sale, but I just shrugged and mentally moved on... When the server came back up, Cryptic's extension of the offer meant I was able to make the transaction I wanted (USS Lakota)... The points I've made aren't about me, just examples of how/why people may have been making their transactions at the end of the promotional offer, rather than over the weekend, and why people doing thus, may not have been able to make the transactions earlier in the sale due to their circumstances, and so make the transactions when they can... And that's not Cryptic's fault... I wasn't saying that Cryptic should accomodate those people 'just because', I was just pointing out that i) I can understand why people in similar situations to mine would be frustrated by the potential impact of the outage on their plans for the offer, and ii) a decent company, when hit by Unforseen Circumstances, will extend and honor the offer once Normal Service Resumes (which they did)

    Nothing about anyone deserving or getting special treatment or favoritism, just explaining why people may have left it to the last minute (when some people seem unable to grasp why people don''t immediately Buy It Now!!! the second the offer started) and that Cryptic did the right thing by extending the sale B)
  • ltminnsltminns Member Posts: 12,573 Arc User
    People, read the News Blog for the C-Store 25% Discount on the PC Platform. It was supposed to be two days - Black Friday and Cyber Monday. What we ended up getting was FOUR days and then they added three hours to that.
    'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
    Judge Dan Haywood
    'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
    l don't know.
    l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
    That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
    Lt. Philip J. Minns
  • marcusdkanemarcusdkane Member Posts: 7,439 Arc User
    ltminns wrote: »
    People, read the News Blog for the C-Store 25% Discount on the PC Platform. It was supposed to be two days - Black Friday and Cyber Monday. What we ended up getting was FOUR days and then they added three hours to that.
    Precisely! Cryptic have acted like champions about this B)
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