Forum Moderators: buckworks
"Sale ends at 12:00am EST Monday March 29"
So far, *every* single person who placed an order on Monday, March 29 has complained that they didn't get their discount. Rather than try to argue the finer points of telling time, I just gave them the discount and went on about my business. 12:00am is so obvious as to be painful as far as I'm concerned, but apparently not to many of my customers.
So I'm going to have to do it differently next time. Wondering if there's any consensus about the least-misunderstood way to indicate when a promotion ends. Should I have said "Ends at 11:59pm" or "Ends Sunday March 28" or what?
"Ends Sunday March 28" may still cause some problems, because people in other time zones will assume their own time zone. So I do think it's a good idea to keep the time zone reference. 11:59 PM EST Sunday gives you the precision you seem to be after and is (one hopes!) less apt to be misunderstood.
Offers are better served by an if statement from the time from your server in your programming language. The offer text can be removed at the precise time. The shopping basket/cart can show the discounted price up to the offer end time - thus allowing the customer to see what they will actually pay. This is the best method to stop any complaints as the offer 'disappears' from your site. There is one problem in the situation where a customer clicks add to basket at 11:59, but then adds new products to create a bigger order only to find at 00:02 the price has gone up! (Simple programming should allow the offer to stay lower for products put in the basket at the offer time for at least an hour or two afterwards).
"Sale ends in 24 hours"
"You only have 3 hours and 25 minutes left"
"Sale ends in 10 minutes!"
Another option, say 12M 29 Mar. And as bcc1234 pointed out, now does that mean 12M ending 29 Mar heading into 30 Mar or does that mean 12M ending 28 Mar heading into 29 Mar? Some people tend to over-analyze things. :)
-Corey
In business, it never matters if you are right or wrong.
It only matters what percentage of your customers are complaining or are confused.
In my understanding, the first half of the day starts at 0 am, and ends at 12 am. In other words, I'd agree with your customers complaining if they didn't get a discount monday morning... ;)
In my understanding, the first half of the day starts at 0 am, and ends at 12 am.
btw - what's wrong with ending the sale at 11:00pm?
You are right that the sale technically ended as soon as the first millisecond of March 29 was in progress. But that is a very poor decision. And you have found out why. If the sale is never in effect on March 29, why put that date in the message?
If someone glances at the sale end time, they are most likely to retain the date, and not bother with the time. That is especially true if they were planning to order in the morning of March 29.
If the sale is never in effect on March 29, why put that date in the message?
I think that goes to the heart of the problem -- and I'm going to make sure I don't do it that way again. I like the "11:59pm March 28" suggestion, as that gets what I want (nearly midnight) and shouldn't be anywhere near as ambiguous.
The reason for putting a specific time and timezone is because I have logic on the shopping cart that stops giving the discount after that time, and it's all based on the web server time which happens to be in the Eastern timezone.
Plus all the "Sale" banners on the site are supposed to disappear after that time.
And they all did, save for one that was on the shopping cart page of all places for another 24 hours until I caught it.
Set your alarm clock next to your bed to go off at 12:00 am and then report back here.
My alarm clock goes for a 24 hour cycle, as any smart device would... ;)
But even on a standards conforming time scale, the old day ends at 24h, and the new one starts at 0h, despite those two moments really being the same.
12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 0
Are you sure your elementary school teacher would have approved of such a way of counting? ;)
Perhaps it would be better to not put a time. So a for a sale that ends at midnight, tonight, putting "sale ends Apr 1st" should be enough. But everyone is different. And there are time zones and so on...
Take a look at eBay, where time is not just slightly important, but near-critical to their operation. They actually tell you what time they say it is and all operations go from that time (right or wrong!). I suppose that makes it equal for everyone!
12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 0Are you sure your elementary school teacher would have approved of such a way of counting? ;)
But I digress from the digression. I didn't mean to imply that the fact 12:00am precedes 1:00am, 2:00am, etc. made any sense, I was just acknowledging that it is the way it is.
I am guessing it was one of the original April fools day jokes that got out of hand.
Set your alarm clock next to your bed to go off at 12:00 am and then report back here.
The fact that a clock marks midnight as "12 AM" and noon as "12 PM" does not make it so! As I pointed out above something marked "PM" is after noon which, by definition, noon itself cannot be! Calling midnight "12 AM" is simply the most convenient and sensible way to design a digital clock (since the next second IS 12:00:01 AM, though that isn't entirely logical either. . . "should be" 00:00:01 AM!).
So, to (continue to) be pedantic -- there are really no such times as "12 AM" and "12 PM". It is simply often easiest (though still confusing!) to refer to them that way.
there are really no such times as "12 AM" and "12 PM".
Actually that is correct.
AM is between 12 midnight and 12 noon.
PM is between 12 noon and 12 midnight.
Scientifically therefore, 12 midnight and 12 noon are neither AM nor PM. They are between neither of the required parameters of the AM/PM divide. They are the parameter. They are in a third state. But that time is so short (infinity) that scientifically it could be stated that it does not exist!
It is like driving down a two lane road. You drive on the right of the road and then cross lanes to the left. Whilst you are over the white line, are you in the left or the right lane? The answer is the same with time. You are in neither.
But again, I am not saying that the convention of using "am" after 12:00 to mean midnight makes any sense. And I am not saying it is smart to do it. I am simply saying that people do it. And the convention is that when you see or say 12:00a.m., it means midnight, and not noon.
And once more, this thread is an awesome example of why you should state midnight or noon, or otherwise make it redundantly clear where the sun will stand at the specified 12:00.
