An order was placed around 8:30pm last night and I was surprised to see they didn’t use my 15% off THANKS2023 discount, so what gives, don’t they like discounts? Our 15% off Thanksgiving / Black Friday 2023 discount was set to expire at midnight when the calendar finally ticks over to 11/29. This meant there was still another 3 hours 30 minutes after their order was placed before the coupon expired.
Well, I decide to save it for the next morning (which is today, now). So I planned to contact them, let them know they didn’t apply the 15% off THANKS2023 discount, then apply it for them, issue the partial refund, etc, etc. Well, they reached out to me first thing in the morning before I had a chance to and they notified me my store was saying the discount code was expired.
I’m so thankful Stephen reached out and reported the issue. This turned out to be one of those annoying technical issues and one that’s related to time zones. Most web servers are configured to use UTC time zones and 4lockedoffroad.com is no different. Our server is configured to use the UTC time zone and I expected the store’s coupon software to check the coupon expiry against the time zone of the person placing their order. It just makes sense to handle it like this, it keeps everything clear and fair for all. No one is deceived by accident. No one will feel like they got rug-pulled or bait and switched.
However, the store’s coupon system doesn’t work like that as I found out this morning. It checks the expiry against the servers time zone, which is UTC. This customer lives in PST and that’s 8 hours behind UTC. So the server was living in 11/29, but the customer was living in 11/28. So after adjusting their order to apply the discount, issuing the partial refund I was able to fulfill their order and ship it just 3 hours later.
So as of now the coupon is now available until 12/1/2023 (UTC of course). Get your 15% off our 4lockedoffroad.com ARB air compressor bracket before 12/1 (UTC). Use coupon code THANKS2023 at checkout.
