@ Druidsfire, aside from missing the point that the coupon expired a whole day earlier then stated, your example does not consider those played who did not open the store at all. I don't got into Walmart on a Tuesday to make sure the chicken they advertised in their circular is still there, and still on sale until Friday.
I didn't miss the point. The verbiage they said was THROUGH the 7th. The code expired ON the 7th, not 'a whole day earlier than stated'. Now, you could attempt to argue that means until 11:59pm on the 7th and then get into the weeds about whether that's 11:59pm Eastern (SSG) time or 11:59pm Pacific (Daybreak) time, and that's fair.
Or you can do a little bit of observation and critical thinking and make some reasonable deductions based on past behavior. For example, we see them post that sales run from X date to Y date. New sales run from Y date to Z date, with the overlap always being Thursdays. So on Thursdays when the overlap is happening, you can then start looking for other evidence to support WHEN the last-week sales stuff turns over, since they didn't explicitly state 'this code expires at ...' with the precise time and timezone. And that's when you open the store to see if you can find that information (with a lot less effort than going to your local Walmart). It's on the very first page, something with a timer on it. But that's still just a reasonable theory, it's not
definitive. That's when you can hop on here or DDO's socials and go 'Hey Cordo!' and see if you get the official answer. It's a lot better than just assuming.
I will grant you that just because something else has a specific sales expiration timer on it doesn't mean
everything expires at precisely the same time (also noting again the reports from others here that the SAVE30 code expired before the SAVE20 codes did for some reason), but it gives you something to think about or even ask about. My personal theory is that the sales stuff has to be keyed in to turn on/off by hand, like the events system, but maybe someone keyed the SAVE30's expiration timer incorrectly, dunno?
Honestly, what I think they should start doing to avoid this mess and conflict in the future is that they should immediately nuke all last-week sales and coupons the second they spin up the new current-week ones, have zero overlap. Simply say 'sale ends on Wednesday' and set expectations that when you wake up on Thursday, there will be new sales and coupons and the previous sales are done with. There's probably a reason why they do it this way, but maybe it's something they'll revisit.
Eliminating the overlap, however, will also ensure they don't get the probably undesired results of a lot of people using an older code to get a super-sweet discount on their new supporter coffer. I can only imagine how many Picard-facepalms the ecommerce team prolly had when they realized that was happening. I imagine they had sales projections for DDO points purchases that weren't met because a lot of folks suddenly didn't have to buy more points to get the bigger coffers. Now on the other hand, that might have increased their number of bigger coffer purchases, however it's still a net loss because buying with already-purchased or earned points doesn't add revenue, which is what these coffers are meant to do (it's in the Patron name, after all).
Ultimately, eliminating the overlap will level the playing field and make it fair to everyone, which is what Nimvind and others in the thread want at the end of the day. I agree that everyone should have the same 6 days, 23 hours, and 59 minutes to use a coupon code or take advantage of a sale.
