Stardock Black Friday Sale!!!! Ohhh wait it is over?

I got the exact same email on 11/25.  The problem isn't with stardock as much as it is with your email provider.

I use gmail. I understand that mistakes happen, and I am not looking for a witch hunt; but gmail is a pretty big email provider to have dropped the ball that badly. I am still curious, but it is good to know some got the email on a logical day to get it. 

I use gmail too, and I got the email at the correct time.

I got the mail today as well.

The problem is not with our e-mail provider... simply look at your full e-mail header :

From - Sun Dec  4 11:08:00 2011 Deliver date and time
X-Account-Key: account2
X-UIDL: 123880.VeIJrwyAPAughVbPIDP8SPxDM9w=
X-Mozilla-Status: 0001
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000
X-Mozilla-Keys:                                                                                 
Return-Path: [email protected]
Received: from pierre.telenet-ops.be (LHLO pierre.telenet-ops.be)
 (195.130.132.34) by zcsnocm12.telenet-ops.be with LMTP; Sun, 4 Dec 2011
 04:41:41 +0100 (CET)
Received: from mail.stardock.net ([38.98.152.150])
	by pierre.telenet-ops.be with bizsmtp
	id 4rhg1i00o3Ex4jJ01rhg4K; Sun, 04 Dec 2011 04:41:41 +0100 date and time of when Stardock mail have send the e-mail to my ISP
Delivered-To: [email protected]
Received: (qmail 13769 invoked by uid 510); 26 Nov 2011 01:12:27 -0500
Received: from unknown (HELO sdcentral2) (10.8.1.220)
  by mail.stardock.net with SMTP; 26 Nov 2011 01:12:27 -0500 date and time of when Stardock mail have receive the e-mail
X-Mailer: ASP.NET 2.0.50727
Content-Language: en-us
MIME-Version: 1.0
From: Stardock <[email protected]>
To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Date: 26 Nov 2011 01:02:06 -0500 date and time of the e-mail creation
Subject: Stardock's Black Friday and Cyber Monday Week-long Specials
Thread-Index: AcbK8Rx64/Vfix5wTeSJSxRNTtnTjQ==
Message-ID: <461101051151091171111048564@sdmail>
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;

From the header, we can see that the e-mail have remain on the mail.stardock.net between the 26/11/2011 01:12:25 -0500 and the 04/12/2011 04:41:41 +01 ... so, it is a problem with Stardock mail... not our ISP...

If it is an error with the Stardock mail service, then I think the special offer should be opened up for one more day and a sticky made for all forums so that people who received the email late can buy the special offer.  I know that will allow those who received the email earlier one more chance, but there's not much that really can be done about that.  I bought the Object Desktop subscription, but only because I was one of the lucky ones who received the email at the correct time.

...

This should be brought up with [email protected] come Monday, 9 a.m.

Take a screenshot of the full details and include it.

Just one thought, though. Was it the only notification? I know SD routinely uses facebook and other social media to advertise.

However, if you do not use the social media, and have an email like Thoumsin's, I would think sales would extend the sale offer to you.

Best of luck, and thanks, Thoumsin for that screenie.

Well, my only issue with Thoumsin's complaint is his screenie only shows RECEIVED times and he even claims one as a sent time...  This just isn't true.  Just because you receive something at one time, does not mean that's when it was sent, especially when the internet was involved.  For example, I can receive emails from friends in Europe all the way here in Los Angeles seconds after they send them, however, neighbors can send me emails and sometimes I won't get them for hours, even a day or two later.  In both cases, I can check SENT times and confirm the delay was not from the sender.  Show me SENT times and then you'll have every right to claim they sent it a week too late.  Here's my full header:

x-store-info:sbevkl2QZR7OXo7WID5ZcaZ0jeT0hTF6w5JqyzrMGIIx9mPnjO6VbDYWu1u75vd/L3GSn/a1/GQtFJlFQsAM8wTj0uljbqN28glpGk5BR7iSMqm7VfOE8sNDcy0TnIPO
Authentication-Results: hotmail.com; sender-id=permerror (sender IP is 38.98.152.152) [email protected]; dkim=none header.d=stardock.net; x-hmca=none
X-Message-Status: n:0:n
X-SID-PRA: Stardock <[email protected]>
X-DKIM-Result: None
X-AUTH-Result: NONE
X-Message-Delivery: Vj0xLjE7dXM9MDtsPTA7YT0xO0Q9MTtHRD0xO1NDTD0w
X-Message-Info: NhFq/7gR1vTLI4TZCLUSLbUciOhfQlP7gH231uIzpdKG1+9O3sQGfWYXON5jVvwWpbP2UP5Rs/r6tTE6VAjdniGv0ZWrpUE5C37bfxVUFjfWzGBNVu4ffKJQVAxKlnhU
Received: from mail.stardock.net ([38.98.152.152]) by COL0-MC1-F13.Col0.hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.4900);
     Fri, 25 Nov 2011 21:11:51 -0800
Received: (qmail 7812 invoked by uid 510); 26 Nov 2011 00:11:51 -0500
Received: from unknown (HELO sdcentral2) (10.8.1.220)
  by mail.stardock.net with SMTP; 26 Nov 2011 00:11:51 -0500
X-Mailer: ASP.NET 2.0.50727
Content-Language: en-us
MIME-Version: 1.0
From: Stardock <[email protected]>
To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Date: 26 Nov 2011 00:11:51 -0500
Subject: Stardock's Black Friday and Cyber Monday Week-long Specials
Thread-Index: AcbK0Rx10/Vfix9wTeSJSxRNTtnTjQ==
Message-ID: <64515049116110971160910@sdmail>
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
 boundary=--boundary_3629499_f3832e9d-56ba-4820-a27b-91a7e16f95e1
Return-Path: [email protected]
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 26 Nov 2011 05:11:51.0719 (UTC) FILETIME=[E82A3B70:01CCABF9]

You'll notice it went to fewer places, meaning it was "in transit" less.  Unless Stardock confirms it was a technical issue on their part, since people did get the email on time, I still say the problem is more on your end of things.  I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for an extension.

You must remember e-mail is not a 100% reliable service and the special offer was promoted in a number of other ways too and ran for a whole week.

Yes, I saw the offer on the forums too.  (In fact, I saw it after buying Object Desktop from the email, so I would have seen it even if the email didn't get through.)  If you don't check the forums very much, don't use social media and your email takes a long time to get there, that can be a problem in finding out about good deals.  But if you do even one of them (or your email doesn't take too long to get there), you have a much higher chance of finding out about deals.  My advice, check the sticky posts or most recent posts on the forums at least twice a week, or at least once a week ask if there are any special Stardock offers on or coming up, and don't rely on always getting email reminders at the right time.

As much as we like to see it as not, email *is*, as Neil Banfield says, not a 100% reliable service (if there even is such a thing ;-)).

I think the mail server at SD HQ farted and resent last week's mailer along with the announcement that GaCiv ][ Ultimate was available on Steam (and on sale).

Sorry for any confusion and all the extra bits in your inboxes.

Keep calm and carry on

Yup - my take as well.  I've personally had this happen as well with a promo that was sent out by SD for Demigod a long time back.  I received the email quite a bit after the sale ended.  It's not related to ISP.  It's a problem that seems to happen from time to time when SD sends out mass emails on their side.  That said, yeah - the ads are always on the forums.  But even with that said, if I didn't follow the forums and received info on a deal that expired before I even got the email, that would kind of suck.  So, my advise would be to shoot an email to [email protected] and explain the situation and leave it up to them as to how to handle things.  They don't have any obligation to give you the deal, but I really don't think you are being unreasonable to ask for it. 

Accept no more e-mails from starkers if it has a curried cabbage attachment. The servers just can't handle that kind of load.

heh

First, i don't complain, i try to explain...

Second, you will only find a receive time from mail server... it is how e-mail header work... SENT is not a header : http://www.iana.org/assignments/message-headers/perm-headers.html

I didn't call you a complainer.  If you're pointing out that something isn't right, that is a textbook complaint.  You're not whining about it or trying to shout or anything and I made no insinuation of the sort, just referred to your post as exactly what it is, a complaint.  Its not considered a bad thing.  If I said argument instead of complaint, even though a point that differs from another in an exchange is considered an argument would you still come back here and say I don't argue, I try to explain...?

I mean, I'm not fighting or yelling or trying to be insulting like usual, just explaining things too, but my counterpoints can all be called arguments none the less, that's just the nature of the English language.

And that is exactly my point.  SENT times are not recorded into the headers because the email is gone from where it was sent from and there is nothing to record those times to at that point.  So you cannot claim that a received time is the sent time.  Its just as I said, not true.  Most times, things work out so that the sent and received times are very close together, but as I pointed out in my last post, there are times when things get 'lost' in transit and take much longer to arrive.  Your header proves only that you got the email late, not that it was sent late.  That was my argument.  Feel free to disprove it.

Always remember English is not everyone's first language ...;)

I had the same issue, I have found it down to the fact that Stardock failed to update their DNS SPF records, thus the SMTP server that sent the email was not registered in the DNS SPF record when the email was originally sent!

John

Has this been mentioned to Star Dock?

Hello,

I sent them a copy of the email headers, however, no response so far. One would expect their techies to understand the issue from the said diagnostic information, or am I too hopeful, let's hope not.

John

Well, in my case, English is my third language... French being my first language and Dutch the second... 20 year ago, i was able to speak modern Greek ( learn it at school ) but i have forget most of it since i don't use it... have some very limited knowledge of Russian and Spanish too...

Not something special here, since i live in a European country who is smaller that a big US city... country itself having 3 national language ( shame on me, i only know 2 of them )...

Hello,

I just got a great response from customer services, seems like they are really not bothered that we have put the effort into letting Startdock know about the error/issue. Here is the email I received bwlow! I wonder if I should bother with Stardock's products if this is the response to customers.

Very Disappointed.

John

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hello,

You may have just missed the email or it got clogged in our servers, either way there are always other deal opportunities, just wait and you'll see em, Christmas would probably be your best bet.

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E... K......
Technical Adviser

JohnJBass... reply #22 - 2 above your last is from Stardock Support.  It was in DIRECT response to your comment immediately before it [ #21].

Time delay for a response ...around 1 1/2 minutes.