I can tell you're upset so I'll provide information on our point of view, but then let's just agree that we need to communicate in more detail in future so that misunderstandings are less likely to occur.
The statement in the email "Your 25% discount still applies to all DLC items, but please note it does not apply to TRS19 during this 3 day sale period." strongly implies that the reward will be applicable to DLC sale items.
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I'm really sorry if you got that impression. The "impression" it was meant to give was that "usually your 25% Gold Discount could be applied to TRS19, but during the sale this option was not offered". It has nothing at all to do with the survey reward (which was offered to some groups of people who didn't have a 25% Gold Discount code through their membership).
The delay in providing the discount code means that it couldn't be applied to sale items.
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There has been no delay in issuing the reward. It was never intended to be related to the sale, so you are simply reading something into something that was never mentioned.
At least one person who responded to the survey never got the email.
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We are unable to communicate with people from our main email server with people who have unsubscribed from that system. There are significant limitations of communicating through the subscription email system, so their only option is to contact helpdesk and request a copy of the email sent manually to them by helpdesk.
No information was available as to when to expect the email, and there was no warning there would be a validity period.
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There was also no information that anything would happen overnight. The survey and the sale being two distinctly different events, we hadn't considered mentioning they do not relate to one another.
The validity period for the discount code was far too short.
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Actually 80% of the codes issued were used within 2 days of being issued and no-one used a code on the final day of the offer (there were 5 days to use the code in the store).
How can the discount mentioned be related to the ongoing membership when the point of the survey is to get a response from people who no longer have an ongoing membership?
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There were different offers to different groups of customers (it's called marketing segmentation) so I'm not sure exactly which offer you got.
The Store discount was offered to certain groups of people who had cancelled their membership (with 5 days to use it or lose it).
There was also a membership offer to certain groups with an end date of Aug 31 (as this gives time to consider our upcoming changes to the membership offer, being worked on now).
Other groups will receive different offers prior to the new membership offer becoming available (can't give away all our marketing secrets).
I hope this all helps explain that there was no conspiracy theory at work and that we're simply trying to gather feedback, reward people to incentivize more feedback, and work on improving our offering (underway).