Remember that there are probably thousands of people participating in this sale. Say 1000 emails.
Of those, at least half would have been sent exactly on 12:00:00, so 500 emails.
Of those, there might only be 200 clacks (which is a lot, when you think about it), so it really depends how hotmail sorted the huge batch of incoming emails.
If you want to blame anyone, blame Microsoft for not sorting your email to the top of the list
These numbers are pure conjecture - no-one (except CC himself) really ever knows what the numbers are.