C # UTC DateTime Request in WCF / .NET

This is a very simple question (hopefully). I am new to working with DateTime to .NET conversion.

I have a WCF service that has a DateTime property - call it BookingDate.

Someone passes this to my WCF service in the format:

<a:BookingDate>2012-03-26T17:03:00-04:00</a:BookingDate>

      

        
        
        
      

    

The server it sits on is set to UTC timezone (Lisbon, London, Dublin).

When I store the corresponding value in the database, it sets the value:

2012-03-26 22:03

      

        
        
        
      

    

I assumed that I am mistakenly believing that the .NET framework (as part of the WCF serialization / deserialization process) would output this to .Net Datetime UTC for me (since there is a minus offset of 4 hours as above)

I expected: 2012-03-26 21:03

My question is this: I would need to call:

var date = fromClientWCFService.BookingDate.ToUniversalTime();

      

        
        
        
      

    

to get the 21:03 time i expect?

If not, is there a WCF option to pass to my service to convert DateTimes to UTC and not to the server timezone?

Thank you in advance

Mark

EDIT:

From 1 answer I can see that DateTimeOffset can be used. Following this, do the following job var offset = DateTimeOffset.Parse("2012-03-26T17:03:00-0400");

to return the result:2012-03-26 21:03