FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - SPG 'Better by the Night' Promotion - pre-launch discussion and speculation thread
Old Dec 27, 2011, 1:27 pm
  #98  
gfowler-ord-1k
In memoriam
 
Join Date: Feb 2002
Location: Chicago, IL (ORD), Phoenix AZ (PHX)
Programs: UA 1K 1.9MM, Starwood Platinum, a nothing in several others
Posts: 5,176
Most companies use the published T&C to resolve any discrepancies on promos. In this case there is nothing in the "early insight" T&Cs that excluded Asia Pacific. Those who implement the promo generally code from a requirements document that should be consistent with the T&Cs. If the requirements stated essentially the same thing as the T&Cs, AP would have been included. Maybe it would have been noticed and corrected, maybe not.

A few years ago United Airlines offered an "Early Bird" promo that gave a large mileage bonus. The promo wording and T&C however were inconstant. The T&Cs offered a higher bonus. Myself and others informed UA of this but UA continued to publish the T&Cs with the higher bonus in some places, e.g. USA Today. There was a lot of pressure from FT members to honor those T&Cs. UA finally gave in. Their legal department recommended that they do so.

I was told by UA employee that was in a position to know, that it ended up costing almost $1,000,000 to resolve this. I have some details on the issue at http://genefowler.com/MPW004 . Be warned that some of the links, especially the one to the FT thread at the top of the page, no longer work. FT changed the their URLs a while ago. The ones in the middle of the page go to the Wayback Machine archive which have copies of the FT threads.

I brought up the inconsistencies to prevent such an issue with SPG. I bet it will be perfectly clear what properties are included/excluded when these pages next see daylight.

Last edited by gfowler-ord-1k; Dec 27, 2011 at 2:56 pm
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