FlyerBeek

A big ^ to Mr. Calder for coming on FT, explaining the situation, and offering a solution.

Despite everything that's been said this morning, perhaps this experience will actually serve as an example for other companies to recover from failed promotions with dignity.

-FlyerBeek

WBurcham

What URL did you access it from? Mine doesn't have it it has:
First
Last
Contact #
Country Code

yyzprincess

I got mine emailed to me directly from VP at LHW Corporate Headquaters in NYC.

Julian

Don't count your chickens.

Kagehitokiri

11:45AM 12:18PM

10:04AM
(times in EST)

and thats only the first FTer to specifically mention that they linked them the thread.

jiggs

well, this will be interesting. I'll stage outlook to send this emial at exactly 8:00 am tomorrow whether I am at my desk or not. If it goes through, great, if it gets rejected, I won't be surprised either. Chances are, with as many people that did indeed register, thousands of email will come in with exact date and time stamp.

So will the process be, the first 6000 requests will be honored? is there some complex algorithim of property and dates to determine if a room is available? Are there X amount of rooms at each property?

jswitch

Spoke to LHW Customer Service yet again... The first woman was downright rude to me... even though I called in on the Leader's Club tollfree #... since I'm a member. After listening to her gimme a bunch of BS... I kindly reminded her that I'm not some random person only looking for the promo rather I booked hotels thru Leader's Club on a monthly basis.... I was put on hold and another woman took over the call. Apparently, they're sending the emails out in bunches and there's absolutely no way to verify if you're on their list. SHOCKER!!! She said since I pre-registered I'd 'definitely' receive the email sometime today... when asked how she could be so sure I'd receive it.. considering my wife nor I hadn't so far... she replied, "have a little patience"... up to this point, I had been very cordial and not pushy in the least bit.

FWIW, the woman from LHW informed me of the new T's & C's.... Apparently, we're asked to complete a form which requires us to list our preference for (3) participating properties in addition to requested travel dates. Next, we are required to send this email back to LHW tomorrow starting at the same time as today's fiasco. Then, they'll begin to fill requests on a first come, first serve basis.... she claimed that no emails will be accepted earlier than tomorrow at 12 GMT (8AM EST). The offer is open for the same 80 min time period as today's crap sandwich... therefore, no emails will be accepted once time expires. She concluded the call with a comment that she's unable to verify if someone is on the list.... and that things are changing 'by the minute' over there so it's hard to provide any add'l details.

Sounds like a 'great plan'.... NOT! I can't believe this is the best they can do considering the circumstances.... come on... what's worse & total BS is how their treatment of existing members and/or customers who happen to book a decent amount of hotels rooms with them. You'd think, after all this nonsense, they'd do something above & beyond this promo... (i.e. assign a priority based on previous stays)...

...or at the very, very least put forth the effort to confirm whether or not an existing member is truly on the list or just simply send the freakin' email out again (just in case...)

jexelot

12 noon GMT? what time is that in paris?

thepointsguy

Third time's a charm! Finally includes a line "Please click here to download the form for details. As a reminder, below is a complete list of the hotels participating in this promotion. "

Which already had here on FT, but it's nice to know they care.

Wonder how long it takes for my corp email to flag LHW as a spammer!

Kagehitokiri

~6000 room nights = 1 or 2 rooms available per night at each property

do you have to have been pre registered to send the form in? that would be a good thing...

biaoism

Hmmm

That's true. I do IT security and I think sending CC info through email is pretty unsafe.

Actually, why don't LHW put up a simple HTML form on their website to get submissions from 12pm onwards? They can do this on a scaled-down web page with minimal graphics to reduce server load.

This is a better method for the following reasons:
1. Smaller file size (compared to the ridiculous 200KB x 250K emails) - smaller if the form is linked to a database
2. Using a database to store personal information (and CC info) is much safer than email
3. By storing submitted form details in a database, it will be easier to sort/filter submitted forms
4. The database can be on another server other than LHW.com so as to avoid affecting LHW.com's operations
5. Timestamp issues - submitted forms will be based on the server's timestamp
6. Server load issues - again, not sure if LHW's email server is formidable enough to handle the incoming torrent of 250k emails at 12pm GMT!

Is LHW looking for a new CIO? my resume is ready

dkelly1110

My email came with no attachment. I sent an email to the [email protected] and got an Out of Office Reply detailing how the promotion went wrong, and they were contacting registered users via email.

Screwed.

Julian

Gee, that's a beautiful post. All those quotes. Lovely.

ShopAround

There must be different forms, because the one I'm looking at has no boxes for credit cards anywhere. I wonder if they changed their mind and decided to add the cc boxes or to remove them?

Kagehitokiri

the first 2 emails both had links. that link was posted in this thread 42 minutes ago. (which was 44 minutes after i received first email.)

the latest email has a much more visible link. its a new url, but the document is the same.

i still dont see CC info boxes. and i wouldnt fill them out even if i did.