Originally Posted by HarbourGent

I agree that for those who missed out there may be some sense of sour grapes. In itself, that has a reputational impact on CX they should consider when running price lotteries. But as I see it the main causes of complaint are substantive, viz.:

1. Cathay made a specific commitment about when the tickets would become available and then released them early, apparently.
2. The queue was in fact not a queue in that there was no order of precedence. Again, this would have been less a problem had it been clearly communicated.
3. People were held in “queues” for hours for no reason. As per a normal booking with limited inventory, there is no clear reason why they could not have been told as they went through the process whether tickets were still available.

It’s a small point, but I also find it tasteless and immature to tell people they have to hurry up with their credit card when you have held them in a wait for hours.

That some people “hacked” the process is not to my mind Cathay’s fault, although if their I.T. was better run and the pointless queue referred to above didn’t exist this would have been less likely to happen.

Whatever their marketing objective, CX holds itself up as a premium company offering excellent service and a shambles like this does not burnish that image at all.