I just made a booking at an IC on the FHR site. There is a little check box where you can enter your loyalty number. So I did all that and made my reservation. I was thinking this is easy and I don't know what people are complaining about. I got the reservation confirmation email and it all looked fine, but it seems that my loyalty number did not get attached to the reservation. So I called in an got a rep who called the hotel and attached the loyalty number and now all is fine.

So for me the FHR site worked very well with this small exception. Next time I will do my research on the FHR site, but probably book by phone.