<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by KGB:
Glad to see I'm not alone in my perspective on looking at this whole thing, thanks runningshoes...
Gleff, This was a typo but on a database/code generated program. The data entry clerk or the program marketer entered 3000/1000 in the fields that should have had 300/100. Therefore once automated a purchase generated the correct mileage (or actually another programming flaw ADDED more miles (ala 6999) then what was to have been programed)and a poster posted that he/she received the miles.
Therefore it is a typo to the code programming for this automatted promotion. It was noticed by someone due to heavier than expected demands and I truly think someone realized they had a major problem when people started purchasing 100's if not 1000's of dollars worth of GCs etc. when they were use to orders of 39.95 or 69.95 etc. This was the tipper that told them they had the typo/data entry wrong.
A mid level manager then reviewed the promotion, realized the level of damage involved and pulled the plug.
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I do work with databases, and can see that one change or insertion in a field can trigger other events (e.g. SQL triggers). But it is a far-stretch of one's imagination that an accidental change by someone with access to the database, from 10 miles per dollar (the regular offer) to 100 miles per dollar, would automatically trigger e-mails to clients that an "extravaganza" is now happening, with only two days to take advantage of this special offer. That would have taken a lot of advanced programming from an extremely bored database programmer. Again, all of this is possible, but it's also possible that space aliens took over 1800Flowers.com computers, and did this. Anything is possible, but statistically not probable.
[This message has been edited by OldRope (edited Jan 04, 2004).]