Not allowed and I guess you know that @:-)

I will have 3 stays before Jan. 7. I hope "now" means "now"

If you watch already says January 7 you should be on the safe side:

i have a 10 night stay
 

starting Jan 4TH will that count or will i need to check out on the 7th move to another hilton for a few days and then come back

You'll have to break up the stay - moving to another property for the night of the January 6th (or stay somewhere else the first three nights, none of which would count either, but less running around).

Dollars to donuts the Waldorf Collection hotels are not participating for cert redemption.

The q4 promotion didn't specify that you could do the 4 stays upto 3 times, it just implied that if you got the 4 stays you would get the 25k. I stayed 12k, and got 3 of the 25k bonus points. 75k total. Interested to see if the restriction of 3 max will be followed.

You have to registrar before you complete the stays. Anything before that would not be valid. The fine print specifies dates of Jan 7-March 31, so suspect registration won't be open any time soon.
I have 5-night stay beginning Jan6th and was hoping the promotion would start earlier.

Unlike the previous Q4 promotion, the fine print does specifically set a limit of 3 free nights earned.

Has anyone found out if this is the case?

seems to me
 

there are just way to many questions unanswered for those who are traveling this week. there is nothing like starting a promo mid week with no advance details.

Time's up!
 

Cancelling my Jan 5th stay at Embassy Suites due to lack of promo. Just rebooked with a Sheraton Hotel instead. Their Q1 promo doesn't work very well for me, but I found a BRG rate that does!

At least with other chains, we get enough notice on promos to plan our stays accordingly. Hilton, GET WITH THE PROGRAM!

The timing is a little frustrating, I admit. However, there is a silver lining. Not only do we have the Q1 free night promo, we also have the January sale. Combined with the 4Q09 promo, seems as though Hilton is trying to be more active with promos these days.

hilton has already missed out on 2 stays from me this week because of the lack of communication with this promo.

So is there a start date to this promo? If yes, can the OP edit the first post to reflect additional details?

Ditto, two more Hyatt stays for me...