tmhwk

thank you, this makes sense. anyway, I really doubt they will process all those forms in one week, one after another, checking availability and alternatives for everybody...

Kagehitokiri

bgmvp, the document is fine, your download didnt finish. >
"pfw3oD7r.doc.part"

King Chung Huang, when did i call anyone names? i said the link is there. and it was. my email was the same as everyone else who didnt see it. all text with, at one point, a long string starting with mailto, and including the url to the file. i simply read the entire text. i am neither saying, nor implying anything about those who didnt see it. the only thing that i found to be a bummer was that if i was one of the few people who saw it, it would have been nice if the promo had been earlier, not postponed until tomorrow.

first 2 emails >

3rd email >

cmginc

The senior executives at LHW really need to understand what a complete failure this promotion is, and steps should be taken to overhaul (replace) the entire marketing department.

First, according to Mr. Calder, they did not anticipate the response received. In today's world of blogs, viral marketing, etc., it is very short-sighted to not anticipate an overwhelming response. There was no planning or load-testing, or conversations with the ISP to prepare for bandwidth/server constraints?

Second, the change has been made to an email submission process, which now strains bandwidth again as all email will be sent at the same time, and supposedly the environment has been scaled to accommodate the load. I truly doubt this has been done. Further, services installed and configured would most likely have to be shut off (Sender Verification) - otherwise, three times the email has to be handled by the servers and ISP. These are additional costs as the IT department and ISP have to attempt to accommodate the poor planning of the marketing department.

At this point, there really is nothing LHW can do to repair the situation. Tomorrow will be a mess and there will, at some point, be some rooms allocated at the $19.28 price. No one will truly know how many, or if his/her email actually made it through the process.

One other bit of information: prior to this contest, the existing LHW.com site has been slow for months. Most of the performance degradation occurs when a basic query is made, supporting the theory that the entire infrastructure is fragile.

In the future, LHW should partner with a company that knows how internet marketing works, and let the professionals do the job right. At least I have the American Express Fine Hotels and Resorts as a superior alternative.

est-gratuite

Basic admin question:

Are they going to personally telephone 3000 people who managed to qualify for 2 nights for the discounted rate to get credit card details off them to secure the reservation ?

iahphx

I agree. If it's true that 150,000 registered, I'd guess they'll get no more than 20,000 "conforming" emails tomorrow (perhaps still enough to crash their email account, though ).

The downside to not requiring a credit card is that they will get many "non-serious" requests. Especially on the "flexible date" option. It will kind of be like "make me an offer -- no risk involved." This perhaps penalizes the more serious "contestants" willing to commit to specific dates. I kind of think they should fill the specific date requests first, and then leave any remainders to the flexible date folks.

FlyerBeek

What would that accomplish?

We know that somewhere between 3,000 and 6,000 reservations will be made. But, not everyone wants the exact same location and dates, so some rooms will go quicker than other. The rooms that email #100 wants might not be available, but the a room that email #100,000 wants still might be open. As jpdx mentioned earlier, they really will need the staff around to read through almost every submission until every single room has been booked... not just the first 6,000 emails received.

-FlyerBeek

jn024

I will predict how it will go..

1. they change the autoresponder message exactly at 8am EST
2. the emails will go into their mail server will be be storing them (assume their IT says they can handle this without a problem)
3.

They did not figure out anything beyond that, so I don't think there will be anything spectacular to see tomorrow. Everyone will send their emails in and that is all that will happen.

At this time, they are calling every temp agency within 100 miles of their offices to get some cheap and plentiful labor. They will be manually sifting through a few million word document email attachment forms that have no standard formatting (not machine-readable).

Expect more problems and excitement in a few days when they realize they have no idea how to handle any of it.

This is a terribly run promotion from both a marketing and technology perspective.

King Chung Huang

Kagehitokiri, I'm not suggesting you called anyone names! I'm trying to explain why some saw a link and some didn't. Your email client rendered the plain text version with the link; my email client rendered the HTML version which does not have a link. There are two different versions of the message encoded in the emails.

hmy1

As somebody previously stated and I have duly observed, sending an e-mail today to [email protected] results in a simple "out of office" e-mail in response. Could they be using a basic vacation program and plan to lift it at noon GMT tomorrow?

I am going to write a simple script that will e-mail them my form every second. That way when the vacation program is lifted, I might have a chance at getting my e-mail through. Heck, I might as well run multiple threads of that program on my computer. Heck, why not run from multiple machines, too? Heck, maybe on hundreds of machines...

Kagehitokiri

1. they said theyre contacting you via email within 1 week. i would imagine they will make a webform for cc info etc. or have you call a number yourself, etc.

2. FHR requires amex plat/cent. amex plat costs ~$500/yr in the USA, and in some countries it is invitation only.

3. hmy1, they said multiple emails = disqualification

4. didnt they say 250K people registered? 250K * .2MB = 50GB. and the email submissions are only open to those who registered. some of whom may not submit.

5. King Chung Huang, i guess i misunderstood your original post, i thought you said your email was also all text.

carsonheim

update: got the form already. thanks!

obkacey

I think that FT should give an award for post #1000!^

wakeboarderjeff

Perhaps they're planning on calling in a bunch of temps, renting temporary space, setting up the various necessary workstations, and arranging for the significant outlay of cash for this type of operation. Or, as any knowledgeable global company would do these days, they've already called an offshoring company in the Philippines, India, or elsewhere...

derekcarden

I never even received a form - the email had no links or attachments

Kagehitokiri

request lock and new thread with form linked in first post...