est-gratuite

where is the new thread ?

jiggs

has someone come out and said that it is X numbers of rooms at every hotel? Are there only so many 1928 rates per date range? I'm confused by how the determination of which hotels/which dates are open. Seems like if they'd of populated a form with drop downs and check boxes, they could of easily sorted the responses...

wakeboarderjeff

Marshall,

As you read through this lengthy thread, you've no doubt asking yourself "What the heck have I gotten myself into"! As a novice traveler, I thought the same thing when I first experienced flyertalk. It's quite simply the most expansive knowledge base for travel that I've ever encountered. The vast majority of the posters are courteous and helpful. A lot of folks are also astonishingly versed in the lingo, vernacular, and even a wholly different language that is used in the airline and travel industry. I've learned a ton here, and still feel like a novice traveler...

In fact, you can get a question answered here about darn near anything. I've visited other sections of the site that deal with technology, electronics and - well - omni and learned much. Heck - in this thread alone I'm learning things about website interaction and e-mail protocols that I didn't know.

However, I've also encountered a small minority of the users here who feel like it's necessary to try and degrade you with their answers and posts. Some industry representatives have dealt with this handily (starwood lurker), while others have been chased off quickly (that jetblue rep that tried to join in during the JFK meltdown). Please try to mine the many nuggets found in this thread and others, while taking the few less than constructive postings with the appropriate amount of salt. Your company deserves some criticism right now, and I respect that you've come here to try and explain how you're attempting to make things right. I applaud you for taking the hits and remaining contrite. I ask that you stick with it throughout the process and not abandon flyertalk because of a few malcontents. And I hope that you'll become a regular visitor to the site after this mess has settled.

tinnub

I received two emails and no form. Frankly this is so screwed up I booked hotels with Hyatt and Hilton in Europe rather than play this stupid game. One must wonder if LHW wouldn't have been better off celebrating their anniversary in a private way rather than this mess. LHW has turned me off to them for future stays.

BiziBB

If LHW is offering an alternative lottery for rooms as a result of the 1828 site's failure, another thread would be good to save some of us trawling through 60-70 pages.

Thanks! I'll add a link if there is one.

MarkXS

Other people reported cc boxes on their forms.

No. They didn't.

All three of your emails may have had links. That is not the case for many of us. My 9:12am MDT and 9:36am MDT emails did not have any links nor any attachments. My 10:33am MDT email had a link to the Word doc. The link didn't work (with a 404 not found) until after about 4 attempts, so the server they had the form on was overloaded, misconfigured, or not ready with the document.

Apparently until you understand that your experience is not universal. Nor is your opinion, that a macro-enabled proprietary format is an appropriate service recovery from a failure, everyone's universal opinion.

I respect that you feel this was not a big deal. Others of us have different opinions. This looks very bad for LHW. It was a service recovery from a failure, by any commonly-understood use of those terms. When a company's service recover looks even worse than the original failure, there's a problem.

IMHO I think the entire promotion period should have been pushed out perhaps 2 weeks (including the travel period), while they fixed things, rather than attempting this poorly-executed recovery.

I do respect Mr. Calder coming onto FT to explain what they're doing. Thank you sir. I hope that your company's next promotion is better handled.

YLW

I'm only half a step ahead of you... I received the form, with the link (no cc reqd) but need to print, fill it out and then scan it to send to them as an attachment, as I can't find any way to send the form directly from the document. I wanted to test-send to myself, because all their messages make it pretty clear that anyone who sends before noon tomorrow is out of the running. They appear to have deliberately sent a document we could send without printing, but made it difficult to do so. Although I will acknowledge being less technically competent than many, I deal with documents all the time and have never faced this problem! Very frustrating!

BiziBB

I checked and have received one LHW e-mail with the .doc attachment.

Has anyone had success sending it yet?

wharvey

Just save the document.... you can open it and input your information and resave it.

You can then attach it to your email message like any other attachment. No need to scan anything.

William

villeradieuse

1. Agreed. I read about this on FT at least a month ago, probably longer. I forwarded to my boss and every friend who travels semi-regularly (remember that this promotion's period for reserving rooms coincides neatly with end-of-year MRs). It showed up in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution yesterday morning.

2. Presumably the failure to equip the server environment for the slamming it took this morning was cost-related. So now they're out the cost of bringing the server back online, potentially owing additional fees to their ISP for all the hits, and as of right now they have zero revenue to show for it. If today was hard, just imagine what happens when 30-50GB of auto-sent emails with Word attachments show up at once!

What a shame to think of the tarnishing this could bring to an otherwise reputable organization's image. If I were any of these member hotels I'd be looking for a way out of my contract.

mcalder

This is Marshall Calder, SVP of Marketing at The Leading Hotels again.

I regret to advise you that we have decided to postpone the $19.28 e-mail promotion scheduled for October 2nd.

We developed a back-up plan for the 150,000 persons who registered for the promotion prior to the failure of our website this morning. Unfortunately, aspects of the plan were met with some confusion over e-mail procedures and timing. Moreover, we became increasingly concerned that the volume of e-mails from non-registered persons could be great enough to cause another outage. Since we do not wish to disappoint anyone again, we shall re-tool the $19.28 promotion and communicate the details to all registrants within the next week.

Finally, I wish to thank our friends in FT. While the criticism that was directed towards us was deserved, the insights, suggestions and commentary is extremely helpful and appreciated.

Regards,

Marshall Calder

YLW

I did save it, but DUH, of course I can then attach it... way too tired, from getting up at 4:30 this morning. Thanks for splashing cold water on my face.^

Kagehitokiri

Marshall, sounds like some reasonable thinking to me.

funny how the least constructive criticism of LHW here is from posters with very low post counts.

driscj

I think you've made the very difficult but correct choice at this point. ^

Two strikes would have been a real mess and this backup plan seemed a bit jakey. Go home, have a drink and watch something mindless on TV. I'm sure it's been a *really* long day there!

wakeboarderjeff

Here's a press release, distributed prior to the latest decision to scrap the e-mail contest: http://www.lhw.com/download_s/161.pdf