If the e-mail was a fake, how did them set up a private chat room ?

Okay, that is a really good point! It would be pretty hard to set up a new forum!



Dorian



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It was more of a quick survey than a focus group. Maybe some airline asked Randy for some quick data.

Jay

Very frustrating event. Started quite late, too many participants, and the topic was about using FF miles for private jets. From the first question, it was obvious that most of the participants were not interested. At that point, it would have been good if Randy, or whomever was running the show, had said that all of the questions after that would deal with the private jet option and those of us who were not interested could go on and leave and we'd get our miles for participating and then he'd run through the remaining questions with those who would want to fly on private jets.

In retrospect, I could kick myself for wasting an hour on this "chat", since I should have been preparing for meetings today, instead of stupidly watching a blur on the screen.

I agree with most of the other posts on here. It was my first time being invited to participate in a forum like this and it made for a frustrating experience.

I did want to point out that I have never posted an e-mail address on my profile, and my invite e-mail was sent to an address that was only provided upon registration for Flyertalk. If it wasn't Randy himself, I'd sure like to know how else they accessed my address.

[This message has been edited by CA Platinum (edited 09-27-2000).]

Same here. It was my first time on live chat, and the experience was def confusing as well as frustrating at times. I believed it had to be either Randy or someone from webflyer who set this up, how else do he/she got all our info?? And, will there be a report/summary of the results??

i don't believe everyone was promised miles, only that some miles would be given out in some form. That was my reading of the email.

cesgo:

As for the email, RichG, Catman and Myself were wondering the same thing last night during the chat.

I pulled some email from randy and other people at flyertalk that I;ve received and compared the routing info and headers, and I'm convinced the email was sent from Inside Flyer. All the IP addresses and software is correct.

I concur with most everyone's opinion that if it wasn't Randy, how did they get our emails (a rogue employee comes to mind as a possibility) and how could the special room be set up?

During the chat, I made the point that this "focus group" fell far afield of any legitimate approach to such an endeavor and any research quality was so biased as to be worthless. I received a private message from RanFlyer saying that he was trying to get a rough cut of responses to structure more research. I pointed out that the fact that it was 25 minutes late starting and was so unstructured resulted in a noticable group dynamic that would certainly contribute bias to any responses/results. The answer I received was that bias can be useful ( or some such) and that he only had a few more questions that "they" wanted answers for. When I asked who "they" were, I received no more answers.

Not being privy to his motivations, if indeed they were HIS motivations, I do not want to be critical of the general concept. However, as an owner of a marketing research firm, I would certainly hesitate to attach any confidence to any analysis of responses.

An amusing thought (and not just my own) is that the whole exercise was intended to demonstrate to someone the degree of response he could generate on short notice and thereby demonstrate the potential of such a group in terms of [marketing, sale, etc.].

There were so many people in the room, I had to leave for a while because I was getting carsick trying to read that fast!

I would also like to add that some participants were calling for Randy to have "chat police" throw out the users in the room who were instigating and perpetuating questions as to whether it was Randy or not. In all fairness, the bizarre set of circumstances leading up to the chat, the fact that the user Randy was in the room under had been created the same day, and the fact that he didn't respond to repeated requests to confirm his identity in some way contributed to those who were suspicious and I personally feel the suspicion was warranted.

Just my two cents worth... an interesting hour.

I wasn't invited. But I never am.

Does anyone else find it interesting that no "official" from Flyertalk has posted whether or not this was actually Randy Peterson?

I would appreciate a public post on this thread to that effect.

What do others think?

Boy, talk about feeling left out! I got the notice yesterday afternoon, but had to be late getting on board. When I did, I had no clue what the password was. I finally gave up. Sounds like I didn't miss a whole lot.

My take on the exercise last night is that it was scripted and condicted by a "Randy Peterson bot." There was no greeting, no informal chat at the beginning, and the questions spit out on the screen as thugh they had all been entered in advance and timed to come out at certain intervals in the chat.

Also, even though the session started 15 minutes late, there was no acknowledgement of that, no informal "sorry I'm late folks, my flight came in later than expected" or anything like that. Not only very un-Randy like, but very un-human like.

i got the email on two different addresses as well. one which is not listed on my FT registartion. i didnt attend the chat but i would be interested to know if it was "legit" or not?? does raise some questions about the privacy of our data though

i got the email on two different addresses as well. one which is not listed on my FT registartion. i didnt attend the chat but i would be interested to know if it was "legit" or not?? does raise some questions about the privacy of our data though