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Comments (7)
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Save/ShareWe told you a few weeks ago about a special online auction from the Leading Hotels of the World. Namely, for 80 minutes only this morning, the group of luxury hotel properties would release "a limited number" of rooms at the rate of $19.28 per night (for its founding in 1928; get it?) for travel between Nov. 1 and Dec. 15, 2008.
Well, I'm not a fool, and this morning I tried to take advantage of the offer. But I wasn’t able to get through on the website — it just kept telling me to reload the page. Once the 80-minute time frame had passed, I went to the site and received the following apology:
"Due to the overwhelming number of consumers participating in this promotion, we have indeed experienced technical difficulties. Despite our efforts to carefully manage and prepare for this worldwide promotion, we were unable to meet the demand.Please accept our sincere apologies. You will be receiving another opportunity to participate in this offer shortly via the email you provided to register for this promotion.
In the meantime, please rest assured that we will not be saving your email address in our database for any future solicitations.
Thank you for your understanding.
The Leading Hotels of the World, Ltd."
It sounds like their server crashed. I wonder when or if the promotion will resurface. We asked our mascot, Bud Travel, to use his Twitter.com/budtravel feed to ask folks what they encountered.
Meg Keough of says, "I tried the auction. No luck. They sent out an email saying fill out an attachment. No attachment." Then, moments later, LHW sent out a third mass e-mail. Via her Twitter feed, Meg adds, "Just had the third resend with a link to download a form. Instructions: Email it in tomorrow at noon GMT."
Update: 1:23 p.m. ET.: Weird! I'm not getting any of these email updates! And I know I'm registered because I got a confirmation email weeks ago! Drat!
Christine Cantera of the delightful Miss Expatria travel blog, couldn't get through either and has a hilarious, expletive-filled transcript of the process. And Shanfishes said she couldn't get through either.
Sigh! What a fiasco. But don't give up hope!
Did anyone get through to get a deal?
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I got an email that said the server had completely gone down, and I could book a room on a first-come first-served basis via the attached form.
One problem: there was no form attached to the email!
Talk about a fiasco!
Posted By Nicole Gustas on October 1, 2008, 12:32 PM
I sure didn't get in and I got up at 5am to get my hotel room. >:(
Posted By Isaac on October 1, 2008, 1:26 PM
I finally got my form via email.
You have to EMAIL it at 12 noon GMT on 10/2. First come, first served, based on timestamp. I guess you'd better hope the time on your computer's clock matches their email server's, or you might wind up being two minutes early and miss out!
Handling those will require MASSIVE data entry on their part. We'll see what happens next.
Posted By Nicole on October 1, 2008, 2:38 PM
Never ceases to amaze me when something like this can bring down a website. This is not news people, traffic=load.
I got an email with the form attached, but I'm not going to bother send it in.
The data-entry required will just take too long.
Leading Hotels should talk to my friends at Amazon/EC2 - for just-in-time capacity needs.
Posted By Michelle D on October 1, 2008, 7:11 PM
And it gets more ridiculous. Another email, stating that in order to keep the process only amongst those who pre-registered they've decided to change the booking method again. When? A nice vague sometime next week.
Posted By Alysia on October 2, 2008, 9:18 AM
I for one feel they are doing a good job with the recovery. Sure they have had to send out a bunch of emails, but over all they appear to be well intentioned. I'm happy that I'll have my chance and it appears that I'll be competing against the crowd that pre-registered (per the original terms) for the offer (150,000). Had they not pulled the form option I probably would have been completing against millions of deal hunters who did not want to register in the first place.
They failed to plan for the huge spike in traffic for this deal, but I can understand how that could happen. i.e. Right now the US House is closing down their email servers at certain times because to much email is being submitted but concerned citizens...
The company has made a good effort to communicate clearly how they will still give me a chance. Unfortunately in their rush they had to send a few extra emails. I will say that my work email - registered weeks ago - received numerous emails, versus my home email, registered the night before, only receive two emails.
Posted By Iolaire McFadden on October 2, 2008, 11:43 AM
One other question - why did you call this an "online auction"?
As far as I knew it was a contest where you might be able to buy a room for $19.28. I think auction is misleading since it is a fixed price sale.
Posted By Iolaire McFadden on October 2, 2008, 2:33 PM