I think I smell lawsuits LOL

"That deal we had? Yeah, well forget it existed. And don't email us either, because we're past the point of caring."

Epic double fail. I got this in my email as well. Hey, quick question, what's a great way to piss off new customers twice before even BOOKING one of your hotels?

It never ceases to amaze me how in 2008, fully twelve years after e-trade suffered severe outages due to overwhelming network crashes caused by too many of their customers trying to trade all at once, that any company still doesn't understand the basic physics of the Internet.

E-Trade. Sears. Leading Hotels of the World. Countless others. "Let's have an Internet sale!"

All a bunch of morons who can't be bothered to do a little basic research.

I was half-expecting this to happen. Their fallback solution smelled of a panicked improvisation (which I'm sure it was), and I was already wondering how they were going to distinguish forms emailed from their pre-registered participants from those of gate-crashers -- the form wasn't behind a password-protected wall, nor did it contain any embedded information about the registered user.

And those concerns don't even address the server strain from having 150,000 emails with 100kb attachments hit at exactly the same time. Time to think this through just a bit more, which is what they should have done in the first place.

What they should do is pick random 'winners' at this point.

I'd be up for a random email or phone call at this point saying 'Hey, you won, where do you want to stay?"

The Phillies sell playoff tickets via a lottery. You have a week to sign up, then they pick at random from that pool, and you get an e-mail saying "Click here to purchase tickets." You don't buy them within a day, someone else gets your shot. How hard could that be?

LOL, I got this e-mail as well. Somebody's not thinking through the logistics of these things. As much as I would prefer not to have to resolve it with randomly drawing winners, I suppose that is what they'll have to do. :(

LHW should just hold a 'sale,' something more realistic like 50 or 60% off, instead of releasing all of their rooms virtually for free ($19.28 a night at a 5-star hotel is practically free considering the actual rack rates of most of LHW's hotels). I know that sounds crazy seeing as the rooms would cost more, but hey, maybe that might give more people a chance, and maybe their site wouldn't break down so horribly.

@kaylabear:

They are only making available a certain number of rooms (6000) at certain hotels. So while it is a fire-sale price, it's not for all their offerings.

But I think your general idea is a far more realistic and a possible solution that would make more people happy.

yeah, when I got the form to fill out for the do-over, I knew INSTANTLY that it would not work. Very cursory information, too many people emailing at once, etc. Hopefully they figure it out, great promotion.

@humphrmi: I'd think a company could make a good deal of money renting out temporary server capacity to companies for promotions like these. It would keep these guys from crashing and burning-if they used it, that is.

@GrantGannon: Well there's two problems with that.

1) They don't know who will want what. If they do it random, they may have all the rooms for florida booked but none for california.

2) I never win random drawings, so no. :D

@Coles_Law:

Done - Amazon EC2 is perfect for this, more companies should use it for flash loads.

There are other solutions as well. This was just sloppy on LHW's part.

Yup yup. I figured it would just be their mail server that melted down this time. And I didn't appreciate a solution that required me to wake up at 4:30am PDT *again*. I'm good with the lottery solution carlosdelvaca talked about.

Ahh yes, I too was one of the *early risers* who got up at 4:30 and then began furiously clicking, only to keep getting the error message. My destination of choice was a stay at the Bernardus Lodge, in Carmel Valley, CA.

My normal employed self wouldn't bother with this nonsense, but my sad, too-broke-for-vacation self would. It's the only way to quench my champagne taste on a beer budget ...

Goes to show that lower prices are the only thing needed to spark new life into our tourist economy!

So be it. Actually this getting like waiting for a new iPhone. In time we will, or we will not get to book a hotel. Either way we can enjoy the ride or bitch about. I'm OK waiting. I'm on the east coast, so my window starts at 8:00 AM, I feel sorry for you left coast folks getting up at O-Dark-Thirty.

Wow, so much anger over what is essentially someone doing a favor that didn't work out. Nobody has lost anything! Anyone who made concrete plans around this thing wasn't paying much attention- even if the servers worked flawlessly, it looks like about a 1 in 25 chance of getting ANY room at best, and who knows which rooms and which nights are in their system.

When they get it back going, I'll try it again, and with a little luck I'll have a nice little getaway to a cool city. And if not, then I'll be mildly disappointed and get on with my life.

@wiretapstudios: Keep doing what they are doing?

Well, some of us wasted about an hour and a half trying to get in yesterday, and then I spent another 10 minutes filling out their form that later they decided not to use. I'm not angry so much as annoyed. I don't mind not getting a cheap room, nor did I actually expect to win. I did expect, however, to lose in a fair manner and without jumping through all these hoops. Many people predicted the failure of the website when the promotion launched and the mess associated with this reflects quite poorly on the company.

These poor silly hotel marketing people. Maybe they need a federal bailout deal.

I still haven't received their foolow-up emails about this. Is anyone else in the same boat?

Wow. That was like the most stilted email I've ever read.

@Whinemaker: Forget beer -- I drink tapwater and pretend it's vodka. Or gin, if I feel like pretending I'm a sot.

Although I find it tastes a little diluted unless you order it neat.

Please, after the initial wave, their waiting for their IT guys to get Google ads put on the form for the next go 'round.

@Jakuub: *they're, god I hate the morning.

@GrantGannon: Different hotels have released different dates. But this can be fixed. It should go like this- do as you say but take a note of the people whose desired hotels and dates aren't available. Go over the list again and repeat the process until the rooms are all filled.

So funny. After the whole initial fiasco, I was bummed and had to leave the office for an appointment. Then got the 80 minute deadline on my mobile - figured I was done. Woke up this AM to the newest disaster email. This entire thing was thought out so poorly. I love the "don't be surprised when half the internet shows up" line.

Well that didn't take long, someone has already edited their Wikipedia entry with this:

Instead of honoring their promotion, the company has opted to suspend the deal indefinitely, banking the tens of thousands of dollars in free promotion from media outlets who covered the promotion in the days leading up to the anniversary sale, and acquiring 150,000 email addresses. The long term effects of the bait-and-switch have yet to be seen.

[en.wikipedia.org]

I went there wondering, "who the hell are these people", and you know, I still don't know the answer. What does "representing" a hotel really mean? Owners? Managers? Or simply a big advertising and promotion co-op?

@acarr260: I just got mine this morning. I think it'll take a while to get all the emails out.

Dear Consuming Public,
We apologize for the problem with this 19.28 promotion.

We did not anticipate that people communicate with eachother by forwarding email information about great deals.

We had no clue that this would be a problem. At least my IT people did not think so but you should have seen them hopping when the computers started smoking...

And in conclusion, I truly believed that turkeys could fly.

Sincerely,
Ted Teng
President & CEO
The Leading Hotels of the World, Ltd.

What incompetents!

I did not register the first time around because I did not want them to have my email address. Yesterday I woke-up and their web server melted. Then I was too foolish to check here again before waking-up early in the morning to fire off the email (should have just did a mail cron job but felt that would be cheating). Now I am convinced that this was just a PR stunt and these PR people with no computer savy have my email address.

That can only end well...

This is worst than the Extended Hotels farting thing. All press isn't good press.

I would never ever ever for free never stay at one of these hotels. Not if every other hotel burned down and they were the only other option left.

This is the kinda stuff Circuit City would do if they were a hotel company.

If this was all a ploy to get people to remarket to, they must have been an easier way....must have been.

That is all.

/rant

Please. There's no way they're bringing it back, especially now that there's even more publicity around the deal than before. But it will be fun to see them try to dig themselves out of this PR debacle.

I suggest that congress act quickly put together a bailout of the hotel industry by issuing coupons good for $20/night stays. This will make consumers confidant that hotels are not simply going out of business and will stimulate travel.