“Leading Hotels Of The World” was supposed to have a sick deal today where you could get five-star hotel rooms for $19.28 per night, but the inevitable short supply and online stampede left many futilely clicking refresh for over two hours as the servers crashed. Instead of polite bellboys, many consumers were greeted by the message, “Just a moment, please…Due to the overwhelming number of consumers participating in this promotion. We regret to inform you due to technical difficulties beyond our control the 1928 promotion has been suspended indefintely. [sic]” Irate would-be customers left messages in various forums describing their experiences…

UPDATE: Do-Over Announced By Leading Hotels Of The World

Flyertalk
Moneysavingexpert
Slickdeals

According to this email reportedly sent out by their Director of Marketing (I’m still waiting for mine), their servers crashed before they could sell all the rooms. But don’t worry, they’ll be using all those thousands of email addresses they got people to enter to sell the inventory via email.

Unfortunately, we’ve had to suspend the sale due to overwhelming demand. Although we were aware of the traffic volume and made preparations ahead of time to accommodate it, the volume of traffic nonetheless outstripped our enhanced capacity. In lieu of the online process, we will be running an alternative email based sale shortly, as most of the inventory is still unsold.

You should be receiving an email from us shortly describing the specifics, but the details you’ve provided in terms of your intentions are exactly what we are going to be asking of our consumers. With this in mind, I’ll try to get your request into the queue.

With sincere apologies for your inconvenience,

Robert Cantave
Director of Marketing Technology
The Leading Hotels of the World, Ltd.

If you’re going to give away shit like a Midtown hotel for $20 a night, especially in this economy, you better ramp up capacity and load test your servers.

End Of Promotion [Leading Hotels Of The World]

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