Gencon Hotels are on sale at 2pm, and all earlier reservations were WIPED

[waterdhavian]

Yea, Wow! This was horrific. This was my first time having to book housing for the group that I go with. I wanted to have Wednesday to Saturday and by the time I got through each page to the final confirmation i had to give up Wednesday. It only took 1-2 minutes from the time I selected a hotel to end and in that time my booking was made obsolete. Wanted Crown Plaza, settled with Hilton Gardens. Now gotta figure out if I get a room one night on Wednesday, so I'm down there or drive all morning and be a really unhappy person all day Thursday. Last night I was in such a better mood...

 

[Nikroecyst]

Dontadow, did you get the same hotel? Did you get one at all? Lemme know when you know whats goin on.

 

[DonTadow]

Yea, Wow! This was horrific. This was my first time having to book housing for the group that I go with. I wanted to have Wednesday to Saturday and by the time I got through each page to the final confirmation i had to give up Wednesday. It only took 1-2 minutes from the time I selected a hotel to end and in that time my booking was made obsolete. Wanted Crown Plaza, settled with Hilton Gardens. Now gotta figure out if I get a room one night on Wednesday, so I'm down there or drive all morning and be a really unhappy person all day Thursday. Last night I was in such a better mood...

BTW. The housing site went up at about 1:57. I know that may not seem like much but it was a bit earlier than what they said. Odd because last night i swear it was exactly midnight when it went live.

In any case even though I got on there early, it still took me 20 minutes to check out. It just doesnt make any sense for them to have done the wipe. I got the same stuff i had, but less confusion. Why piss off your core visitors who stayed up till midnight to go to your thing.

BTW Hi Nick, got the same hotel and everything. Just more of a hassel and i was 25 minutes late for a meeting. I'm glad my boss and coworkers are gamers, else I'd be in serious trouble.

 

[DaveStebbins]

To those who mentioned their badge confirmation e-mail as tipping them off that hotel registration started at midnight, please note that not all of the confirmations said that. My confirmation, received about an hour after badge registration opened yesterday said (in two places), "!!!HOUSING OPENS ON MONDAY FEBRUARY 12th at 12NOON EST, 9AM PST!!!"

So, not everyone had that 'fair' chance to book at midnight...

Also, before you call me one of the 'winners' in this situation, please note that I started trying to register at 2PM EST today, with a broadband connection, and finally managed to book a hotel suite at the Radisson (the only place left that had any double doubles) after 4:30 PM EST. I ended up coming home for lunch and now have to use a half-day vacation. So I am definitely feeling more like a whiner than a winner.

 

[Nerfwright]

For what it's worth, my whine-log:

1:59 PM
The first of fifteen serially stalled login attempts on four different browsers.

2:35
I'm frustrated. For yuks I call national reservations for Embassy Suites while I watch my time-outs happen. The rep is very specific that I can call the Indy Convention & Visitors Association directly for bookings if I have my booking code - I can do that? Cool! He supplies the number. Six calls later, the nice/stressed/tired/ service rep in Indy has very helpfully tried to put me into the reservations phone queue (they have 8 lines for 2 reps), but it transfered to a busy signal each time. On the last call, she told me that the reservation system had crawled over some agonizing threshhold to its death. "Please wait and try later, sir."

3:11
My first successful login when I cycled 'round to Safari again - and I get a room at ES! They have my room! I click to confirm and it's already gone - each single individual night. I post my whine in this thread. My lunchtime is long over and I need to do actual work again, but I dejectedly keep trying in the background as I multitask.

3:50
I've had numerous time-outs again, even a couple of successful searches that are unfortunately contained in dead, truncated page-loads. Seeking outlet for my whine-fu, I call the hubby, to tell him what's NOT happening. I am very, very bummed. At his request, I forward my hotel code email to him so he can try from completely different systems. Two minutes later I have my confirmation at the Radisson. It's not among my first choices, but I have a room. I owe him big.

[/whine]

Oh, I have an actual point to make too;

While this was an ugly process made uglier by the screw-ups, be nice to the help.

I think this bears underscoring: be nice to the help.

I somehow kept my temper this afternoon; tonight I tried to use my anger in more constructive ways than abusing blameless customer service reps. I sent a message to the IC&VAss to profusely thank the phone rep who tried to help me under awful circumstances that were beyond her control. (And methinks maybe should have been more under theirs). I wish I'd gotten her name - I hope the commendation gets back to her.

Bucky

 

[Piratecat]

While this was an ugly process made uglier by the screw-ups, be nice to the help.

I think this bears underscoring: be nice to the help.

I somehow kept my temper this afternoon; tonight I tried to use my anger in more constructive ways than abusing blameless customer service reps.

You're a saint, buddy. Good call.

 

[coyote6]

I had a room at the Westin last night; perfect. Now I have one a couple of blocks away, at a higher price.

I'm not sure, but I think this kind of sucks.

OTOH, the staff did an amazing job -- they called my contact number (home phone), and when I wasn't home, got my cell phone number and called me there. Otherwise, I wouldn't have had a clue until just about now. I think I'd be settling for a hotel in Ft. Wayne, maybe.

 

[Nerfwright]

You're a saint, buddy. Good call.

shucks

 

[theredrobedwizard]

I guess posting this same message again might be overkill, but the message needs to get out to the non-convention center hotel using populace.

Just a heads up, if you plan to register for a hotel through GenCon's referrer service (the non-block hotels link in the email you get when you purchase your badge), the dates that it auto-fills for you are wrong.

I wrongly assumed that the dates that the convention's website plugged in would be the correct ones. I'm now having to jump through various hoops of fire and acid to get the dates changed to the correct ones. Huzzah.

I guess this is a lesson to me to not trust anything, even the website of the convention I'm attending.

-TRRW

 

[Steel_Wind]

Epilog

From having a reservation confirmed at a great double suite room at the Embassy Suites to... no room at all by the time I got home.

*nods* Just so. That is the expurgated version of a very long day for me.

There is more - a postscript, which I will refrain from posting. The upshot of which is that I will be at Gencon this year.

Moral of the story:

Mistakes happen. No system is impervious to simple human error. How one deals with those mistakes, on the other hand, is a very different matter. The former is caused by negligence and without intent, while the other is a path picked out and embarked upon by deliberate choice.

Unintentional mistakes may be forgiven; errors in judgment in how you try to fix those mistakes, however, get no discount. For those you are judged at full retail.

What Gencon ought to have done is simple: they should have stopped the early registrations when they came to their attention and stopped taking more of them. Full stop. That's the sum total of what they ought to have done.

Where they crossed the line was in interfering with and purporting to nullify contracts which had already been formed by customers and hotels - contracts to which they were not a party and by their own disclaimers, acted only as agents to facilitate.

You can't have it both ways. You are an agent - or a principal. You are not both. A party may not slip on the coat of a mere agent when it gets cold and then cast it off when they find it gets uncomfortably warm.