March 31st, 2009 | 
Author: I’ve been pretty upset lately. Hilton/AMEX closed down their Advance Your World Challenge due to an overwhelming number of cheaters and probably an underwhelming performance from their IT department. Both companies ought to be ashamed with they way they are handling this fiasco. Before I get comments bashing me and reminding me of Terms & Conditions, kindly recall my positive attitude when this promotion commenced. Nothing but praise. Worst promotion award should be a new Freddies Awards category.
Check out the message Hitlon/AMEX posted on the game’s site. They didn’t even have the decency to email people. I had to find out about this on a forum!
Thank you for playing the Advance Your World Challenge brought to you by the Hilton HHonors® Card from American Express. Unfortunately, we have found some technical issues with the game that resulted in erroneous scores. As a result, we have made the decision to end the promotion in accordance with the official rules as of March 27, 2009.
We will still award the 1,000 prizes, but will do so through a random drawing of everyone who registered as of March 27, 2009 and meets the eligibility requirements. We will notify potential winners on or around May 18, 2009.
We know many of you devoted significant time and effort to playing the game. We thank you for your participation and apologize for any inconvenience. If you have further questions, please email questions@eprizefulfillment.com.
So they are now going to radomly give out prizes? Wasn’t the purpose of this “event” for people to win prizes based on their skill and practice? But, I do wonder, since there are were so many cheaters registered, how will the organizers of this game know if the players they chose for the prizes were cheaters or duplicates to begin with? They could contact every single person that registered and request an ID to be scanned and faxed to them. That’s what I’d do!
One more thing. If anyone is paying close attention to the FlyerTalk thread that discusses this promotion, notice that around page 44 of the thread, members are receiving emails with 3,000 and 5,000 HHonors points as an apology. Of course, you have to craft a nasty complaint email to HHONORS@HILTON.COM. I did so yesterday, and as of 8PM on Tuesday, March 31, 2009 I haven’t gotten a reply yet. We shall see.
Have a nice clicK life, (really AMEX, have a nice life as those form/generic replies are really starting to tick me off!)
-Mark
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Just curious if you won a prize. Checking FlyerTalk, it seems that winner notices are being sent out.
James,
I was one of the first prize winners. I just made a post about this on my blog: http://kinglobjaw.com/blog/?p=578
10K points plus extension Diamond VIP status till early 2011 is nice! Still, kind of sad I didn’t get the grand prize. I really worked my behind off to get to the Top 7! Was #1 at one points.
So, did you win anything? I hope so!
-Mark
Congrats on winning! That’s really cool. I didn’t get any notification so assume that means no luck for me. Sucks, cause I’m confident I could have stayed in the top 1000 legitimately.
James,
One more thing which I completely forgot about. I just posted a new entry about requesting a copy of the entire winners list. Promotion rules give you the right to do so. All you have to do is email ‘WinListRequests@eprizefulfillment.com’ with a simple email (just include a subject + at least one character in the body since the it’s auto-reply on their end). They will then email you the winner’s list on or after May 18, 2009 when the promotion is “fully” over. Who knows, maybe a spam blocker rejected an email from them, but you’re still a winner. It would be nice if that would be the case.
-Mark