Are LastMinuteTravel’s $1 room rates too good to be true?

A room at the InterContinental Tampa on Feb. 10 costs $278 a night. But Dave Willis got his free, thanks to LastMinuteTravel.com’s The World for a Dollar offer. Sound too good to be true? It may be.

Willis is one of the fortunate few who snagged a zero-dollar rate. (“I got a confirmation email with a zero price,” he told me. “They said the bellhop could use the dollar more than they could.”)

He signed up for a “hint” email on Monday and happened to check the site yesterday night. With just five minutes left in a 15-minute window to book, he managed to score a zero-dollar room rate.

“Hope I don’t get a follow-up email saying there was an error,” he adds.

But at least one traveler thinks the promotion isn’t legit. Reader James Fischer decided to time LastMinuteTravel.com’s window of opportunity.

I wrote a little program to track any changes to specific pages within the Web site, and found something very strange: The promotional periods were not 15 minutes long, but only 3 minutes at most.

Fischer didn’t believe it, so he repeated the test.

I found that the promotion periods were no more than 3 minutes. To make matters worse, one would be redirected to a flash “movie” to “explain” the promotion at every selection in the process, so one’s time was consistently chewed up, and it was impossible to complete a booking before the timer ran out.

Lauren Volcheff LastMinuteTravel’s director of marketing, insisted the offer is on the up-and-up.

Our intention from the start of this campaign has been to introduce travelers to the new LastMinuteTravel.com, our variety of travel products and our great, low rates. Due to the expected demand and the opportunities presented by this sale, we have continually encouraged travelers to prepare in advance, which allows them to easily complete a booking within the sale session. In fact, many have already been successful – during the first three days of The World for $1 sale, 624 bookings have been made, sending 1,437 people on vacation.

I also want to provide you with some of the campaign’s specifics in order to clarify questions and dispel any rumors or myths.

The World for $1 sale occurs on LastMinuteTravel.com each weekday (Jan 26 – Feb 6) for a total of 15 minutes daily, with a minimum of seven more opportunities to become involved from today forward. Specific start times vary day-to-day, and the 15-minute windows are divided into three or less sessions per day – each lasting for at least five minutes, for a total 15 minutes of sale time each day. During the sale, travelers automatically view a series of three tutorials, which total two minutes and 25 seconds when combined. Each short video explains how to ‘book smarter’ on the new LastMinuteTravel.com and gives tips on using the Undercover hotel model.

On average, it should take 3 minutes to complete a reservation during this sale. For instance, on January 26, the sale’s launch day, the first session occurred in the morning during the ten o’clock hour, and again in the afternoon at the one o’clock hour. One session was seven minutes long, and the other was eight. During these two sessions alone, we had 112 people complete bookings in 62 destinations around the world – 65 percent of which were in high-end, luxury hotels.

It’s also important to note that while we have taken all of the necessary steps to support the enormous demand expected during this promotion, rooms may sell out during high-demand periods.

I’m withholding judgment on this offer. It may be gimmicky, it may have lots of fine print, and it may be difficult to claim a room.

But is it fraudulent? Let’s give LastMinuteTravel a few more days before reaching a verdict.

Update: Got another note from Willis …

Just got a call from a LastMinuteTravel rep, who wanted to confirm that I received my confirmation email (which I did) and congratulate me on my win. He explained cancellation terms, which are basically nonexistent, despite their boilerplate terms that impose a $25 penalty and full night/stay fee for cancellations for paid stays.

Also, he clarified that winners can’t get another $1/free stay during the campaign, even though the terms make it sound like it could be one win per week.

  • Patrick

    The 3 minute figure is bogus. I’ve loaded up the page with 6.5 minutes on the timer. They do seem to break up the 15 minute interval into two 7.5 minute intervals (like this morning) or some combination of shorter ones, per day, however.

  • Jim

    Patrick:

    What date/time did you see “time” of 7.5 mins?
    What date/time did you see “time” of 6.5 mins?

    Either way, were you able to book a room in that time?

  • Frank

    I also feel that it’s not 15minutes in one chunk, but I’m not sure exactly how long it is. I tried both Monday & Tuesday, but wasn’t able to complete it in time. The site tends to be incredibly slow when that happens, and they show you the movies that you can’t skip.

    I will keep trying in hopes that I may be one of the lucky few, but I will say it’s utterly frustrating to see the clock ticking and having to watch a stupid movie telling you what you’re doing.

  • Michael

    I was reading on flyertalk that lastminute is supposedly sending 1099 forms on this offer. Can they actually do that? Is this considered a prize that you DO have to pay taxes on?

  • Carrie Charney

    Last Minute Travel is so not worth my time, even thought I’m retired. From what I’ve read here, I’m not even tempted to look at its website.

  • vwoaj

    I got through on Tuesday and booked a room. I was waiting for my wife, and was sitting in front of the computer. I refreshed once and it wasn’t there; I refreshed 10 seconds later and it was. There is a large clock at the top telling you how much time you had left until time “ran out”. I would say the entire time was less than 6 minutes, during which I had to search, watch a movie, click the room, watch a movie, pay, fill out a questionaire and confirm. I had about 1 minute left. Everything went through, and now I have 7 nights completely paid for (not even $1/night). Would I sit and realistically expect to get it again? No – not a chance.

  • jeff

    I was up from 2-3am also, but didn’t see any of the video’s some people did. I will definitely join that boycott of LAST MINUTE TRAVEL. I’m certainly not one who cries for things I did not get, however LMT set up the rules for their own promotion and did not follow them. That is grounds for a class action suit. Although, they could have canceled the promo anytime they liked under their terms, instead they made it impossible to achieve the goal.

    Running the clock after 11pm is unethical, but not running individual 15 minute segments each day is against how they set the rules up. It is just as bad to me as when McDonalds ram the Monopoly contest and didn’t have winning pieces available. For those that say they may have had technical trouble, it is still their responsibility to communicate that to us. They certainly have all of our email addresses and we saw nothing. It’s obvious to me they gave away some 900 rooms earlier than expected and instead of handling the situation with class, they resorted to unfair practices.

    LMT was very impressed with the 1700 people in the chat room and the power they held to keep us looking at their site. Let’s show them what those 1700+ people can do when treated unfair.

  • Tina

    To elaborate on what Jeff said:

    Yesterday, 2/3, there was no specific time period of 5/10/15 minutes where the promotion was running, as per the terms of the campaign. Instead it was intermittent…where one person would see the deal and call up a friend and say “It’s going on now!” and the friend would try, and the promo would not be running for them… some of the problems were as follows:
    1.) People using firefox are no longer seeing videos (which are required to view to get the deal) For some reason it now seems to be I.e. only?
    2.) The timer is inconsistent for those who do see it. (There are several reports of completing all text box entries on a page a page with 3 min on the timer, but then after clicking submit and progressing to the next page, the user gets an error message saying that the time is up, or having it go to the next page, and they see that their time is cut short to 15 sedconds.)
    3.) For some individuals a room search is showing up as “0 points”? No one knows if this means it’s a free room, it has nothing about points noted in the terms of the campaign…
    4.) For some individuals who got to the final confirmation page, there is a security image box with a randomized passcode you have to enter. If you type that code faster than 3 seconds, it flags an error and says that you’ve done it faster than 3 seconds and need to retry. (Sucking up time for you to complete the forms)
    5.) For those who saw the videos, many watched the first video, got their $1 search results and still had time ticking on the top of the page when they clicked “Book it”. Unfortunately, they were then taken to a page that said “The contest is finished”.

    I, personally, have worked in tech support and community management in the past. They’ve got a blog (which is pretty much instant communication) but are not communicating to people whether they’ve had tech issues, etc. I don’t believe that people are unreasonable about wanting to know the scoop… they do seem to be changing the rules on us without telling us. Last week (well, at least before Thursday), if you went to the site during the time of the correct minutes, you would be presented with a video, watch that, see search results, click book it, watch another video, go to a confirmation page, go to a billing page, go to a final confirmation page and then you’d be done. You had an accurate timer on the top of the page the entire time that you were working against. This week several people didn’t see a video at all, didn’t see a timer at all, got error messages when filling out forms, had time mysteriously run out/shorten, and numerous other problems found here: http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?t=1127859&page=34

    What I would ask is whether Elliott has tried to touch base again with Lauren in LMT marketing now that so many weird and wonky things are happening? It would be great to get visibility into this.

    Also – I did want to note that this will be bad PR for them even for folks who HAVE gotten rooms, because they are now telling their friends and family to try, and the rules have changed. Now even someone who DID get the deal will look like a tool for having told their friends and family to try a promotion where the rules keep changing and there seem to be innumerable problems affecting equality for a user to book.

    Thanks for looking at my rant Elliott and Elliott.org staff. If you talk to Lauren the marketing lady again, I’d be thrilled to know what she says.

  • Bernie

    I might be the only knucklehead to stand up for these guys, but the sale is legit. I got in the very first round on day 1 and got one of the nicest hotels in the entire country for 6 days for free.
    Hung around and my girlfriend got 7 nights all inclusive in Jamaica in an ocean front suite that is over 900 per night according to the resort’s website in the 2nd round last Monday.
    My folks also got the W in NYC on Wednesday.
    All the reservations have been confirmed at the respective hotels, and they say I don’t owe them a dime.
    Sure you have to type quickly, and not every hotel is on the list since they realized how much it cost them on Monday, but who care? It’s a friggin FREE hotel room.
    I’m actually shocked that despite all the beeotching around the boards, they haven’t pulled the sale yet. Nobody is entitled to a free room. I’m not saying I’ll use them for other travel after the sale, I go with best price, it is legit.

  • BostonT

    Bernie, I don’t think you’re a knucklehead. No one is entitled to a free hotel room, and not everyone who plays a game is entitled to win. But I have real doubts about a company that changes rules so randomly and constantly appears to be fixing the game. Plan the rules more carefully, then stick to them. Here, they seemed to want the free advertising hype of offering up to 7 free nights, but then pulled back after the promo started–and after getting the free press–and started messing with the terms to scale back. It’s just not straightforward, and that kind of company seems to me all too willing to cut corners, misrepresent, etc. when doing regular business.

    As for limiting winners: the t & c always said that there would be a limited number of winners per booking period. (What was it, 500 per day?) They could have set that lower. Doing that, and sticking to the original set up would have been more credible than trying to limit access in other ways. Again, it goes back to the false advertising. They got a lot of free press for 15 minutes/per day on ALL hotels in their inventory, but that is not what they offered in the end.

    In any case, I’d recommend that savvy travelers compare prices on LMT to prices obtainable on other sites and through the hotels themselves. I did this when I was trying to participate in the promo–I like to do my research–and I found LMT to be consistently higher priced. I also found that they inflate hotel ratings. Beware 3-stars at LMT!

    Best of luck everyone, all you World for a $1 junkies out there!

  • James

    I was able to book last week but, I have to say that I am still not happy, I booked some crappy hotel because all the 4 and 5 stars were taken down so them stating that all 15k hotels and their whole inventory is there is a complete lie, I find it amazing that they were available directly before and after the promo, so their lie saying they get booked is a joke. Also I don’t understand how they can legally get away with changing the T and C so ofter. They did this half a** They should have also had a training with their CS so they all can get their answers correct. I have called about 5 different times and each time have gotten a different answer from their reps. I am sure that LMT had good intentions and has potential to be a good company but, their ethics in this promo are lacking.

  • Tina

    Well – LMT is at it again.

    They just sent me a 1099, for what was clearly outlined in their TOS at the time of my purchase as a “Sale” for $1. No where in the TOS was any ARV listed, any sweepstakes rules… in fact, the language at the time clearly stated that it was “NOT” a sweepstakes or lottery.

    /sigh