Someone will have an unexpected present I wish I wasn't so good at writing my reviews as soon as I get back!

aaww I will miss out by a whisker as I am going away Xmas Eve

Have I missed something, has anybody won this?

So who is the lucky winner?

Hmmmmm missed out on this... :-(

ATB,J.

is it me????



belly

No, it's me

The winner has not responded, I am choosing another. Will post here once I have a confirmed winner

Chris wrote:

The winner has not responded,

I got the same feeling when I read this as I do when I check the unclaimed Lottery winners

it is disappointing that we dont have a winner yet, but i suppose this could be down to the T&Cs of the draw where the winner must reply within 4 hours of being notified.
i did notice this in the T&Cs at the initial anouncement and thought it was a bit odd to restrict the claim time to such a short period. a lot of people will use works e-mail or separate hotmail accounts to register on here and other websites and so may miss out because they are not monitored all the time.i know that i do not monitor my e-mail accounts every 4 hours, not even every 24 hours.
if it was a new member that won, the notification could even have gone straight into a junk mail folder.
still, these were the rules so i suppose anyone who did submit a review needs to sit with their mail box(es) open just in case.

I don't get any emails into my inbox from holidaytruths or a lot of other places. I get too many emails as it is because I run my business online and it's just too much other junk to take into consideration to receive emails from the various forums I visit.

The only way I know what's going on is to log in and check the posts or if I've had any pm's.

Wouldn't it be better to post the winner in this thread along with all the other info?

I've been checking on the FaceBook page to see who won, but nothing has been posted there since 20th December. I wouldn't have won, cos the T and C's said no overseas winners. I did wonder about the 4 hours cut off time, thinking that a lot of people would be out and about getting xmas sorted.

It'll be a nice New Years pressie to whoever gets it in the end

That would be a much better idea- announcing the winner-or sending them a private message via holidaytruths (rather than email)- as a lot of mine goes straight into spam- and are deleted.- i dont have time to go through them all- and sometimes (i dont know why) i never receive some emails- Eg ordered a washing machine from homebase and never received confirmation order number- had to ring them up- this has happened more than once with other companies I have dealt with- Hope thats not the case on this occassion- or i could be an ipod touch down!!!!!

belly

Some good ideas here. If you do another promotion than a pm to inform the winner is good because they have to log on here to read it, and even better, they have to join( which I am assuming they dont have to do just to post a review?)
It does look like you didn't stick with the 4 hour cutoff if you are just picking a new winner now.
edit to add- it could be that some actually make up an email address to post reviews as they are worried about spam.

I also no longer seem to get any emails from HT so I guess I wouldn't have known either maybe that is why it has gone unclaimed, although the review that I put on for this has never been published (iberotel Coraya, Marsa Alam). A pm would be good as anyone who is a regular gets a pop up box as they are typing or when they logon to say one has arrived.

It will be a nice late Christmas Pressie for someone though so that will be good.
Doe

The winner was not a member. I could not PM them. The draw was what it was, a prize BEFORE Christmas, I detailed in the T&C's that winner would be notified via email and I would need a prompt response to get the item out the same day to arrive on the Saturday morning (22nd Dec). As it happens I gave the winner over a week to respond just incase they don't check their emails very often, I still don't have a reply from them. I can't be held responsible for how other people check/manage their emails. I even checked to make sure the winner wasn't a member of the Facebook group, alas no joy. The reason I never announce a winner before it is confirmed, is for this reason. Sometimes they just never come forward.

Thank you as always to our ever vigilant members for their feedback.

So you've picked another winner now?

It was only for reviews submitted between 6th and 19th December, so must be fairly easy to find them surely? When I clicked on the link on Facebook, it brought me straight to HT, to write the review, so perhaps a message on Facebook would be best after all?

No Sue I haven't chosen a winner yet. When I have done so, I'll make sure it's announced appropriately.

Thanks.

the way this has been done is now starting to concern me.
i thought the original idea was great in that it could promote more traffic on here as it is quite a good prize for not a lot of effort. i am all for trying to get more members and getting HT more postings.
when i first saw this advertised i thought that i might submit another review of a hotel i have reviewed before, or do one for a bar/restaurant i have used -though i do not like reviewing these as they can change hands too often- and then i read the T&Cs. to win i would need to submit a review and reply to an e-mail within 4 hours. so to me it seemed that i was in a lottery to enter and a further lottery to claim my prize, and as i use my works e-mail for notifications from here it just seemed too much hassle for something i was not desperate to have, so i did not bother entering.
now it transpires that the T&Cs are not being adhered to in that the 4 hour rule was not applied, and that a further draw (with the same 4 hour rule to apply) has not yet been done. if the 4 hour rule had been applied we could maybe have had a winner before Christmas, but now, as the T&Cs seem to have been ignored we could maybe have to wait until Easter for a winner to be announced.
i find it quite sad that we are always telling people on here to read the T&Cs before booking holidays and we cannot follow them ourselves.
still, my further concern about this is that someone has posted a review on here, did not stick about to join us, and does not respond to e-mails so i start to wonder about their review.
is it truthful and accurate?
Fiona seems to think that maybe the writer used a false e-mail address to avoid spam. i thought all reviews were checked before being published.
do we not check where they came from?
do the checks we have in place now differ from the "old" HT?
we have always been proud of the fact the reviews on here were from genuine holidaymakers and we did not suffer from the false reviews that mar TA.