Get your HfP Christmas Party tickets at noon today and noon tomorrow

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• John says:

  30 Nov30 November 12:24

  Hi Rob,
  Hmmmm!
  Having missed out on previous years, we tried hard to get our ducks in a row for this time
  I am using a PC with Win 10 & Chrome.
  Earlier this morning I did as you suggested … linked to Eventbrite and entered email addr & pswd to set up an account. I was surprised that no CC info was requested.
  Then at the stroke of noon followed your booking link and was able to “request” 2 tickets. When I clicked “Check Out” … nothing! I repeated the steps and the same thing happened. I then saw your comment about having a few minutes to seal the deal, but there was no obvious way to do it. I tried your original link and tickets were now unavailable. I tried Eventbrite … but nothing there either.

  From our experience today, the booking process does not look at all robust.

  Congrats to those who succeeded … but once again my wife and I are utterly frustrated. We are both retired and our hobby is extensive travelling to far flung destinations (BA GGL) … so we find your WEB site to be invaluable.

  • Rhys says:

    30 Nov30 November 12:29

    Hi John – you have a few minutes from adding the tickets to basket to process the payment. It might be that between you “requesting” two tickets and them being added to your basket, that they were snapped up by someone else.

    The booking process itself IS robust – there were not apparent technical errors and the first batch of tickets are sold out, and actually sold out within 60 seconds. That gives you an idea of how quickly these things go.

    Rob, Anika and I have ummed and erred on what is the most fair way of doing this. At the moment, though obviously not perfect, we think this is the least bad way of doing it!

    Hopefully you will be able to purchase some tickets in round two tomorrow but, if not, we are tentatively planning on hosting a significantly larger party in the summer.

    Sorry!

    • John says:

      30 Nov30 November 12:42

      Rob, many thanks for your very prompt reply.

      For the sake of clarity … I was on the ball at noon! Furthermore I managed to get 2 tickets into the basket on 2 separate occasions; the second time because the “check out” function for the first pair went nowhere … as was the case with the second pair. After then it was all too late!

      May be tomorrow …

      Best regards,
      John

      • Rhys says:

        30 Nov30 November 12:47

        If you are using browser extensions such as an ad-block or anti-tracking, those sometimes break functionality. Better luck tomorrow! And I suspect there will be slightly less demand tomorrow since 125 people already have their tickets so you might get a better chance.

      • Julian says:

        30 Nov30 November 16:02

        May be the site played ball with me because I only asked for one ticket?

      • John says:

        1 Dec1 December 12:13

        Rhys, thanks for your comments & encouragement yesterday … very helpful.

        So at the crack of noon today … all done!

        Very much looking forward to the event and meeting the mighty “trio” on 11th Dec!

        • Rob says:

          1 Dec1 December 12:47

          No Anika, should have her back for the Summer Party though ….

    • Polly says:

      30 Nov30 November 13:17

      Well done as the intern in organising this with Anika and Rob. You are right, there’s always tomorrow…and hopefully less demand…

      • Joe says:

        30 Nov30 November 14:12

        And the sharpshooters will already have one so the slow old duffers might have a chance 😛

    • Vince says:

      30 Nov30 November 15:39

      Although I don’t blame you for this, to say this is the “most fair way of doing this” is nonsense. It is the easiest for you as you get confirmed and paid tickets all in one go. If you wanted “fair” then simply run a competition. Draw winners at random and give winners 72 hours to pay. Any left overs go into a second round. More work for you guys obviously but certainly “fair”.

      • BrianDT says:

        30 Nov30 November 17:31

        ‘Fair’…..surely ‘Fairer’

      • Rob says:

        30 Nov30 November 17:35

        “More” work is putting it mildly. Let’s assume we get 500 emails asking for tickets. We then need to pick out between 125 and 250 people depending on whether people want 1 or 2 tickets. Each person must be individually emailed and given banking details and a firm deadline. The bank account needs to be monitored and 125-250 transactions ticked off. Those who do not reply must be a given a final warning. Additional people need to be drawn to replace those who do not pay. Bank account needs to be monitored again, etc etc …

        The only possible way of doing it – which would only work if Eventbrite allowed free cancellations without charging their booking and card fees – would be to sell an unlimited number of tickets, pre-paid, and then randomly go down the list cancelling 1/3rd, 2/3rd, 3/4 etc of the bookings and triggering card refunds. If Eventbrite took their fee (which is over £1 per ticket on an ex-VAT price of £8.33) on cancellations it would wipe out most of our revenue though. There is also the risk that people make multiple bookings knowing that most will be refunded.

• Connie says:

  30 Nov30 November 12:33

  Sad didn’t get one.

  • Rhys says:

    30 Nov30 November 12:47

    Try again tomorrow!

• Alex W says:

  30 Nov30 November 12:40

  Got one. I shan’t be bringing Mrs W or baby W this time so as they say I will be “on it”.

• Following on behind says:

  30 Nov30 November 12:49

  I did a practice run this morning and spent £8.50 on a charity concert to make sure my card details were in and I could react to the tickets going on sale like a fighter pilot.

  Success! I have a H4P ticket.

  PS Anyone want a ticket to a UNICEF carol concert?

  • Julian says:

    30 Nov30 November 17:34

    I might well be interested. Where is the concert and on what date?

    • Julian says:

      30 Nov30 November 17:41

      Answering my own question. Its tomorrow (1st December) at the cathedral who’s founding eventually led on to the creation of my own similarly named school (even though there are many other clone St Pauls Schools but none of them with a link to St Pauls Cathedral, which is why only my old school has its annual Feast Service there. See https://www.eventbrite.com/e/unicef-christmas-concert-tickets-50594559690?aff=erelexpmlt

      If you are giving the ticket away I’m definitely interested. If you want face value I will have to think about it as its a bit of a trek from Bucks on a Saturday evening. The cheap balcony location actually sounds like quite an interesting place to be, although I suppose it might be like the top deck of the Albert Hall and not come with any kind of seat?

      Anyway if you don’t want the ticket to go to waste a fellow HfPer may be able to help you out.

      • Julian says:

        30 Nov30 November 17:48

        Email:- js AT grenehurst.plus.com if you get this in time.

        Not too concerned about the spam risk as I have very heavy anti spam protection on that email account. Obviously AT is replaced by the @ sign and you remove the two spaces either side of AT to create the actual email address.

  • Julian says:

    1 Dec1 December 11:52

    Following on behind I take it you aren’t reading this page any more or alternatively you have decided to attend the carol concert yourself? If neither is the case then I would be happy to make use of the ticket if you email it to me.

• David Faichney says:

  30 Nov30 November 13:34

  A success from New York! whilst on a Virgin Upper Class rewards flight – thanks Rob it’s all down to you a few years ago when I got hooked on HFP 🤗

  • Julian says:

    30 Nov30 November 17:44

    I’m impressed you managed to bag one from that location as on board aircraft wifi internet is usually distressingly slow and unreliable, although having said that I only have experience of using Norwegian’s free offering so far.

    Anyway I would suspect you are probably the only HfPer to bag a ticket while flying at over 30,000 feet.

• CV3V says:

  30 Nov30 November 14:36

  Looking at the event pics i think you need to impose a dress code: no blue shirts.

  • Julian says:

    30 Nov30 November 15:18

    I’m not doing a suit or a blue shirt.

• Alex Sm says:

  30 Nov30 November 14:44

  all this only shows that we need more and bigger events and tickets (or at least part of them) should be distributed via a ballot

  • Julian says:

    30 Nov30 November 15:17

    As very large venues would I think be quite disappointing I think there’s probably a strong case that those who have attended in the past should not be allowed to attend the next one or two events so that more people get a chance to come along.

    On the other hand it will be fascinating to meet some of the website’s most dedicated followers and contributors in person.

    • Lady London says:

      30 Nov30 November 16:32

      I don’t expect to get a ticket (missed out today as my neighbour knocked on the door shortly before) but for those there, wouldn;t it be nice if there could be a spot around 7pm where any regular contributors who wishes to identify themselves could stand up and do so?

      The one time I went I couldn;t find anybody who looked like Genghis…. and I think the summer one should be in Cornwall to make it harder for Harry not to come….!

      • Worzel says:

        30 Nov30 November 17:21

        Squills and I are doubtful too – as to whether we’ll be able to secure tickets.

        However, a contingency plan is in place and we might well meet closer to home 🙂 .

      • Rob says:

        30 Nov30 November 17:32

        We are doing name badges again this time. What Genghis chooses to put on his badge is of course up to him but I’m happy to point him out if you ask me!

      • Shoestring says:

        30 Nov30 November 17:50

        @Worz rather good beer up your way, I used to live in Clifton Village.

        Talking beer: today I popped into the only pub within walking distance on Shop Small to check they still take Amex – they do! – and Tribute on tap is £3.79/ pint so that makes 3 pints for £6.37 🙂

      • Julian says:

        30 Nov30 November 17:53

        I’m yet to be convinced that Genghis is a real person. He may well be some extremely high tech bot that makes frequent automated posts with relevant content on this site.

        If he does exist then I’m sure he’s considerably older than his avatar picture would imply,

        Of course I expect Rob will say he definitely is a real person and that he can also point him out to any of us who want to be introduced to him.

      • Julian says:

        30 Nov30 November 18:09

        Rob,

        Perhaps you should allow people to use their forum names on their name badges rather than their real names if that is what they prefer. That way they remain incognito in terms of their real world name (which someone like Genghis might very well prefer) but we are still able to identify them as the person who’s posts we have been reading on the forum.

        For some odd reason I have actually used my real first name to post here, even though in many other internet discussion forums I use the pseudonym of Capvermell.

        • Rob says:

          30 Nov30 November 19:01

          People will be writing their own name badges (having 250 on a table will slow things down too much) so they can write what they want! Only industry execs will get pre-printed ones.

      • Worzel says:

        30 Nov30 November 18:24

        @Squills-en route for a pint with you now…..!

        Clifton Village-lived there from 0-18 months – apparently 🙂 .

      • Genghis says:

        30 Nov30 November 18:40

        @Julian – you appear obsessed with mentioning me?
        @Rob – please don’t point me out to Julian. I don’t want to be stalked…

      • Julian says:

        30 Nov30 November 18:55

        Genghis,

        I’m merely intrigued about your very high level of participation in the discussions and how it is that you manage to spot almost any post that mentions your name in such a short period of time when this is such a low tech unthreaded and non post update notifying form of discussion forum (or I believe technically only a Wordpress blog that allows comment posts).

        Of course there are post scanning bots that IT savvy people can set up to notify them of any posts that mention them or any post that responds to one of their posts and I presume that this is how you can actually remain so on top of any blog discussions that reference your good self on this website.

        I’m honestly not dangerous and I would not be rude to you if we were to meet up on the night. If on the other hand you don’t wish people to connect your forum identity with the person they meet on the ground at the HfP parties than clearly that has to be your choice.

      • Alex Sm says:

        1 Dec1 December 12:11

        @LadyLondon Were you looking for a Mongolian-looking warrior? 😉

        I thought people had name badges…

        @Julian
        The most potentially useful feature this forum lacks is the possibility to get notifications about replies to your comments – this just pushes them into obscurity. But you were right, @Genghis somehow found a way to monitor these. I asked him once about it but he didn’t reply…

• idrive says:

  30 Nov30 November 16:16

  OT: in plain English for the Iberia 90k Promo Expiry 01/12 means that tomorrow it is still possible to book right? Otherwise it would be expiring today 30/11. Someone was quoting COB today. Can you please confirm? Thanks

  • Shoestring says:

    30 Nov30 November 16:25

    [‘“For example, if a customer purchases tickets on Iberia.com for three people to fly from Seville to Madrid and two of the people are identified as Iberia Plus members during the purchase process, 9,000 Avios will be credited to both of these people within 10 days of the purchase. These two people must have redeemed at least 9,000 Avios by 1 December 2018, or this same amount of Avios will be withdrawn from their account.”’]

    I would read that as meaning by midnight tonight in Spain – so 11pm UK time.

    • idrive says:

      30 Nov30 November 17:15

      Thanks, I am not convinced that the last booking is tonight, but thanks! we shall see

      • Julian says:

        30 Nov30 November 18:11

        I don’t think its worth risking with both ambiguous wording like that and bearing in mind that you are dealing with Spanish business ethics (which are generally not receptive to the concept of customer complaints in my experience) so you should definitely book before midnight tonight.

  • marcw says:

    30 Nov30 November 18:08

    Today is clearly the last day. Theoretically. But tomorrow is saturday.

    • Julian says:

      30 Nov30 November 18:57

      Yes but this isn’t a job application deadline but a real live booking process with a website that will cut you off dead when its calendar says the offer is no longer valid.

      • idrive says:

        30 Nov30 November 19:09

        Thank you for the participation in the discussion. Sorted! Maybe not in the most efficient way but according to the degree of what my current future plan can be. Unfortunately not all goes to plan or forecasting in 12 months is almost impossible sometimes.
        it will be interesting to see if someone has got some spare miles to know when they will die but even more interesting…Million dollar question for those who transferred out…what is the final outcome?

      • Shoestring says:

        30 Nov30 November 19:44

        @idrive we can guess

        IB will definitely remove any 90K special promo Avios unredeemed left in your IB a/c

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