Hoxton Hotel £1 sale Starts 2nd July 12PM

The_Bargain_Hunters

I managed to get a room 14th March- for my 50th :j! (although I am not a big fan of London) as I knew hubby had booked monday after off but at least we would be going somewhere!
BUT rang hubby at work to tell him and he said he'd booked a nice place in Oxford for 2 nights as a surprise but - being the skinflint he is he would prefer to go to the £1 one and go another time to Oxford! (he was paying for 2 nights with Tesco vouchers!)
I tried for day after - got through on £29 room but when got to end it would not process order! gutted!

MsCrow

Flipped27 wrote: »

Thanks, checked the smal print and it must be me that goes ( I could take someone else, but DH has this important exam, i can't abandon him?!

Oh the frustration!

Really sorry to everyone who didn't manage to get one, I only thought I would give it a go after seeing Martin on GMTV this morning....

When I couldn't go suddenly I was able to change the reservation to someone elses name. I rang the Hoxton who were very nice and they sent a new confirmation with the other name on it. It was all fine.

PinkRarr

No luck here either! Wanted one for a honeymoon night away but back to the original plan of leaving child with a friend and rose-petalling our own bed!

Congrats to all that were successful and hope all that got stung get their money back.

Flipped27...how would they know it was you??? I'm sure you'd trust your mum to return your credit card and she could just pretend to be you.

patrick0

It is possible to get a room. But there are tens of thousands of people trying for just 500 £1 & 500 £29 rooms so most people are going to miss out.

I messed up my booking this time and booked a £1 and £29 room for the same night on the same card, so my booking may be cancelled.

Here are my tips, sorry if they seem too technical:

1. Decide in advance on the dates you want. Decide in advance if you are willing to pay for a £29 room, if you are then make sure you instantly try for £29 room if £1 is unavailable for the date you want. If you want any weekend dates then try for them first as they always go first.
2. set your PC clock a couple of minutes fast (as the countdown is calculated using the time of your PC, not the time setting on their web server). This means if your PC clock is slow then by the time it reaches 00:00:00 the actual time may be 12:03 and you will have lost 3 mins of valuable booking time. Once the countdown timer hits 00:00:00 click refresh every few seconds until the offer appears (bearing in mind it may take a few mins if you've sped up your clock). You can change the clock by double clicking the time in the bottom right hand corner of your screen (on PCs).
3. Use the HTML version of the booking pages - these have been covered in another Hoxton Hotels thread - they are a lot faster than the flash booking page. You need to append the £1 or £29 "rate id" to the html booking URL as soon as it appears on the main Hoxton Hotel page. What I mean here is that when the £1 booking icon comes up, hover your mouse over it and look at the URL it's pointing to (which you should be able to see at the bottom left of your browser) - at the end of the URL will be the £1 rateid (eg. &rateplanid=584373 or &rateid=584373). Note it down the number and append it to this URL (replace "rateidhere" with the number):
   http://reservations.ihotelier.com/crs/indexaccount.cfm?hotelid=13279&languageid=1&rateplanid=rateidhere
   Then paste the URL into your browser and you'll get the HTML booking page for the £1 offer. For £29 rooms you need to hover over the £29 icon and paste the £29 rateid into the url.
   Note: the rate id changes for each sale, so you need to manually edit this URL for each sale.
4. If you use Firefox, download a form filling extension such as "Autofill forms" and set it up for the html credit card page -- this can mean the difference between getting a booking and not getting a booking (as entering credit card details manually takes a fair while). You can prime the values in the form filler by using the html booking page for standard (non-sale) rates which is reachable via url https://reservations.ihotelier.com/crs/step1.cfm?hotelid=13279&languageid=1 -- just follow the booking process (pretend booking) through to the credit card page and then setup the form filler for the fields. Make sure you DO NOT click submit after entering your credit card details otherwise you'll make a full price booking. The form filler extension has a help option if you're stuck - I personally found it quite fiddly to setup.

Having said that, plenty of people are able to book via the flash page. I avoid it as it never works for me whereas html always does and doesn't give time out errors.

If you're staying the Saturday night then try the Columbia Road Flower Market on Sunday morning (you can store your bags at the hotel after checking out) - the local shops around the market are great for browsing and the market is a real London treasure. Here's a route map that you can printout if you don't know where it is.

Crabman

Andy_cf wrote: »

THIS WAS A TOTAL CON! I tried booking on my iphone becaue it uses a html not flash interface. I was trying to book on saturday night at £29. All I kept getting towards to end of the booking was the server too busy message.

But now I've just checked my email and I have TWO BOOKINGS for the same saturday night at £99 each!! I did not agree to this at all and the email says its totally unrefundable!

Surely this cannot be right? The first screen I accepted the room on was at 29 pounds, it never went up to 99 pounds at any point (besides which I never got to a confirmation of booking point at all). Anybody know my rights about getting a refund?!

Contact the hotel and explain what happened, I'm sure they've refunded people in the past where this happened and if they didn't it would be pretty bad PR for them.

Let us know how it goes

McKaz

Hey Patrick0...... are you seriously saying that people can cheat this system by changing the time on their PC??
If thats the case im absolutely disgusted, talk about terrible system....

With regard to existing customers having less to fill in on the form..... I actually called their reservations prior to the countdown and was told the existing customers dont have an unfair advantage because everyone has to enter the same info. Apparently she lied to me!!!

HOXTON: If you cant make it fair, DONT DO IT.... terrible way to run a business!!!

I hope Martin Lewis shares this information with people next time because I feel like ive just wasted half an hour for nothing.

MsCrow

McKaz wrote: »

Hey Patrick0...... are you seriously saying that people can cheat this system by changing the time on their PC??
If thats the case im absolutely disgusted, talk about terrible system....

With regard to existing customers having less to fill in on the form..... I actually called their reservations prior to the countdown and was told the existing customers dont have an unfair advantage because everyone has to enter the same info. Apparently she lied to me!!!

HOXTON: If you cant make it fair, DONT DO IT.... terrible way to run a business!!!

I hope Martin Lewis shares this information with people next time because I feel like ive just wasted half an hour for nothing.

No, he means that some people's clocks run slow on their computers and need to be adjusted to reflect actual time. The page for booking only comes up at 12pm.

I go by Radio 4, and refresh as they get to the end of a programme preview before the 12pm pips.

patrick0

MsCrow wrote: »

No, he means that some people's clocks run slow on their computers and need to be adjusted to reflect actual time. The page for booking only comes up at 12pm.

I go by Radio 4, and refresh as they get to the end of a programme preview before the 12pm pips.

Yes, exactly. What I'm saying is that if your PC clock is slow by say 5 minutes then you won't see the booking page until 5 minutes after it becomes live. So you need to make sure your PCs clock is the correct time - either set it to the beeps on Radio 4 news or set it a minute or two faster than actual time. This is in no way cheating - it's just making sure you don't miss out because your PC's clock is set to 11:55 when it's actually 12:00 in reality.

patrick0

McKaz wrote: »

With regard to existing customers having less to fill in on the form..... I actually called their reservations prior to the countdown and was told the existing customers dont have an unfair advantage because everyone has to enter the same info. Apparently she lied to me!!!

I have never tried the last 4 digits of card number on the flash booking page. If it does fill out all your details then it may save you a few seconds.

I have to say the Hoxton Hotel people are not cheats. The booking system is run by an unrelated company in America is used by thousands of hotels around the world. It's likely that the Hoxton Hotel are not permitted to make any changes to the system works.

I personally avoid the flash booking pages as they are too slow and often fall over in these sales when too many people are trying to use them. The plain html pages along with a form filler are much quicker and they have never given an error when I've used them.

nluk100

I got to the checkout by 12:02 but got a "connection error" message.

After that I couldn't get past the £1 rooms home page