Winner Of The SMD4 Seat Giveaway!
Now the moment that everyone has been waiting for…
There were over 1,000 entries in the StarMegaDO4 seat giveaway contest and I was extremely impressed by all of them!
The winner of the StarMegaDO4 seat giveaway is Josephine from Los Angeles!!!!!!
Josephine submitted 10 entries during the contest and the one that won her the seat was this post on Facebook.
After selecting her name Saturday morning, I was laughing because I thought the shopping part was a joke so I sent her an email saying, that was really creative.
Anyways, I gave Josephine my phone number and told her to call me so I could get all of her info and discuss the logistics of this little giveaway.
To my surprise, she was not joking about the shopping part and she is a 34 year old graduate student at USC getting her Masters of Fine Arts in Film & Television production, which is pretty cool.
After attempting to act like I know anything about film, we disused how to approach trying to get tickets to the SMD4.
I had previously been on the SMD3, so I was content in trying to secure Josephine a seat first and then trying for myself, however Josephine apparently has the equivalent of a Graduate Dissertation due in November.
So instead of her getting a seat on the SMD4 and then not being able to go, she said that I should try first for a seat and then try to get her one if anything was still available.
She said that if that plan worked out then great, if it didn’t, than she would just take the United and Hyatt gift cards so her and her husband could go vacation in Hawaii after she completes her MFA program.
SMD4 Ticketing
At 8:55am Monday morning, I booted up MilePoint and MegaDO.com in an attempt to snag 2 tickets to the SMD4.
At 9:02am there still wasn’t a link on the MegaDO.com site to officially sign up, so I started reading through MilePoint threads and sure enough there was some glitch on their end which was preventing the site from updating with the link to register.
Within a few minutes the link was eventually up and I furiously clicked away.
I opted to go with Economy because it was the cheapest at $999.
I personally thought Economy would go the quickest but from reading MilePoint, apparently Economy Plus and Tommy Class (where the middle seat of every row is blocked off), went even faster, so I guess I got lucky going with Economy.
As I rushed to fill out my form, I didn’t realize that they needed participant’s United MileagePlus Number and Hyatt Gold Passport Number!
Thankfully I had AwardWallet bookmarked, so I quickly copy pasted those account numbers in.
The final wrench in the tire was that at the end you had to provide your Passport number.
Looking back, this seems kind of obvious, but then again because this was only for the domestic portion, I guess I didn’t think they would need a Passport.
Again luckily, when I went to Montreal a couple of weeks ago, I decided to take a picture of my Passport on my iPhone as a precaution just in case I lost it. Also I quickly realized that it is easier to fill out Customs forms by looking at your phone for your information instead of physically pulling out your Passport.
So I quickly found my Passport number and plugged it in, double checked all my info and hit send!
As I write this, I realize I should have taken some screenshots for Readers to see but according to MegaDO.com, my order did go through!
I didn’t receive a confirmation email or anything so hopefully I am not writing this post Monday night and then find out tomorrow that in fact I am on the waitlist or my order didn’t get processed properly!
Regardless, as soon as my order was in, I went right back to MegaDO.com at 9:07am to try and snag a seat for Josephine but it was all sold out…..
I then checked the MilePoint threads and it seems that many people who tried right after it launched were not able to get seats : (
I am kind of disappointed that I couldn’t also get Josephine a ticket, but I am sure she will have fun in Hawaii and I’ll be sure to get you a grab bag of SMD4 goodies!
As for everyone else that entered the SMD4 seat giveaway, I appreciate all the time you spent Facebooking, Tweeting, and Emailing.
I got quite a few emails from people who saw all the posts on Facebook and Twitter, and were wondering how to go about collecting miles. That in itself makes this contest all worth it.
As I stated months ago, I will be at the Chicago Seminars in October, and since it is in my backyard and I won’t have to pay for any of my flights or hotels since I live here, I will most likely be sponsoring a FFU Reader to come enjoy the Windy City on Frequent Flyer University’s tab, so stay tuned for that!
Thanks again to everyone that entered, and if you ended up buying a seat and will be on the SMD4, comment below or email me!
Can’t wait to meet everyone!
-Parag
