Yesterday, because I’m on Jetstar’s mailing list, I received an email about Jetstar’s 5th birthday promotion – they’d be offering 5,000 tickets and 5 cents each (including tax!) from between 10pm and 11pm last night.

So naturally, I tried to jump aboard the bandwagon (at 9.59pm). Of course I realised that there was a very good chance indeed (like around 99%) that I would not score two of these magical fares – because demand was sure to be seriously high.

I had not anticipated that for the promotion, Jetstar would unplug their servers and replace them with a lonely Commodore 64, connected to the internets via 300 baud modem.

What I really would have liked was a friendly “Sorry, you’ve missed out! Better luck next time!” message.

What I really didn’t like at all was the endless timing out / getting half-way through the booking processes and being kicked back to the start. For the whole hour.

Now, thankfully, I’m not one of these marketing types, but surely they could have anticipated demand and catered to it? That sort of thing isn’t impossible and not planning seems just unprofessional and sloppy.

Okay, the title was a little misleading – that was nowhere near ranty. But had I written it last night, it would have been. There was swearing! And gnashing of teeth!

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