So I blogged a few weeks ago about a new game that La Quinta hotels was offering called Play and Stay. The basic idea of the game was that you got a certain amount of tokens per day and you could spin a pseudo-slot machine and earn La Quinta rewards points.
I have been faithfully playing every day, and averaging about 200-300 points a day. I figured that through the end of the month, I could make it up to the 8000 points that it would take for one night at the cheapest LQ hotel here in Cincinnati (we don’t have any Category 1 hotels here which are only 6000 points)
But then, starting about 3 days ago, the winnings stopped (at least for me). I noticed that instead of the 25-50-100 LQ points options, there was also a 5 and a 10 point, but even that wasn’t coming up. Literally the last 3 days, for both my wife and I, we got 0 LQ points. This seemed inconsistent with what we were getting before, and was quite frustrating.
So I did what I like to do in these situations – sent out a complaining email!! 😀 I actually used to have a whole blog dedicated to me sending complaining letters out to companies. I basically said what I said above and that it was pretty frustrating.
I was only expecting maybe a few hundred LQ points (if that), but I actually got a call from a lady at La Quinta. She apologized, and mentioned that they had a certain amount of points budgeted for the game, and because the game was more successful than they anticipated, that they had both a) reduced the probability of winning and b) introduced the 5 and 10 point rewards.
We actually talked for a bit about it and I shared my frustration about it. What I said is that I understand if they only have a certain amount of points budgeted, and only they can decide the value of their points vs. acquiring new customers. What frustrated me the most was the total change in game rules in the middle of the game, with no notice given about it. I suggested maybe an explanatory blurb on the front that at least would let people know about it. She said that was a good idea and was going to take it back to the team.
She also mentioned that they had gotten feedback and in the next few days, they were going to eliminate the 5 and 10 point spins and go back to just 25, 50 and 100. I believe she did say that they were still going to have the lower probability of winning, so we’ll see whether it still makes sense to play the game at all. At the prize levels of the past 3 days, I don’t see myself playing much if anything.
What has your experience been with the Play and Stay game?
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
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