Monday, January 21, 2008

BUSTED! CLOSURE NOTICE AFTER IT WAS CLOSED

If you haven't already, scroll down the extensive list of posts to read all about how Home Depot/IMRE Communications allowed the winning video in their YouTube Gift Card contest to re-edit their video AFTER the contest was over, to avoid being disqualified.

Well, I posted earlier that I had my suspicions about a post on Home Depot's/IMRE Communication's YouTube site. In it, they say the phrase "(Discussion Forums will be closed on 12/26/07, more than one week after the contest ends)". I thought the parsing was a little weird, since why would you go through the trouble of qualifying that it would be "more than one week after the contest ends"? It seems that my suspicions were correct.



In viewing a cached version of the website, up till the evening of December 25th, 2007, there was NO notification that the message boards were going to be closed on the 26th, "more than one week after the contest ends". Let's say that again, because it seems very telling of those operating the contest... They originally posted NO END DATE for entrant feedback. When they felt the heat from the barrage of comments that were confronting their decision to re-edit the winning video, they closed down all the message boards, and THEN told everyone they were going to close them down... as if it had been planned all the long.

UPDATE: It now appears that even mid-day December 26th, they still hadn't posted any closure notice. By 5pm Dec. 26th, the new notice was up. So, what... they give people a couple of minutes between the time the notice is posted to voice any last concerns before they shut it down? All the while, not responding to the massive requests for more information.

The absolute best-case scenario would be that the Home Depot staff members who posted this have painfully horrific English and time-space skills, and that nobody is double-checking the moderator. Because if someone were assigned to post a closure notice, say, on December 26th (after closing the boards), wouldn't they just say "Discussion Forums are now closed, more than one week after the contest has ended"). And the least they could have done was leave them open for people to read but not post, rather than deny ANY access to them.

So there you have it... another "after-the-fact" justification... just like they did with the winning video. They couldn't simply close the message boards down without notice... it seems they felt compelled to build the illusion that everything is going swimmingly. Remember, they also removed their contest rules from their YouTube Site shortly after the controversy began, although a copy is posted below (you'll get a blank page with that link - NOTE: site is managed by IMRE Communications). I guess in "Home Depot-land", if you don't like the rules, change them! No wonder they've been voted one of the most hated companies in 2007.