Scoot's Longest Virtual Flight A Failure?

I first heard about Scoot’s Longest Virtual Flight last week and it was held yesterday and is expected to end at 1300 hours today. Initially, I was contemplating whether I should take part in the challenge but after seeing all that has happened, I’m really glad I didn’t even though I registered and was invited to participate in person at Golden Village City Square Mall.
[Image Credit to Scoot Singapore]

In case you haven’t heard, Scoot’s Long Virtual Flight was organised to commemorate the first anniversary of its maiden flight to Sydney and one lucky contestant will win S$20,000 in cash, with a further S$30,000 in travel vouchers to be given away.

[Image Credit to Scoot Singapore]

Contestants “on board” must tap [for those using mobile devices] or click [for those using the desktop/laptop] the “Scoot Virtual Flight” every 60 seconds and the contestant who outlasts all others will walk away with the grand prize of S$20,000 cash and free Scoot flights for one year.

Sounds doable and achievable? Probably.

However, when contestants were supposed to “board” the virtual flight at 8pm and get ready for “take off” at 9pm yesterday, there were multiple technical glitches and out of the 10,000 people that registered for the challenge, only 20-30% of people managed to access the challenge. Even then, out of the 2000-3000 contestants that managed to access the challenge, more than 3/4 of them dropped out midway in the challenge due to technical problems and malfunction. This led to a public backlash and even contestants at the contest venue [Golden Village City Square Mall] experienced similar technical difficulties.

[Image Credit to Scoot Singapore]

To pacify the contestants whom consisted of media personalities, bloggers, and the general public at the contest venue, Steven Greenway, Head of Commercial at Scoot, apologized and assured the contestants that the team is working hard to sort out the glitches and as a token of appreciation, gave everyone at the contest venue a free return ticket to Sydney. When news about this reached contestants whom weren’t at the contest venue, a second public backlash took place where a majority of the contestants cited that it was unfair.

A third public backlash took place when the first half of the challenge was completed and this was because contestants whom completed the first half of the challenge did not have their names listed for the second half of the challenge. This means that some of the contestants whom have been tapping or clicking for the last 8 hours have been doing it for nothing.

Currently [as @ 1031 hours], the challenge is still ongoing with 18 contestants tapping away and once this challenge ends, I guess Scoot is going to be put in a rather difficult position as they will have to answer to the rest of the contestants about the technical glitches. While I’m not sure how this crisis will be managed by Scoot but taking a look at the Terms and Conditions for the challenge, Scoot inevitably has an advantage over the contestants that took part and the ball is in Scoot’s hands to decide the course of action.

Anyway, Scoot’s Facebook Page currently has 274,000 likes/fans and if Scoot wants to maintain its stance and decide that they will not be responsible for the technical glitches, they will probably lose 10,000 [or probably lesser] likes/fans and that is only like 3.6%. So, I guess that isn’t much of a concern to Scoot but if Scoot chooses to compensate all 10,000 contestants by offering them a $50 travel voucher each, this would cost them half a million dollars and even then, some people will probably eventually “dislike” Scoot’s Facebook Page and leave due to this bad experience. Hence, what do you think Scoot will do? Pacify all 10,000 contestants by giving them a token of appreciation or just admit their mistake, apologise, and move on without offering any forms of “compensation”? After all, Scoot is a big company and the primary purpose of a business is to make profits and minimise financial losses.

From Screen Captures

Well, my guess is that Scoot don’t really have anything much to worry about. After all, they don’t really have much to lose other than the support of a minority of disgruntled people whom spammed Scoot’s Facebook Page with vulgarities and verbal insults.