BIG Win (and why Twitter, Hampton Inns & my friend Claudine totally rock)

I feel the need preface this post with one statement: I never win anything. Really. Never, ever, ever anything. One of my favorite websites has recently done a number of $300 Apple store gift card giveaways and I have entered every time. Nothing. Twitter parties where pretty much everyone wins something? Nada. Raffles? Nope. Radio contests? Zilch. It's just a fact, I really never win anything.

Today, I was working catching up on Twitter and saw this post from a real life friend of mine expressing her displeasure about her recent stay at a Hampton Inn during a family trip.

Hey @HamptonFYI On road to NC we stayed @ Hampton Inn. 2 Dbl beds & no rollaway allowed in room #fail! Courtyard Marriott for return. #WIN

Being the busybody that I am, I started to follow @HamptonFYI, mostly because I wanted to see if they responded to her online complaint. Note: lately I am really in awe of the fact that so many large corporations monitor social media applications like Twitter and Facebook for complaints and truly do their best to rectify the issues and appease their complainers.

About an hour later, I received the following private message from @HamptonFYI:

Hi there! Can you DM us your contact info? You're our 2,000th follower!

Because of the high rate of identity theft and other frauds that run rampant through the internet (I'm sure you've received the e-mails from a prince in Nigeria who wants to give you $25 million dollars for doing pretty much nothing), I was pretty skeptical of this, so I replied with only my e-mail address.

Pretty soon after that, I received this e-mail from Christy from Cohn & Wolfe Digital, the PR firm for Hampton Inn.

Congratulations! To thank you for following Hampton, we’d like to offer you a free night’s stay at a Hampton property of your choosing. All we’ll need is your mailing address to send you the certificate! If we have your permission, we’d like to include your Twitter handle in a tweet announcing you as our 2,000th follower and a recipient of a free night. Thanks again for following Hampton – We love having you here!

Hilarious!! I totally won something! And it was something really great and fun! BIG win for me!

And a BIG win for my friend Claudine. Hampton Inn replied to her tweet and let her know that they have a 100% satisfaction guarantee, meaning that if you don't enjoy your stay, you don't pay. She called and they refunded her money for the lousy night that she had when she stayed there.

So really, who rocks now? Me, Claudine and most definitely Hampton Inn and their PR rep, Christy!