When I contacted Hyatt Concierge about my problem with promotional certificates, they were apologetic and helped me with my problem. They didn't have to help me because it was my credit card issuer -- Chase -- that had sent me the misleading promotions. Of course Chase didn't want to help me at all. They gave me a bureaucratic runaround.
Now, Hyatt has a better place in my mind, and Chase has a worse place. Hyatt redeemed their premium brand image. Chase still seems cheap and out of touch with consumers in my mind.
This is a great lesson in branding and the power of customer service to reinforce a brand image.
Starting at midnight Eastern time on Saturday, Facebook's more than 200 million users will be able to personalize the URLs for their profiles, the company announced Tuesday. By rolling out so-called vanity URLs, the company aims to make it easier to find people and brands on Facebook via search engines, while potentially boosting its own traffic as well.
Until now, a user's URL has just been a randomly assigned string of numbers.
The new usernames for profiles and Facebook Pages will be offered on a first-come, first-serve basis.
"Your new Facebook URL is like your personal destination, or home, on the Web. People can enter a Facebook username as a search term on Facebook or a popular search engine like Google, for example, which will make it much easier for people to find friends with common names," according to a post on the Facebook blog by Blaise DiPersia.
The move is expected to set off a land rush among individuals and businesses for the most desirable URLs. Already, hundreds of vanity URLs have been doled out to celebrities and other prominent people on Facebook such as President Obama (http://www.facebook.com/ barackobama), according to the Inside Facebook blog. Now marketers can also capitalize on the new URLs to drive traffic to their Facebook brand pages.
But the company warns about choosing usernames carefully: "Once it's been selected, you won't be able to change or transfer it. If you signed up for a Facebook Page after May 31 or a user profile after today at 3 p.m. EDT, you may not be able to sign up for a username immediately because of steps we've taken to prevent abuse or "squatting" on names. And only Pages with more than 1,000 fans before May 31 will be able to choose a vanity name.
According to Inside Facebook, the company is also barring brand pages from choosing generic vanity URLs such as "pizza" or "flowers" and allowing rights holders to prevent their trademarks from being registered as usernames.
To that end, it has created a form to request Facebook block use of a trademark in a URL. Not allowing users to change or transfer URLs is designed to thwart a black market from developing around usernames.