Sure, I can explain what happened.
Earlier this week (monday), I called to enquire about our summer vacation booking under the "Endless Summer" promotion that was on the SOG website (listing a 40% off room discount). Everything was great, our dates were available, was quoted a price and ask if I could call back to finalize the reservation in a couple days after the family talked it over. The lady we spoke with was very nice and said of course just call back once we've discussed it and that everything would be ready to go.
Called back today and was told the Endless Summer promotion was no longer available, I checked their website and it's still listed under the promotions but now with a 30% discount (and a different rate code). I explained we were quoted a different rate only two days prior and then put on hold so the reservation agent could speak with "the boss". We were disconnected so I had to call back and wait to speak to another reservation agent (no big deal, things happen, sometimes called get disconnected).
After explaining to a new reservation agent that I wanted to go ahead and book the vacation, I was again told the promotion had ended (then I was told no it's still going but the rate changed). So I decided to try and pull up the promo rate on the computer myself so I could read off to the reservation agent what I was seeing, she said if I saw the discounted price online I should just book it myself. Fine, that's not a problem, I just needed to be sure that it wasn't some type of mistake and we weren't going to make the reservation only to have it cancelled later.
We were put on hold again while she spoke to "the boss" and told if we could get the discount (40% off) when doing the reservation online they would honor it. Great that's pretty much all I needed to know. However, she wanted to stay on the line while I did the reservation, I needed two rooms so I had to do two separate reservations. I did the first one, gave her the confirmation number and she said she saw where it was giving me the discount of 40% off but it should have only been 30% off. Then you hear her turn and speak to a gentleman who said it was not right and the promo was no longer active. We could hear them back and forth saying "she's doing something wrong/that's not right/no she did it and the confirmation shows xx amount/no that's the wrong amount...etc" until I get both reservations done online and give both confirmation numbers to the lady on the phone. After I had two reservations number with the discounted rate, the lady on the phone was very nice and said she'd put a request for connecting rooms on the reservation and get a paper confirmation out to us (we already have the email confirmations).
It's not a dig deal, but it shows me that they either don't understand their own promotions or are having big problems updating and understanding their website. Either way, they were insisting that I was looking at their website wrong or doing something wrong in order to book a special that they advertised, but I wasn't. I don't think they were rude just uninformed as they didn't seem to know what they were doing. If they were going to argue between themselves about the website being wrong it probably isn't the best idea to do that while you're on the line with a costumer. I'm not upset about the situation, I just think it was a lot more complicated than it needed to be.
I'm not saying don't use the phone reservation line (we have before and have always been pleased with them), I'm just saying, know what you're booking before you call and stand your ground if they tell you the promos aren't right. In the end they did honor what was on their website, but they didn't initially seem very happy about it.
We are happy to be going back to SOG and glad that we were able to take part in the promotion that they were running, the fact that SOG even offers different promotions is a big bonus and it's absolutely worth the extra time spent!