Hi fellow SZers,

As you all know Yamaha launched a FreeStyle Competition which ended with Yamaha canceling the competition at the last phase. I felt that Yamaha had conducted itself extremely unprofessionally throughout the ordeal and wrote the following letter a week ago. They refuse to respond, so I figured I'd put it out there:




Hi Steve,

I wrote a number of times over the last week or two, but have not received a response.

Yamaha set up a competition the purpose of which was to showcase Yamaha arrangers to as many people as possible. Unfortunately the competition was set up extremely poorly. Everything from the run-up publicity, to the website, to the rules of voting, was confusing and amateurish at best.

I immediately brought this to Yamaha's attention and suggested that perhaps the voting should be limited to one vote per IP address, or, to require Facebook log-in to vote. This would have avoided possibilities of voter fraud and is indeed the accepted way to conduct online voting. My suggestion was ignored.

Nevertheless I decided to stay in it to win. I felt I had what it took to deliver Yamaha the email addresses and publicity it desired. I, like many of the other contestants, worked very hard to generate publicity, enlist friends and family, and even local media. For almost three weeks we all drove everybody crazy to meet the ridiculous allowance for multiple, daily, voting. But we were all in it to win, so we did our part to showcase and promote Yamaha.

But I do not feel Yamaha did its part in return. After all the tireless work of the contestants and the tireless voting of our supporters, Yamaha decided that instead of fixing the process, it would cancel the entire show.

It is disrespectful to the contestants, disrespectful to the voters, and all together disappointing.

I feel like it's deja-vu. I'm sure you recall that when the Tyros 4 came out I immediately notified you of the many serious bugs. I wasn't taken seriously (in fact Yamaha's reaction bordered on condescending) until I published youtube videos which went viral.

Yamaha is a large, respected, international company and I am sad that it has taken advantage of its cheerleaders and handled this situation so poorly.

A response would be appreciated.

Thank you,
Chony

Interesting...keep us posted on any news on this. Something is not right, and you all deserve an explanation.

Nobody won the contest yet? and the T4?

Nobody won the contest. They cancelled the contest at the third (and last stage) after tens of thousands of votes had been cast, and awarded the keyboard to the guy THEY thought was the best (admittedly he was very good).

They learned from the elections in Iran and Zimbabwe. You make a vote and then cancel the results.

Have they posted the wining video Id like to see that?

Shuey thanx for that awesome performance I can see why he won!



As far as any fishy going ons I don't know what to think?

Interesting. Thanks for the link, but when I went to make a comment to show up this scam for what it is, the you tube "comment" box merely said "Error, try again." Hmmm . . .

Edited to add: Note I'm certainly not disparaging the guy's performance. I just feel for Chony.

Chony:
I totally understand your frustration about how bad the contest was badly managed by Yamaha, but in light of that fiasco and aftermath, I think Yamaha did the best thing they could to mop up the mess, as in addition to awarding Dimtriv Greenberg the T4 grand prize, they are also awarding (compensating) all other finalists (including yourself) with a Yamaha Piaggero NP-V60 keyboard.

Has something changed?!

Here's a related thread in which my opinions on the matter were expressed.


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Here's Yamaha's Official Statement (on May 9th) regarding the Contest:

Yamaha Corporation of America has reason to believe that the integrity of the voting process in the Freestyle Contest has been compromised.
Yamaha regrets this and, in the interest of fairness to the entrants, has decided to award the announced prize based on the professional judging scores from the pre-voting phase of the Contest.
Based on those scores, the winner is Dmitry Greenberg. Congratulations, Dmitry, on winning the YAMAHA Tyros4 Arranger Workstation Keyboard, TRS-MS04 speakers, L-7S stand and available manufacturer's warranty.

In addition to the originally announced prize, Yamaha has decided to also award each of the seven remaining finalists in the Freestyle Contest a YAMAHA Piaggero NP-V60.

Once again, Yamaha regrets the disruption that has occurred to the Contest. Thank you to everyone for your interest and participation.

Sorry, but that looks fair to me. They messed up with their voting system, but the way they fixed it was fair.