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