Contests and sweepstakes.. no more.

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I've come to the conclusion that a company that holds a sweepstakes has no legal obligation to actually award a winner for it. There are a few that I have entered in and tracked over the past couple of years and about 90% of the time the sweepstakes just vanishes from existence after the entry period has ended. The company will pull all notices of it and become unresponsive to inquiries about it. (often referring you to the independent sweepstakes coordinator who also doesn't respond to emails)

In fact I bet they do it merely to gather names/emails for marketing purposes.
 
Originally Posted By: aquariuscsm
You mean Ed McMahon doesn't show up at your house with that HUGE million dollar check? Haha

he never came to my house...


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We had a local radio station run a scam many years ago. They sold chances to win a million. Talked it up every day. They never paid anyone, as the winning ticket was never sold. All by design. There was never a chance anyone would win.
 
I think it depends on the type of contest. I think there was a shot once at a billion dollars, but no one hit it. Some contests guarantee the award and some don't, just depends on the contest.
 
Sometimes it is a scam. McDonald’s had the same winners in their Monopoly game for years. They finally realized the employees who made the game pieces kept the winning ones! They all went to jail.

Sometimes the company will go under. My wife won a drawing for a Sega Genesis as a kid, but didn’t get it. Turns out the magazine giving it away went bankrupt. Finally, one of their ex-employees felt so bad, he bought her one!
 
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I entered three sweepstakes from Ford back in 2015. The prize for the first sweepstakes was a new F-150. The second was a Mustang. Finally the prize for the third was a trip to 1 of 4 destinations to drive a Mustang GT. I won the trip and they flew my wife and me down to Miami. From there, we drove a red Mustang GT convertible down to Key West. It was fun, and obviously Ford used us in a story that they put out on their site. I guess some of these aren't scams. Going forward, I'm not sure how to tell if a contest or sweepstakes is legit, but I still enter them if it's something that I'm interested in.
 
Hi I'm calling from Jamaica you've won a million dollars and a new mercedes benz, just need you to send us $9000 to cover the taxes in advance...
 
Originally Posted By: LoneRanger
Hi I'm calling from Jamaica you've won a million dollars and a new mercedes benz, just need you to send us $9000 to cover the taxes in advance...


......along with your bank account number so we can transfer the funds directly into your account. Haha
 
Originally Posted By: Cujet
We had a local radio station run a scam many years ago. They sold chances to win a million. Talked it up every day. They never paid anyone, as the winning ticket was never sold. All by design. There was never a chance anyone would win.

Then that's not a contest or sweepstakes, and it definitely sounds illegal. By definition they aren't allowed to charge for an entry for a contest. I remember when McDonald's used to have a policy that a game piece could be requested on demand for no charge, or one could be requested by mail. They modified this to only requests by mail. I haven't heard of any where they could be requested online, since that would be too easy.

A contest/game is required to distribute all "grand" prizes - or at least the kind that we're used to. If you read the fine print, if per chance several major prizes aren't claimed, there's usually some second chance mechanism where there's a random drawing to distribute them. This might happen with something like the McDonald's collection games, if someone happens to get the rare game piece but doesn't manage to get the rest, or perhaps someone who simply doesn't claim it or the game ends when those pieces haven't been distributed. Still - I remember reading something about a McDonald's Monopoly winner, and he said that he opened up one of the pieces and found Boardwalk and Park Place in the same piece.

Here's some terms for a second chance drawing:

Quote:
http://danimals.com/promotions/golden-bongo/official-rules/

SECOND CHANCE DRAWING (FOR UNCLAIMED GRAND PRIZE): To enter the Second Chance Drawing, hand print your complete name, complete address, daytime and evening phone number(s) (with area code), date of birth, and if entrant is a minor, minor’s parent or legal guardian’s email address, on a 8.5″ x 11″ plain white piece of paper and mail it in an envelope with proper postage affixed to:
 
The oddest one I remember was a printing error for a Kraft Singles contest where the grand prizes were supposed to be 4 Dodge Caravan minivans. But the printing error meant that thousands of the winning game pieces were printed.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/b...b-43744e063c55/

From what I remember, Kraft offered to give everyone with a grand prize game piece $100, and they would all be entered in a drawing for 16 of the minivans. I remember watching Nightline, where the lead plaintiff in the class action lawsuit seemed to have a pat answer every time a question was asked, which was "I want my minivan". The fine print of any contest like this will say that they have the right to deal with printing errors in an equitable manner. I really didn't hear anything about how this was resolved.
 
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