kcmoviebuff
New member
First off, thanks to all the companies offering their sweepstakes - it's truly appreciated. These gripes and suggestions are
simply so you can make your potential customers (us) happy and not aggravated entering your sweepstakes as well
as getting the most bang for the bucks you're spending on them! :cheers:
Gripe 1 - TELL US CLEARLY if the contest can only be entered once, daily, weekly monthly or whatever!!! This is especially true
of Facebook sweeps which mostly are not completely clear in their official rules. And you weekly sweeps - for the love of Michael
would you PLEASE tell us what DAY of the week and exactly at what TIME we can put in a new entry for your sweeps??? Every week
on Monday I always have some Monday sweeps that won't accept my early (6am CDT or thereabouts) entry until later in the day so
I have to keep track of those - same things happens on other days too - there's no reason for this!
:cussing:
And while you're at it, add a CONTACT in the official rules for the sweepstakes who we can notify via email (at the least) in case we run into problems
entering your sweepstakes, so that some techie can put down his brewski and FIX IT!!! :nono:
Companies that get it perfect every time include Coke Sweepstakes. :cheers:
Gripe 2 - PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE tell your programmers or your gaming consultants to TEST their dang forms first, which means
you have users test the forms and NOT just the programmers!!! People have blind spots and don't always test what they should -
I know this for a fact as I worked as a programmer/systems analyst in the mainframe world for over 20 years prior to retiring.
Just yesterday I ran across a form that only accepted 10 characters for the STREET field - obviously they screwed up instead of
applying that format to the PHONE field! And we've all had problems sometimes just getting the stupid form to accept a completely
valid birthdate - I mean, how hard is THAT to get right and test!!!??? Geez Louise!
Gripe 3 - If your form requires any adblocker to be disabled, then TELL US on the form!!!!! Geez, I am sick of clicking on a Submit button
and having nothing happen, then having to turn off my adblocker and re-doing the entire form.
Gripe 4 - What is up with all these phone formats??? I mean, some forms require only numbers, some require 999-999-9999 and others
(999) 999-9999, and a few actually require 999 999-9999! Get real - pick one format and stick with it! And another thing - to the right of the
phone field CLEARLY STATE the format you want!!!! Man, it's so aggravating when there's no format listed and you happily submit the form
only to either get an error message stating you've entered in the wrong (and unknowable) format or, what's worse, my Gripe 5.
Gripe 5 - For the love of Charlie, would you PLEASE always display a clear and accurate error message
in a pop-up that (1) we can clearly see and (2) makes sense???!!??? Sometimes you'll enter the phone number in an unacceptable
format but when you hit the Submit button all you'll see is the form sitting there - if you're lucky you MIGHT be able to detect a light
red highlighting on the field in error, but not always; rather, they appear to want you to hunt for the bad field, inevitably the phone
number or the birthdate. END THE SUSPENSE AND THE HASSLE, WILL YOU PLEASE???
Gripe 6 - Please learn the difference between you're and your , especially on the instant win
form: spend a little more time getting the grammar right on your forms because it does reflect on you:
http://www.englishbaby.com/lessons/grammar/your_vs_youre
Gripe 7 - When your contest is over, please don't just 'disappear' the web site - rather, change the link to point to the official
rules or the winner list so that people trying to find out details after they win something from it can find it. It's easy to do
and friendly, but it's not a big gripe.
Gripe 8 - Anyone playing the Aldo 'free shoes' sweep recently knows this gripe - it IS possible to be too cute and too clever by far.
That Flash-intensive daily sweeps aggravated the living bleep out of me so much that I would just let it run in a pinned Firefox
tab and simply enter other sweeps on other tabs, checking back from time to time to see if the stupid graphics had finished
so I could play the next of 3 games. In other words, instead of involving me in staying on their page they drove me away!
Gripe 9 - If you're going to have trivia CHANGE IT OFTEN!!! There is NOTHING more boring than seeing the same
trivia questions every darned day (you know who you are, Morton Salt!); yeah, I know they're doing it to drill it into
you but how many times do you have to answer true or false to "Kosher Salt is also referred to as 'Koshering Salt'"??? Since in
that sweeps it doesn't matter if you get it right, how about throwing in some genuinely interesting questions related to
salt? Giardelli almost gets it right on their Dark Chocolate Sweepstakes & Giveaways sweeps, but they simply have too many questions, none of which
you need get right, and they don't change them often enough.
Gripe 10 - Multiple page sign-ins. :cussing: :cussing: :cussing:
Look, put a captcha on a page if you want to ensure bots or macros aren't being used to enter your sweeps but Disney, WHY are you
forcing me to (1) click on Enter (2) if I'm not logged in, forcing me to click on Login (3) enter my sign-in info and (4) forcing me to click on Enter again?
Simplify it by presenting the form with the fields necessary for both a new and returning visitor - just program the dang form so that
it automatically verifies the user's email and password against the known users and accepts the form with just those fields for them:
if you don't find that combination then require the rest of the fields to be filled in! Simple, right? Geez
Gripe 11 - Disney got this one right - if you're going to have a game, make it involving - their current Magical Cruise Adventure is
actually fun and it does require you to make decisions that impact your score and a possible bonus entry. Most games are
deadly dull and have zero impact on earning entries into the sweepstakes, in which case I don't even bother playing them. And
while I'm at it PLEASE test the games to make sure they work (you listening, Tums???)!!! :scratch:
Gripe 12 - WHY do some sweepstakes require you to get a code by email??? That drives me nuts, because then I have to move on to
other sweeps and come back later - what's the point when they KNOW I'm a registered and valid user??? Just don't require a code for
online entries or simply allow a code to be entered for a bonus sweeps entry. All you're doing is adding extra work on the player
for no good discernible reason. :scratch:
Gripe 13 - Unlimited sweepstakes. :cussing: :cussing: :cussing: :cussing: :cussing: :cussing: :cussing: :cussing:
WHAT is the point of these??? It's too much of a time waster to try to compete with some obsessive-compulsive
sitting around all day in jammies drinking Scotch and entering your sweepstakes over and over and over and over
and over and over and ... wait, I'm obsessing! :laughing:
New
Gripe 14 - Repetitive entry of 'why you want to win this prize' or 'tell us what your favorite shopping moment is' comments on forms where it's required EVERY TIME you re-enter the sweeps - WHY? For example, Fox's Year of a Million Moments daily IWG forces you to respond to approximately 185,362.05 multiple choice questions on the 3rd screen in before you get to see the "Didja win? Huh? Didja??? H@LL NO you didn't win, you dummy!" screen - this is digital torture (a.k.a the DTs)!
New
Gripe 15 - 24 hour sweepstakes that force you NOT to enter unless it's exactly 24 hours later since you last entered - that's insane! What possible difference does it make, anyway? Just allow us to enter once each calendar day as defined by whatever time zone the contest is being run from and everyone's happy. So what if I entered at 10:30am yesterday and want to enter at 10am today - what's the harm? You know what I have to do? I have a '24 Hour' sweepstakes folder and I have set up a recurring appointment in MS Outlook so that a pop-up screen alerts me daily as to when to enter - so that works fine. What usually happens, though, is that I get up at different times, so sometimes I sleep past the start time and start the 24 hour sweeps later, and this happens a lot until I'm entering the stupid things in the late afternoon, at which point I say enough and don't enter them until the next morning! Arrrghhhhh!!!!
:scratch: :scratch:
New
Gripe 16 - Voting contests on Facebook. Look, I know some of you enter these (and good luck to you) but they're not my cup of tea. The winners of these voting contests (not judging contests when they're judged by the sponsor) are invariably those who've gotten the most people to vote for them, not because of the quality of their entries but because of their networking, often swapping votes with people who are in other similar contests. So what's the point of bothering with these when I know I can't win? Sponsors, I know you're trying to attract a lot of people with this method but instead I think you're actually discouraging a lot of people like me from entering and instead you're attracting the same people over and over again who have large networks of willing voters. Also, some ridiculous entries win due to this - why, last year in a not-to-be-named Facebook recipe contest a leftover, reheated hot dog recipe won the grand prize for best Super Bowl recipe!!!??? It was soooo bad that the sponsors rejudged the entries and awarded the exact same grand prize to a deserving recipe.
New
Gripe 17 - Voting contests on Facebook or the web where I can earn a chance at a prize by just voting - when they offer a limited number of choices (the best is when they all fit on one page), that's fine, but when they shove a plethora of choices at your face my eyes glaze over and I vote for the one closest to my cursor and I suspect that most of you do the same thing. That leads to complete randomness and has nothing to do with the quality of the entries. A perfect example is the E! Online Adrianna Papell voting sweepstakes where you cast a vote for the best dress design - there are over 6 freaking HUNDRED entries!!! No WAY am I going to take the amount of time necessary to decide which one is the best!!! The sponsor needs to evaluate them and then put the best 10 dresses out there for us to vote on if they want a much better way of gauging the public's opinion. Yes, you can click on the 'Top 12 fan favorites' but come on, you can't tell me those are the 12 best dresses!
New
Gripe 18 - Sweepstakes forms that do not acknowledge that you've actually been entered - this is a rare problem but is still aggravating, especially with daily sweeps like the current Philips Norelco Ultimate Morning Upgrade sweeps that doesn't display any message at all, until of course you enter again thinking it didn't 'take' the first time and then it tells you the following (if it can tell you this then WHY can't it say "You've been entered into this sweepstakes successfully" - arggghhhh!!!):
SORRY You've already entered today. Come back tomorrow for another chance to win. One entry per person, per day through December 31, 2011.
Well, I'll add to this list as more gripes occur to me - feel free to add yours :wave:
simply so you can make your potential customers (us) happy and not aggravated entering your sweepstakes as well
as getting the most bang for the bucks you're spending on them! :cheers:
Gripe 1 - TELL US CLEARLY if the contest can only be entered once, daily, weekly monthly or whatever!!! This is especially true
of Facebook sweeps which mostly are not completely clear in their official rules. And you weekly sweeps - for the love of Michael
would you PLEASE tell us what DAY of the week and exactly at what TIME we can put in a new entry for your sweeps??? Every week
on Monday I always have some Monday sweeps that won't accept my early (6am CDT or thereabouts) entry until later in the day so
I have to keep track of those - same things happens on other days too - there's no reason for this!
:cussing:
And while you're at it, add a CONTACT in the official rules for the sweepstakes who we can notify via email (at the least) in case we run into problems
entering your sweepstakes, so that some techie can put down his brewski and FIX IT!!! :nono:
Companies that get it perfect every time include Coke Sweepstakes. :cheers:
Gripe 2 - PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE tell your programmers or your gaming consultants to TEST their dang forms first, which means
you have users test the forms and NOT just the programmers!!! People have blind spots and don't always test what they should -
I know this for a fact as I worked as a programmer/systems analyst in the mainframe world for over 20 years prior to retiring.
Just yesterday I ran across a form that only accepted 10 characters for the STREET field - obviously they screwed up instead of
applying that format to the PHONE field! And we've all had problems sometimes just getting the stupid form to accept a completely
valid birthdate - I mean, how hard is THAT to get right and test!!!??? Geez Louise!
Gripe 3 - If your form requires any adblocker to be disabled, then TELL US on the form!!!!! Geez, I am sick of clicking on a Submit button
and having nothing happen, then having to turn off my adblocker and re-doing the entire form.
Gripe 4 - What is up with all these phone formats??? I mean, some forms require only numbers, some require 999-999-9999 and others
(999) 999-9999, and a few actually require 999 999-9999! Get real - pick one format and stick with it! And another thing - to the right of the
phone field CLEARLY STATE the format you want!!!! Man, it's so aggravating when there's no format listed and you happily submit the form
only to either get an error message stating you've entered in the wrong (and unknowable) format or, what's worse, my Gripe 5.
Gripe 5 - For the love of Charlie, would you PLEASE always display a clear and accurate error message
in a pop-up that (1) we can clearly see and (2) makes sense???!!??? Sometimes you'll enter the phone number in an unacceptable
format but when you hit the Submit button all you'll see is the form sitting there - if you're lucky you MIGHT be able to detect a light
red highlighting on the field in error, but not always; rather, they appear to want you to hunt for the bad field, inevitably the phone
number or the birthdate. END THE SUSPENSE AND THE HASSLE, WILL YOU PLEASE???
Gripe 6 - Please learn the difference between you're and your , especially on the instant win
form: spend a little more time getting the grammar right on your forms because it does reflect on you:
http://www.englishbaby.com/lessons/grammar/your_vs_youre
Gripe 7 - When your contest is over, please don't just 'disappear' the web site - rather, change the link to point to the official
rules or the winner list so that people trying to find out details after they win something from it can find it. It's easy to do
and friendly, but it's not a big gripe.
Gripe 8 - Anyone playing the Aldo 'free shoes' sweep recently knows this gripe - it IS possible to be too cute and too clever by far.
That Flash-intensive daily sweeps aggravated the living bleep out of me so much that I would just let it run in a pinned Firefox
tab and simply enter other sweeps on other tabs, checking back from time to time to see if the stupid graphics had finished
so I could play the next of 3 games. In other words, instead of involving me in staying on their page they drove me away!
Gripe 9 - If you're going to have trivia CHANGE IT OFTEN!!! There is NOTHING more boring than seeing the same
trivia questions every darned day (you know who you are, Morton Salt!); yeah, I know they're doing it to drill it into
you but how many times do you have to answer true or false to "Kosher Salt is also referred to as 'Koshering Salt'"??? Since in
that sweeps it doesn't matter if you get it right, how about throwing in some genuinely interesting questions related to
salt? Giardelli almost gets it right on their Dark Chocolate Sweepstakes & Giveaways sweeps, but they simply have too many questions, none of which
you need get right, and they don't change them often enough.
Gripe 10 - Multiple page sign-ins. :cussing: :cussing: :cussing:
Look, put a captcha on a page if you want to ensure bots or macros aren't being used to enter your sweeps but Disney, WHY are you
forcing me to (1) click on Enter (2) if I'm not logged in, forcing me to click on Login (3) enter my sign-in info and (4) forcing me to click on Enter again?
Simplify it by presenting the form with the fields necessary for both a new and returning visitor - just program the dang form so that
it automatically verifies the user's email and password against the known users and accepts the form with just those fields for them:
if you don't find that combination then require the rest of the fields to be filled in! Simple, right? Geez
Gripe 11 - Disney got this one right - if you're going to have a game, make it involving - their current Magical Cruise Adventure is
actually fun and it does require you to make decisions that impact your score and a possible bonus entry. Most games are
deadly dull and have zero impact on earning entries into the sweepstakes, in which case I don't even bother playing them. And
while I'm at it PLEASE test the games to make sure they work (you listening, Tums???)!!! :scratch:
Gripe 12 - WHY do some sweepstakes require you to get a code by email??? That drives me nuts, because then I have to move on to
other sweeps and come back later - what's the point when they KNOW I'm a registered and valid user??? Just don't require a code for
online entries or simply allow a code to be entered for a bonus sweeps entry. All you're doing is adding extra work on the player
for no good discernible reason. :scratch:
Gripe 13 - Unlimited sweepstakes. :cussing: :cussing: :cussing: :cussing: :cussing: :cussing: :cussing: :cussing:
WHAT is the point of these??? It's too much of a time waster to try to compete with some obsessive-compulsive
sitting around all day in jammies drinking Scotch and entering your sweepstakes over and over and over and over
and over and over and ... wait, I'm obsessing! :laughing:
New
Gripe 14 - Repetitive entry of 'why you want to win this prize' or 'tell us what your favorite shopping moment is' comments on forms where it's required EVERY TIME you re-enter the sweeps - WHY? For example, Fox's Year of a Million Moments daily IWG forces you to respond to approximately 185,362.05 multiple choice questions on the 3rd screen in before you get to see the "Didja win? Huh? Didja??? H@LL NO you didn't win, you dummy!" screen - this is digital torture (a.k.a the DTs)!
New
Gripe 15 - 24 hour sweepstakes that force you NOT to enter unless it's exactly 24 hours later since you last entered - that's insane! What possible difference does it make, anyway? Just allow us to enter once each calendar day as defined by whatever time zone the contest is being run from and everyone's happy. So what if I entered at 10:30am yesterday and want to enter at 10am today - what's the harm? You know what I have to do? I have a '24 Hour' sweepstakes folder and I have set up a recurring appointment in MS Outlook so that a pop-up screen alerts me daily as to when to enter - so that works fine. What usually happens, though, is that I get up at different times, so sometimes I sleep past the start time and start the 24 hour sweeps later, and this happens a lot until I'm entering the stupid things in the late afternoon, at which point I say enough and don't enter them until the next morning! Arrrghhhhh!!!!
:scratch: :scratch:
New
Gripe 16 - Voting contests on Facebook. Look, I know some of you enter these (and good luck to you) but they're not my cup of tea. The winners of these voting contests (not judging contests when they're judged by the sponsor) are invariably those who've gotten the most people to vote for them, not because of the quality of their entries but because of their networking, often swapping votes with people who are in other similar contests. So what's the point of bothering with these when I know I can't win? Sponsors, I know you're trying to attract a lot of people with this method but instead I think you're actually discouraging a lot of people like me from entering and instead you're attracting the same people over and over again who have large networks of willing voters. Also, some ridiculous entries win due to this - why, last year in a not-to-be-named Facebook recipe contest a leftover, reheated hot dog recipe won the grand prize for best Super Bowl recipe!!!??? It was soooo bad that the sponsors rejudged the entries and awarded the exact same grand prize to a deserving recipe.
New
Gripe 17 - Voting contests on Facebook or the web where I can earn a chance at a prize by just voting - when they offer a limited number of choices (the best is when they all fit on one page), that's fine, but when they shove a plethora of choices at your face my eyes glaze over and I vote for the one closest to my cursor and I suspect that most of you do the same thing. That leads to complete randomness and has nothing to do with the quality of the entries. A perfect example is the E! Online Adrianna Papell voting sweepstakes where you cast a vote for the best dress design - there are over 6 freaking HUNDRED entries!!! No WAY am I going to take the amount of time necessary to decide which one is the best!!! The sponsor needs to evaluate them and then put the best 10 dresses out there for us to vote on if they want a much better way of gauging the public's opinion. Yes, you can click on the 'Top 12 fan favorites' but come on, you can't tell me those are the 12 best dresses!
New
Gripe 18 - Sweepstakes forms that do not acknowledge that you've actually been entered - this is a rare problem but is still aggravating, especially with daily sweeps like the current Philips Norelco Ultimate Morning Upgrade sweeps that doesn't display any message at all, until of course you enter again thinking it didn't 'take' the first time and then it tells you the following (if it can tell you this then WHY can't it say "You've been entered into this sweepstakes successfully" - arggghhhh!!!):
SORRY You've already entered today. Come back tomorrow for another chance to win. One entry per person, per day through December 31, 2011.
Well, I'll add to this list as more gripes occur to me - feel free to add yours :wave:
