A Quick Word Regarding Cheating And Giveaways

6/7/2011

I hate to have to write such an unpleasant post, but this is an issue that unfortunately needs to be addressed. First, I want to say I greatly appreciate my readers and the amount of time they spend reading my reviews and entering my giveaways. Before I started blogging, I entered and won a TON of giveaways myself, so I know how incredibly time consuming this can be.

That being said, there is a person going to many, many blogs who refuses to play by the rules and has been caught cheating on many, many giveaways. This person has been entering MY giveaways as well. I will not publicly call out the person unless I need to, but they enter giveaways using multiple aliases and e-mail addresses. They also claim entries that they have not completed. I first caught on to this due to entries one after another using the same terrible grammar and similar, though not identical, e-mail addresses. So of course, because I DO verify ALL entries, I went and looked closer...Lo and behold, these entries originated from the same IP address.

I want to assure my many readers who DO play by the rules that THIS PERSON WILL NOT WIN ANY OF MY GIVEAWAYS. EVER. PERIOD. I don't know if they think they're getting away with something, but bloggers are NOT stupid. Yes, we are busy. Yes, we put a ton of time and work into our blogs. Yes, you might think that we may not check our entries and let things slide. But THIS blogger ALWAYS checks. If you do not follow the rules, you WILL be disqualified. End of story. If you say you like a sponsor on Facebook, I can check this! If you claim to subscribe to my e-mails, guess what? I can check that, too! Even if you claim to subscribe to a sponsor's newsletter, I can and will verify this with the sponsors!

It is completely and totally unfair to all of those who play by the rules to cheat on giveaways. It is also unfair to the very generous sponsors who sponsor these giveaways. Providing great giveaways is something I LOVE doing. I literally feel like Santa Claus when I announce my winners, and I am legitimately excited for them when they win! But these giveaways serve a purpose other than winning products. These giveaways are to promote and advertise a product, company or service. So, it is my personal guarantee that I will NOT disrespect my generous sponsors by allowing a cheater to win.

I just wanted to reassure you that I am fully aware of this, and that I DO PAY ATTENTION. I appreciate my readers and want to provide only the best experiences here at Newly Crunchy Mama Of 3. I promise to always do my best to run these giveaways honestly and ethically. This is MY personal commitment to you and to all of my amazing sponsors. Thank you to those who follow the rules.

Now go enter some giveaways! :)

15 Comments

Amanda Woodward

6/7/2011 03:29:49 am

Yay! Bravo!!!! I hope that all the blogs and FB pages catch on to this and confront this person! It's ppl like that who take the fun out of contests

D Schmidt

6/7/2011 04:00:48 am

Sorry you have to deal with this, I find people that are dishonest totally pathetic!

Taleah link

6/7/2011 04:52:26 am

Wow. That's SO low. Good for you for making a stand against that!

Alicia link

6/7/2011 05:45:44 am

I agree, that is soooo low! And what a time waster for the one creating bogus entries. Good for you for checking it all out!

Jl Johnson

6/7/2011 08:15:52 am

Yay! Thanks for exposing.
I do have one question. is there a way to track without looking through all the coments on whether or not you've commented? I enter so many giveaways and sometimes forget what I've already done.

Keri

6/7/2011 08:34:42 am

Wow! I mean Wow! thats just so wrong :(
You are a better person them me, I would ave called them out :/
Keri
Sahm to my 2 little <a href="http://www.time4learning.com/index.htm"> Online Learners</a>

Anna Pry

6/7/2011 11:58:59 am

thanks for being on the lookout!

to answer Jl Johnson: If I don't remember if I entered something, I try using 'control' 'F' to find a word on the page and search for my username or email addy since that would show up in any comments I left earlier. Sometimes I have to search several pages of comments before I know I can safely go ahead and leave entries without duplicating.

Jessica W

6/7/2011 12:46:35 pm

How incredibility sad that someone would stoop to that level. Thank you for having such a watchful eye. As a reader I love getting helpful info from another mom and them sharing the goodies is all the better!

Sandra K321

6/8/2011 11:39:51 pm

And this unfortunately is why I don't enter very many blog giveaways. I don't tweet or do facebook for starters and to have people do this is just so sad and makes my one or two entries quite useless. I stick to blog entries where it is either one entry per person or that at least someone can only do each type of entry once.

Holly C.

6/9/2011 03:16:17 am

wonderfully written, thank you!

and to Jl Johnson, yes there is a way to check. you can hold ctrl key and letter f, which will bring up a find box, type in your name or user name that you use and it will highlight all or show no matches found.

Dawn S.

6/9/2011 04:57:42 am

I often wondered if there were shady people that did this. I enter alot of giveaways and I do try to search if I entered them already with "Control, "F". It is hard since most of the blogs only list a few entries and I have to scroll through the pages. I am sorry you have to deal with this since it you put a lot of time and effort into writing your blog and posting and doing giveaways. I wish there was a way to search by my email address. This person should be banned from all giveaways! It messes with the rest of us!

Carolsue

6/9/2011 08:20:57 am

I'm sure many of us (I know I have) entered a contest twice by mistake. I am pretty sure that it is something more blatant than that, such as entering multiple times with different e-mails.

Question: My sister visits me now and then and asks if she could enter some contests on my computer (with her e-mail and address). I have let her in the past, but maybe I shouldn't be doiung this? I assume you can tell if an entry came from the same computer (IP address). Is that how you determined that this person was entering multiple times with different e-mails?

brandy nelson link

6/9/2011 11:16:47 am

Hi Carol Sue,
To answer your question, I am sure that the vast majority of people are honest when they enter giveaways. This person, however, has been busted cheating MANY times, and OLS even has a thread in their forums warning about them. Same IP address is not the only issue...It is clearly the same person typing, due to the same grammatical errors, etc...Dozens of blogs have had a problem with him/her (?) and they have been entering contests here as well...and continue to do so even after I posted this warning. I am currently trying to see if I can block their IP address altogether, but have not heard back from the support team yet.

Lisa link

6/9/2011 02:46:45 pm

Good on you. Honesty and integrity are important!

http://thepennywisechick.com

Jen link

5/24/2012 03:41:14 am

I am actually going through this right now on 2 giveaways. One is sponsored, and the other is something that I am paying out of pocket to give one of my lucky readers because I am very passionate about books.

I caught on because the daily tweets between two different Facebook profiles use the same Twitter account, AND the same link for both tweets. She also doesn't leave comments, and the comment is actually enough to get her disqualified right there.

It's very frustrating to me to see that people have no remorse about doing things like this. Like you said--bloggers work hard, and our sponsors are generous! I hate seeing that this is happening! At this point, I am seriously considering contacting the publishers to let them know about her. On smaller giveaways with low entries, she is probably getting quite the haul because most of the entries will be from her and her duplicate entries. I even notified a fellow blogger that she was cheating on one of the girl's giveaways, and she didn't even reply to my email.