lexlazootin wrote:Chief Blur Buster wrote:
winner will be notified by March 15th, 2015
Wait, why would you wait two weeks before giving it away?
It is not as easy as pulling a number out of a hat.
There's actually a law that applies to me.
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There's a process totalling several hours, almost a full day's work, that also (a) involves running the random selection process with the correct starting and ending member numbers at random.org (b) record/screenshot of the randomization (a legal record, y'know, for disputes)... (c) verifying eligibility which includes, (d) qualified location, (d) qualified postcount, (e) scanning for duplicate accounts/abuse, (f) notifying the person privately before publicly announcing, (g) applying the legally-required skill test question for legal reasons (h) repeating steps (a)-(f) if necessary during eligibility failures, (i) public announcement on forum, blog and witter, (j) boxing up the monitor, (k) begin for shipping process including the (l) possible trip to financial institution for shipping expense, (m) trip to post office or depending on destination country, also a visit FedEx/UPS/DHL, and (n) including writing up an international customs invoice (boooring!). (can cost up to $100 for certain countries, and since it's being paid out of the blog's budget -- essentially out of my pocket -- which means free shipping for the recipient!) There are additional steps, but this is the short simplified version. Fun stuff, indeed!
Keep in mind there are some laws involved on a blog's giveaway, to make sure it is compatible with the legislation put upon sweepstakes and lotteries, both where the blog is and where the winner is, some of this stuff could unexpectedly be illegal in some countries -- apparently. Wikipedia covers this
in this entry. Even the popular howstuffworks.com site has an article: "
Why are some national contests invalid in certain states and other countries?" ... I have tried my best to keep this giveaway as simple as possible, some contests have 20-page legal agreements! Ouch. While some of this is new to Blur Busters, all the big major sites have to all follow the same laws too...
Besides, I also have my own (non-Blur Busters) full time job, which I have to juggle Blur Busters time with -- so the 15th is a reasonable deadline.
I will, of course, make an effort, to do it all sooner -- so that's why I said "by..." -- it's just the latest possible date, given unexpected delays, etc. I know some people are holding off a monitor purchase to learn whether they got picked or not, so I understand -- I consider that an incentive to hurry things up where possible, even if a little!
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. I told a friend of mine about this giveaway, but he was too lazy to even register. Let's see if I can get something for my brother in the next giveaway.