From the time I was able to read (a long time ago), I have seen ads, postcards, notices in magazines and newspapers with something like:
“Send in your coupon or card. The Drawing will be held 15 Oct 2000. No purchase is necessary. The winner will receive 500,000 dollars; the next 19 cards selected will win a Mercedes (model not important here) and 2000 people whose card is drawn will win 100.00 each”
In any event I am curious to know if any of you have been present when the official drawings were performed? Do they really put in the cards people sent in who purchased nothing? In simple language, how exact and honest are these events?
If you read those instructions carefully, you can also find out how to obtain a list of winners. If everybody has the same last name, you might be on to something.
If the contest doesn’t mention that you can send away for a list of winners that’s one tipoff that the sweepstakes isn’t legit.
The real ripoff is those places where you fill out a little card to “win a car”. They then call you & try to talk you into timeshares or something. They usu do not really give awy a prize, per se, as they accumulate all those 100’s of thousands of cards from all over for a year or 2, for one prize. And you have to put up w/ telemarketeers. Don’t do it!
If the contest is being represented by a big company that you recognize there is a huge chance that it will be a drawing of some kind. This is because a drawing is the easiest to control and handle in contests of this size. The trick is to add a “twist” to make it more exciting than just a drawing.
The drawing is usually handled by an outside company that specializes in this.
One popular way of holding a drawing–in a big rotating drum–just isn’t possible when you have millions of entries flowing in from all over the country. It would require a drum the size of a warehouse.
In an interview I had with a Neilson rep he said they would rent space in a secure warehouse. Each mailbag with entries would be numbered and thrown in a “dated” area…all bags that came in on June 9th would go here, June 10 there, etc.
On drawing day they’d draw numbers. One number would represent a day, another number would represent a bag.
Let’s say “79” would rep July, 9 (7/9, get it?) and “32” would represent a bag number.
They’d go to the bags that arrived on July 9 and yank out bag #32. Then the drawing would be done out of that bag for that prize.
This is one method to cull out millions and millions of entries.
Has anyone seen this? Some drawings tell you that the drawing will be held on… say July 1st. They then go on to say that the deadline for entries will be July 31st. Huh? What’s up with that?
Things are random only insofar as we don’t understand them.