Why is it that so many competitions held by American companies on the Internet are restricted to America only?
Perhaps it’s confirmation bias, but IME the odds are that a competition held by a company based outside the U.S. will be valid world-wide, but one held by a company based inside the U.S. will be restricted to U.S. residents only. Why is this? Is there some legal problem in the U.S. with holding a competition with a world-wide participation?
What kind of competition?
I noticed the same with British lotteries/special offers, etc. when I was living in Ireland - the small print usually said “not applicable in RoI” or something. There are different gaming and competition laws in each country, and to try to adhere to them all would be a nightmare.
You’re right: I should have been more specific. I’m thinking of free-to-enter competitions. Usually of the ‘choose the right answer’ or ‘simply send us your email address / telephone number / whatever’ varieties
This is prety much it. Many contests can cause contractual and or legal problems in some states of the US, not even counting other countries. For example if laws in Quartzistan state the contest operator must cover all delivery fees/import taxes for the prize and the prize is a car… Shipping a car and paying import taxes on it could easily double the cost of the contest, in the US its a simple matter to purchase a vehicle at a dealership near the winner minimizing transport costs. Even the VAT in England on a nice laptop can be pretty steep especially after insured shipping.
I also think it’s part of the promotion. Contests serve to generate interest in the company, hopefully you’ll buy the product or at least look at it. If somene in Outer Mongolia wins and the company has little or no presence it’s not gonna do much good. If an American company has a person in Chicago win, he’s gonna spend some of that money on the company’s product or at least tell people in America about how he win. This word of mouth spreads and helps the company.
If a foreigner wins it’ll stir up resentment, for right or wrong people will feel that way and that does the company no good. Company’s never want any customer to feel negative about them.
Besides the mentioned stuff, there are also restrictions on sending some items to certain countries.
I agree. When radio stations in my area have some kind of contest, and read the official rules over the air, it seems that you have to live in the area to be eligible.
Anyway, if those contests were opened up to everyone in the world, there would be a serious possibility that they would come to be dominated by foreigners. If you are making a few dollars a day working in Calcutta or Lagos, it may make a lot of sense financially to spend a lot of time trying to win the $1000 cash giveaway.
Because what they are after is your email or telephone, so they can try to sell you stuff. If you don’t live in the USA, or maybe even in their general area, you are not a potential customer, and they have no interest in you entering their contest.
Sorry, but I don’t think you’re correct. I’ve entered competitions run from Holland, Taiwan, Germany, Canada, Bosnia, etc, all of which were open world-wide, including the U.S.; but take a competition run by an American company and chances are it’s America-only.
The same applies to the UK - when we lived there, I entered a lot of online competitions, most of which specified “UK residents only”. Now that we have moved back to South Africa, I’m slowly unsubscribing from those websites I used to use to find online competitions, as I can’t enter any of them.
Perhaps you should turn the question around - why do countries like Holland, Taiwan, Germany, Canada, Bosnia, etc allow non-residents to enter? How do they stand to benefit?
Grim
Because we’re the only ones dumb enough to think we’ll win 50,000 dollars by sending in a self addressed stamped envelope or to care who is the next Deal or No Deal model is.
Many years ago, when these sorts of contests were more often seen magazines than on the internet, I recall one of the videogame magazines answering a letter asking why the contests were invalid in Canada. Basically it had to do with regulations in Canada that just wouldn’t permit them to hold the contest the way they wanted.
Yeah, I always assumed this dumb law is why I can’t enter U.S. contests.