Because they must provide an alternative way to enter the contest without purchase. If you look at all those contests that stores and candy bars run they allow you to write in an entry through the mail instead of purchasing their product.
Charging someone for a chance to win a prize that has monetary value is gambling.
HOWEVER. If you go to Curse's website and look at the rules to the contest you'll see this:
(ii) Mail-in Entries. If you are a non-Premium member of the Site, to enter for free by U.S. mail, send your full name, address, daytime phone number, date of birth, and Curse.com account name to: Curse, Inc., Win A Trip To MineCon 2011, 351 California Street, Suite 1450, San Francisco, CA 94104. The entry must be postmarked no later than the last day of the Sweepstakes Period, and received by Sponsor within five (5) business days following the end of the Sweepstakes Period. Sponsor assumes no responsibility for lost, late, damaged, misdirected, illegible, incomplete or postage-due mail or entries. No photocopied, digitally created, or mechanically reproduced additional entries allowed. b. Limit: One entry per person. Any attempt to exceed this limit (either online or by mail) may result in disqualification. All entries become the sole property of Sponsor, and receipt of entries will not be acknowledge or returned.
So they are not running an illegal contest.
HOWEVER, they are obviously not going to include the people who enter free. Just this line: "and receipt of entries will not be acknowledge or returned." states that. Couple that with "Sponsor assumes no responsibility for lost, late, damaged, misdirected, illegible, incomplete or postage-due mail or entries".
No way I'm going to support a company like that with my money.
If the statement by coldbladed is true then it seems the US is the only market that has any value for curse.
Taking the statement as it is, the issue appears not to be that the prizes cannot be offered to non-US citizens but that curse was unwilling to give the same level of time, effort, and investment to other nations.
This says to me that I am worth less than as US citizen and gives plenty of opportunity to those who like to make anti US comments which solve nothing and make the situation worse.
If curse are faced with this issue again it may be best to simply not run a promotion at all as it may well anger more potential customers than it brings in which is never a good idea.
If we were to offer it to even one non-US country all that red tape would have to be repeated, weird tax fees would arise, and a handful of European countries would require us to pay tons of extra taxes and regulatory fees to offer a contest to their residents. Additionally, some countries just outright make it impossible to run contests.
You have to sign up for curse premium? We bought the game, that should be enough.
Why should we bother with curse premium when they can't handle their own network of forums, every one I got to runs terribly. Thanks for nothing on this one guys. Curse couldn't sell me a premium account for a penny, not worth it.
This isn't a contest though... it's a lottery. I'm in the US, but this is just a way to loose some money - there's 2 discrete advertisements on the page anyway.
You have to sign up for curse premium? We bought the game, that should be enough.
Why should we bother with curse premium when they can't handle their own network of forums, every one I got to runs terribly. Thanks for nothing on this one guys. Curse couldn't sell me a premium account for a penny, not worth it.
Well I guess that's ok but I don't think Curse.com has any right to ask for money, that don't have the fundamentals working for anything on their network, GW2Guru is the only one that doesn't lock up on me and spit strange SQL errors at me, YET that is, when Gw2 is released we'll see that change too.
These issues certainly aren't stemming from my end they are half assing their services.
"also its illegal to have to pay to enter a contest to win something" yeah no its not hello the lottery and this is done in the same way as a lottery is.
"also its illegal to have to pay to enter a contest to win something" yeah no its not hello the lottery and this is done in the same way as a lottery is.
The lottery is gambling and you must be over 18 year's old to BUY a ticket. If Curse had age verification and prevented people who didn't qualify from entering, that would be different. But as stated above, they provided a way to enter without paying. If they did "lottery style" falling under gambling, they would have to pay all sorts of taxes and be applicable to laws of specific states which prevent people from doing online gambling etc.
Ths isn't winning a trip to minecon it's buying it. This complete ********. They even made a new tab up top all about premium.I dont know why the forums had to choose curse th shitiest hoster of all.
HOWEVER, they are obviously not going to include the people who enter free. Just this line: "and receipt of entries will not be acknowledge or returned." states that. Couple that with "Sponsor assumes no responsibility for lost, late, damaged, misdirected, illegible, incomplete or postage-due mail or entries".
No way I'm going to support a company like that with my money.
This simply isn't the case. We don't acknowledge or return the entries because people are all over this and we get a ton of them, we just don't have the man power. Not including these folks would be very illegal and not worth our jobs, the potential lawsuits, etc.
I literally have a giant stack of envelopes on my desk from the Blizzcon contest. Each one of these people was included in the drawing to be randomly selected. As the rules state, everyone has the same chance of winning and I personally ran the selection process. Non-Premium members were among the winners.
As an aside:
Many people even decorated their envelopes or included fun notes. While this didn't help their chances of winning it did make the process of receiving the entries each day an enjoyable one. Many people here in the office would ask me if I got any cool drawings or stickers that day and we really appreciated the folks that had fun with it.
What I'm trying to say is, with the right attitude you can submit an entry and hope for the best, some of you may even turn up winners. While I can understand the skepticism try to understand that we are doing this the right way and keeping it fair for everyone that is an eligible entrant.
This simply isn't the case. We don't acknowledge or return the entries because people are all over this and we get a ton of them, we just don't have the man power. Not including these folks would be very illegal and not worth our jobs, the potential lawsuits, etc.
I literally have a giant stack of envelopes on my desk from the Blizzcon contest. Each one of these people was included in the drawing to be randomly selected. As the rules state, everyone has the same chance of winning and I personally ran the selection process. Non-Premium members were among the winners.
As an aside:
Many people even decorated their envelopes or included fun notes. While this didn't help their chances of winning it did make the process of receiving the entries each day an enjoyable one. Many people here in the office would ask me if I got any cool drawings or stickers that day and we really appreciated the folks that had fun with it.
What I'm trying to say is, with the right attitude you can submit an entry and hope for the best, some of you may even turn up winners. While I can understand the skepticism try to understand that we are doing this the right way and keeping it fair for everyone that is an eligible entrant.
That is good to hear. Thank you for addressing my concerns!
The outright fact that they are allowing people to mail entries in, is them being nice. These are premium member only contests, so they request that you go premium, to support the forums. If you guys are uninterested in doing that, then that's your fault. Mail an entry in. for those in EU, I'm sure they would love to include you guys in this contest, but it is WAY to expensive for tickets between the US and EU. So i'm sorry for all of you, but that's just how it is going to work.
Well I suppose it is an option but hardly constructive.
My point is that curse are happy to follow US law and pay any costs that go along with it yet could not be bothered to do the same for other countries. To exclude a massive section of the members is not a good idea and as can be seen in the responses here its made plenty of people angry.
Because we are a US company the costs consist of a minor inclusion on a tax form we already fill out. European countries want as much as thousands of dollars to run a contest in their country and some add even more fees to companies that aren't based in that country.
With (according to Wikipedia) 50 countries in Europe alone we cannot afford to run the contest for everyone. Throw in the aforementioned red tape and it would be (not kidding) a decade before we had permission to run contests in all the European nations and by that time the rules would have changed on so many that we'd be starting over.
Again, I made every effort to include non-US residents but it is just impossible. Like, Ethan Hunt would not choose to accept this mission.
Edit:
The most constructive feedback I can give you is to get involved in your nation's politics. Find out why they are making it so difficult for companies like Curse to run sweepstakes and, if you still think it is BS, work to change the law. Unfortunately that is not something we have in our power to do, but you do.
I don't know what Curse is on, but under United States law, a sweepstakes has to be free to enter. Ever heard of Publishers Clearing House? They got in big trouble because they claimed that everyone couple win by letting everyone submit, but in reality only paying customers could win. Fix your facts, Curse. I wanna see legal documents.
Because they must provide an alternative way to enter the contest without purchase. If you look at all those contests that stores and candy bars run they allow you to write in an entry through the mail instead of purchasing their product.
Charging someone for a chance to win a prize that has monetary value is gambling.
HOWEVER. If you go to Curse's website and look at the rules to the contest you'll see this:
(ii) Mail-in Entries. If you are a non-Premium member of the Site, to enter for free by U.S. mail, send your full name, address, daytime phone number, date of birth, and Curse.com account name to: Curse, Inc., Win A Trip To MineCon 2011, 351 California Street, Suite 1450, San Francisco, CA 94104. The entry must be postmarked no later than the last day of the Sweepstakes Period, and received by Sponsor within five (5) business days following the end of the Sweepstakes Period. Sponsor assumes no responsibility for lost, late, damaged, misdirected, illegible, incomplete or postage-due mail or entries. No photocopied, digitally created, or mechanically reproduced additional entries allowed. b. Limit: One entry per person. Any attempt to exceed this limit (either online or by mail) may result in disqualification. All entries become the sole property of Sponsor, and receipt of entries will not be acknowledge or returned.
So they are not running an illegal contest.
HOWEVER, they are obviously not going to include the people who enter free. Just this line: "and receipt of entries will not be acknowledge or returned." states that. Couple that with "Sponsor assumes no responsibility for lost, late, damaged, misdirected, illegible, incomplete or postage-due mail or entries".
No way I'm going to support a company like that with my money.
Blame your government.
Why should we bother with curse premium when they can't handle their own network of forums, every one I got to runs terribly. Thanks for nothing on this one guys. Curse couldn't sell me a premium account for a penny, not worth it.
See my modified post above.
Well I guess that's ok but I don't think Curse.com has any right to ask for money, that don't have the fundamentals working for anything on their network, GW2Guru is the only one that doesn't lock up on me and spit strange SQL errors at me, YET that is, when Gw2 is released we'll see that change too.
These issues certainly aren't stemming from my end they are half assing their services.
The lottery is gambling and you must be over 18 year's old to BUY a ticket. If Curse had age verification and prevented people who didn't qualify from entering, that would be different. But as stated above, they provided a way to enter without paying. If they did "lottery style" falling under gambling, they would have to pay all sorts of taxes and be applicable to laws of specific states which prevent people from doing online gambling etc.
This simply isn't the case. We don't acknowledge or return the entries because people are all over this and we get a ton of them, we just don't have the man power. Not including these folks would be very illegal and not worth our jobs, the potential lawsuits, etc.
I literally have a giant stack of envelopes on my desk from the Blizzcon contest. Each one of these people was included in the drawing to be randomly selected. As the rules state, everyone has the same chance of winning and I personally ran the selection process. Non-Premium members were among the winners.
As an aside:
Many people even decorated their envelopes or included fun notes. While this didn't help their chances of winning it did make the process of receiving the entries each day an enjoyable one. Many people here in the office would ask me if I got any cool drawings or stickers that day and we really appreciated the folks that had fun with it.
What I'm trying to say is, with the right attitude you can submit an entry and hope for the best, some of you may even turn up winners. While I can understand the skepticism try to understand that we are doing this the right way and keeping it fair for everyone that is an eligible entrant.
That is good to hear. Thank you for addressing my concerns!
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Because we are a US company the costs consist of a minor inclusion on a tax form we already fill out. European countries want as much as thousands of dollars to run a contest in their country and some add even more fees to companies that aren't based in that country.
With (according to Wikipedia) 50 countries in Europe alone we cannot afford to run the contest for everyone. Throw in the aforementioned red tape and it would be (not kidding) a decade before we had permission to run contests in all the European nations and by that time the rules would have changed on so many that we'd be starting over.
Again, I made every effort to include non-US residents but it is just impossible. Like, Ethan Hunt would not choose to accept this mission.
Edit:
The most constructive feedback I can give you is to get involved in your nation's politics. Find out why they are making it so difficult for companies like Curse to run sweepstakes and, if you still think it is BS, work to change the law. Unfortunately that is not something we have in our power to do, but you do.
Abraham Lincoln
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxqQT3UvXkM