Replied a bit late as something distracted me. I apologize about that. About your concerns. Gmail sometimes has issues apparently and it seems a lot of emails were sent and in the sent folder but they never arrived to the sponsors. This isn't our fault and it's not their fault nor your fault but we really need to know when you aren't getting your prizes. We are sometimes late because judges are late which has been a problem for years. But, even when they are on time, they often have to wait because winners don't reply. At every point there can be delays which is why we ask you guys to get those lists to us because that speeds things up a bit. But, when we get the lists, they often just list the sponsor rather than the prize wanted from the sponsor so we have to contact the winners again. It's kind of a bother to request you list what you want exactly when most of you have no idea if you'll even win so you don't want to search through the sponsors stores until you've won. Thus, we generally wait because it's something we can't seem to get from people who enter.
Our contact at Rosity does ten jobs so we have to be patient until we can get her attention which sucks but you do eventually get your prizes as long as you let us know as sometimes winners won't tell us so we assume Rosity delivered.
Some sponsors immediately confirm they sent prizes out and it turns out the winner is the one having email problems and keeps telling us they didn't get their prize and the sponsor sends again. When the third time happens, they then provide screen captures and such which then the winner realizes the problem was on their end which sponsors don't appreciate and we get an earful.
So this doesn't just cut one way as yes, sometimes emails aren't received by sponsors and sometimes they take time to deliver, but we have just as many issues with participants not following the rules and requests so that it really is difficult to hold these contests when no one's replying and when we've tried to make things smoother and more efficient, we can only do so much as we rely on you and the sponsors for communication. When you send message after message to a winner, a judge, a sponsor and get no responses... you get frustrated and several times I've considered ending contests altogether like we stopped the POTW and Challenge competitions.
We used to have a lot more fun and people used to reply more. Prizes weren't delivered because sponsors didn't get the message or were away and participants stopped participating. Yet, many of the participants also would not respond until months later and then we would get the "I didn't receive" messages. You've got to do better than that as we don't mind being harassed every few weeks and if more winners reported in, we'd know something happened in regard to sponsors not being notified.
Margy and dhouck are trying to let us know and others like Aqua1955 but many like Aqua let us know months later. If the judging is done in a timely manner and you get your lists to us on time so we don't have to wait, then you answer what exact prizes you want... this generally goes a lot smoother.
I guess if we're going to continue doing contests I'm gonna have to become a ballbuster. I said a few months ago we'd start judging the contests by the end of the first week... well, judges didn't cooperate. I've said to keep checking in then find winners saying they don't even check their messages so we have more delays.
So if you understand what we're dealing with and cooperate, we can make this work better. More participation means more headaches but it also means more sponsorship so you have more prizes available and we can have more winners.
Remember, most sites barely hold any contests if any at all because these things are a huge headache and we hold them every month lol.
So forgive the issues and keep in touch with us. Cooperation and communication of a regular kind will help things run smoother. But don't wait months to tell us there's an issue. Margy tells us practically every time she has issues and she generally does it the same month she wins or definitely by the next month. While it's a headache if everyone's reporting in, we really need to know as we were unaware many of the messages we sent to sponsors didn't show up as Margy is addressing.
Julys Contest ~ Invasion of the Body Snatchers
