Nonfulfillment of Prizes by Sponsors
Right, I’ve read about it from a member of our panel of reviewers and I know for a fact that many other bloggers have came across companies not sending prizes out to their winners. BUT we’ve been pretty lucky so far. For the past 1 year plus, we’ve worked with some of the most professional companies and PR reps around….that is of course, until we ran a review & giveaway for this company, Ultimate Cloth.
Since our giveaway post went live until now, I’ve sent several emails to the company representative who sent us his PR pitch as well as directly to the email contact listed on its’ site but not a single email was responded to.
Though our contests & giveaways terms states that we are not responsible for non shipment of prizes by sponsor, it peeves me that our readers who have won will not be getting the prizes. So, we have decided to remove the review and giveaway post which Su did earlier on. Parent Reviewers absolutely refuses to endorse companies that cannot hold their end of the bargain.
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February 19th, 2010 at 10:43 am
I really applaud you for that. I won 2 giveaways (on another blog) last year that the sponsor never sent, and I got the run-around. The blogger didn’t do anything about it. I would have liked to have seen a response like this.
February 19th, 2010 at 10:56 am
For the most part, I have received most of my wins, I have about four that I have had to pester to get my wins delivered.
They keep saying they are in the mail……Well…I am being patient because of the weather conditions everywhere.
Thanks for taking a stand.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:00 am
Kudos to you for calling out this company, so other bloggers (and possible customers!) know to be on their guard. I did a review for their product, but didn’t host a giveaway – perhaps that’s a very good thing! It’s not fair that we as bloggers, and as giveaway entrants, put our time into reviews and giveaways, and then end up having something like this happen.
It takes all the fun out of it.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:34 am
I won a prize that the sponsor refused to send me … because they had previously sent me a prize thru a different blog’s promotion. Same company is running promotions with other blogs and there is never mention of refusal to send a prize to anyone who has previously won anything from them.
February 19th, 2010 at 12:14 pm
Good for you calling them out! When I end giveaways, I always try to ask my winner to let me know if or not their prize comes so I can see what’s up if they never get it.
February 19th, 2010 at 1:03 pm
I can’t tell you how many times i’ve had that happen to me. Some give me the run around for months and others don’t even respond to my emails
February 19th, 2010 at 1:40 pm
That’s too bad that happened. I’m glad you’re standing your ground. Grrr
February 19th, 2010 at 6:53 pm
I won this on another blog back in Oct/Nov and never got mine.
I like when blogs do “green” companies, too bad this one is a “FAIL.”
February 19th, 2010 at 9:33 pm
Betty,
I wonder if you and I had to deal with the same company refusing to send the prize.
February 19th, 2010 at 10:38 pm
Kudos for standing up & thank you for the link love! I take pride in my blog, giveaways and especially my readers. They take their time to come read my blog, and I appreciate that. I don’t like when companies back out of their end of deal and not send the prize, but what makes me more mad than anything is when the company doesn’t reply or acknowledge my email follow up’s, just as the independent rep did for Gold Canyon. Finally, the main company saw my post and have taken over it since the rep has bailed out.
February 19th, 2010 at 10:44 pm
That is so lame! What kind of company wants to risk a bad reputation by not fulfilling their end? Very odd.
Also…how can I become a member of this review team???
February 19th, 2010 at 11:14 pm
Happy to hear this. Especially as I won Ultimate Cloth on another blog and never received it…..occcasionally I have problems – I try to leave lots of time to get the prize.
February 20th, 2010 at 3:21 am
Thank you, more giveaway blogs should do what you did!
February 20th, 2010 at 10:34 am
I’m sorry to hear that. Was the blogger running the giveaway aware of the actual situation?
February 20th, 2010 at 10:35 am
I hope yours is just a case of delay in shipment. Good luck!
February 20th, 2010 at 10:37 am
You took the words out of my mouth. I’m upset that they didn’t even bother to reply at all.
February 20th, 2010 at 10:38 am
Thanks for the heads up on such requirement. So far, we have not had any sponsor imposed that condition on our giveaways. If they wanted to do so, they should have informed the blogger running the giveaway upfront, not after the result is out.
February 20th, 2010 at 10:40 am
That’s so thoughtful of you. We normally will ask the sponsor to let us know when prizes are shipped but it takes a lot of time to monitor each and everyone of them.
February 20th, 2010 at 10:42 am
We’ve recently had a winner emailing us about another prize which she did not claim in the first place. However, our sponsor was kind enough to agree to ship it out to her after the deadline. Nevertheless, after emailing her a couple of times, we still did not get any reply regarding her shipping address. Thus, I think it’s advisable that we check our spam folders sometimes.
February 20th, 2010 at 10:44 am
Exactly my sentiments. How could they NOT even bother to reply? I’m actually hoping that someone from the company will notice and resolve this issue too.
February 20th, 2010 at 10:46 am
Hi Meg – at this point of time, we are still closed to new reviewers but we’re hoping to recruit more this year. My advice is to subscribe to keep updated when we make the announcement on our blog. Thanks for your support.
February 20th, 2010 at 7:20 pm
I am having this problem right now with “Munchie Mug” and “I See Me Personalized Books”. The blog owners have contacted them, but they do not respond. Would be interested to know if others have received their prizes from these sponsors.
February 20th, 2010 at 8:48 pm
Gives the whole giveaway thing a bad name when that happens. To be honest, we have more of a mystery when a winner fails to redeem one of our gift certficates to Loving Healing Press
February 20th, 2010 at 10:43 pm
I ran a giveaway for the Ultimate Cloth – and I feel awful that the product arrived. I contacted the company a handful of times with no response. It’s really discouraging.
For my winner, I’m giving the option of actually ordering an ultimate cloth or a $10 gift card to their choice – it’s not fair that the company flaked, they won, and I’d hate to have someone be unhappy about that.
February 21st, 2010 at 2:40 am
I did a review and giveaway for this company and never got a response about the winner either! I just might have to put up a post about this also!
February 22nd, 2010 at 12:08 pm
Thanks for letting us all know about this company. Maybe if we all stick together, they’ll get the point and live up to their end of the bargain. It’s maddening to know that companies can get away with this. Grrrr…
March 1st, 2010 at 11:44 am
I suppossedly won an organic sleepy wrap from your site and never received it. Your giveaway for it closed Nov. 14, 2009 Link: http://parentreviewers.com/featured/mega-xmas-new-year-giveaway-organic-sleepy-wrap/
Are they another bum company? I e-mailed Parent Reviewers about this but never received a response.
March 1st, 2010 at 12:54 pm
Hi Sherrie, I’ve replied your email 3 times and have not receive any respond from you. I’ve also sent a separate email again requesting you to provide us your shipping add as Sleepy Wrap would be delighted to ship the prize despite the fact that your prize claim was made after the deadline. If you’re reading this, please please please email me back with your shipping add soonest. Thanks.
P/S Please check your spam folder for our earlier mails.
March 2nd, 2010 at 10:48 pm
I posted about this same company (with some link love back here): http://angiemarion.blogspot.com/2010/03/ultimate-cloth-im-calling-you-out-for.html
PS he’s on Facebook and I’m posting it on his wall and on the fan page… then I’m deleting him!
July 9th, 2010 at 4:19 am
Last fall, an entity calling itself “Ultimate Cloth America” made a campaign to many parent bloggers offering an Ultimate Cloth® giveaway. This person has been associated with our company as an independent distributor of our product line only. He is in no way a representative, much less the President. His website name violates our trademark and he was not authorized to offer a giveaway. We want you to know that these issues are being addressed.
We sincerely apologize for this unfortunate incident and we would like to honor any giveaway that “Ultimate Cloth America” has not followed through on. As you have already experienced, the Ultimate Cloths® are a fantastic product that everyone can benefit by using in their homes and businesses.
We understand that when situations such as this arise, it doesn’t just make us look bad as a company, but it makes the hard-working blogger seem less credible – the very people we value for word of mouth advertising. We will definitely be following up with those who were wronged by “Ultimate Cloth America.” Please bear with us as we attempt to repair the damages of this incident.
In the meantime, these are the only official, and approved online Home Office links for Ultimate Cloth®:
Official website
Facebook page
Twitter
Thank you very much to all of the bloggers who do support our product – they may not yet know that it was sent to them under false pretenses, and we would like to follow up with each of them. If you have written a blog about Ultimate Cloth®, please email us a link to it at charity@ultimatecloth.com.
Sincerely,
Charity Michot
for Ultimate Cloth®
July 10th, 2010 at 1:19 am
I do see that this was posted back in February, and I apologize for our late response. We had no idea such a post existed, I just recently discovered it as the newly hired marketing director. Anyone who has been wronged in this incident, say you won the cloth on a blog giveaway, etc please contact me with the details and your mailing address so I can make sure you get the prize you deserve.
Thanks again,
Charity