I won a madden 11 2gb USB stick, yay! That's the good news...
I have to say that this Charity event has been poorly executed and at this point seems somewhat shady.
1. If you state the rules of your raffle, you should generally try to stick to those rules.
2. You should attempt to be transparent with the drawing, ie actually show a list of who won what.
3. You should answer peoples reasonable questions
4. You should close the drawing in a reasonable amount of time after the event.
Let's look at the sequence of events..
10/16 - Extra Life Gaming Marathon takes place
10/18 - bluedotlounge update - still trying to decide a cut-off for donations and prizes
10/21 - bluedotlounge update - going to cut-off on 10/24
10/24 - 10/30 several questions from posters, no answers
10/30 - bluedotlounge update - I got a bunch of cool stuff, some will be added to raffle
11/06 - bluedotlounge update - Winners will be announced mon/tue (unsure which week) if you don't hear by wed, sorry you did not win. also mentions cut-off of 11/15?
11/09 - bluedotlounge update - list of 29 winners and 28 other participants of the extra life event. No breakdown of who won what.
11/10 - bluedotlounge update - anyone who won should email him and verify their shipping address. Prizes will be mailed on 11/20
11/12 - bluedotlounge update - Hey look, I got more cool stuff
11/14 - final post in thread before this one, asking more questions... no answers
12/03 - postmark of my prize, 2 weeks after stated send date of prizes.
Ok, so, my main issue with this charity event is the lack of information about the actual drawing and who actually won which prizes. I don't know how many people actually donated, but I believe the amount raised was around $1000. I donated $50 and I saw at least 3 other people in this thread donated $50 or more.
When there are 200+ prizes in the drawing an you have purchased 5% of the tickets, you would think you'd end up with close to 5% of the prizes (not taking into account the fact that donating $50 gave you a 50% bonus)
$5 will get you 6 entries
$10 will get you 12 entries
$20 will get you 25 entries
$50 will get you 75 entries
So, to only have won a single prize seems unlikely. Nowhere in the original post did it mention giving free entries to other people who were taking part in the marathon, but it seems like 50% of the prizewinners came from this group and again, there's no information on the outcome of the raffle. I guess if those other raffle participants were given 750 entries each, it might explain the prize distribution.
You know, I don't really care all that much about the prizes, I was expecting a bunch of T-Shirts that would be too small and I'd give those to friends kids or have a couple of copies of Naughty Bear to give to friends for Xmas.
I will say that I did receive an official letter of thanks from Extra Life for my donation, so at least I know the money got to the good cause.
I'd like to hear what other people won?
Will we know what we won in advance?
