The GameStop Surprize Attack promotion got majorly abused when it first came out. A couple days into it they realized it and added a generic captcha, and a few days later they added ReCaptca. But, with the use of services like Decaptcher.com the site was still abused by people using bots (i.e. entering hundreds or thousands of times with various email tricks). The Xbox Live rewards were then removed. People that used bots, and submitted hundreds or thousands of entries, and supposedly won lots of prizes, didn't get anything at all. Nada. Not even a single code.
I am lucky enough to have several shipping address, so I entered once daily for each unique address (email, shipping and IP). So, as far as the promotion is concerned, all of my entries would appear to be legit. During that period I was able to win several times on a several of the accounts. When they did eventually send out the awards (sometime around 10/22?) I ended up getting no more than 1 of each (MSP and 1 mo XBL), even if the account had won two of MSP awards (or two XBL awards).
Since the legitimacy of my wins are somewhat questionable, I am not about to pursue the omitted prizes. It is obvious that they had to take a closer look at all of their entries received from the start of the promotion up until they were able to address the abuse issue, so if you cheated there is a good chance your entries were voided. Anyone that entered multiple times with the same computer, and possibly the same phone number or shipping address (i.e. just used different email address to submit more than one entry per day), was probably identified and disqualified.
I also got an interesting notification that I believe indicated that I won one of the daily drawings, but I have not heard from them, so I am not sure about that one. However, I suspect I know why... According to the ToS:
[quote name='ToS']Administrator will attempt to contact the potential Winners via the telephone numbers provided on his or her entry form. No messages will be left on answering machines or voicemail systems. If any potential Winner cannot be reached directly, the potential Winner will be disqualified and an alternate potential Winner will be selected in a random drawing from among the remaining applicable Eligible Entries received.[/quote]
Depending on when they would have called, it is entirely possible that I was unable to answer the phone (i.e. I cannot answer my personal cell phone while at work), and thus was disqualified. If you ask me, that is total BS... All they have to do is call people at 4am, or during normal business hours, and a whole lot of people would get disqualified. My guess is that most people in school or college can't answer their phones during class, either... So, another huge demographic (the one that is most likely to be playing their game) that would probably miss the call. Ugh!
I am lucky enough to have several shipping address, so I entered once daily for each unique address (email, shipping and IP). So, as far as the promotion is concerned, all of my entries would appear to be legit. During that period I was able to win several times on a several of the accounts. When they did eventually send out the awards (sometime around 10/22?) I ended up getting no more than 1 of each (MSP and 1 mo XBL), even if the account had won two of MSP awards (or two XBL awards).
Since the legitimacy of my wins are somewhat questionable, I am not about to pursue the omitted prizes. It is obvious that they had to take a closer look at all of their entries received from the start of the promotion up until they were able to address the abuse issue, so if you cheated there is a good chance your entries were voided. Anyone that entered multiple times with the same computer, and possibly the same phone number or shipping address (i.e. just used different email address to submit more than one entry per day), was probably identified and disqualified.
I also got an interesting notification that I believe indicated that I won one of the daily drawings, but I have not heard from them, so I am not sure about that one. However, I suspect I know why... According to the ToS:
[quote name='ToS']Administrator will attempt to contact the potential Winners via the telephone numbers provided on his or her entry form. No messages will be left on answering machines or voicemail systems. If any potential Winner cannot be reached directly, the potential Winner will be disqualified and an alternate potential Winner will be selected in a random drawing from among the remaining applicable Eligible Entries received.[/quote]
Depending on when they would have called, it is entirely possible that I was unable to answer the phone (i.e. I cannot answer my personal cell phone while at work), and thus was disqualified. If you ask me, that is total BS... All they have to do is call people at 4am, or during normal business hours, and a whole lot of people would get disqualified. My guess is that most people in school or college can't answer their phones during class, either... So, another huge demographic (the one that is most likely to be playing their game) that would probably miss the call. Ugh!
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