Non-receipt of prizes from photo contest

As promised, I'm posting this to let everyone know how things turned out.

 

After speaking with Brad and giving him my MC number instead of the Amex number that was originally accepted, my certificate for the free 4-night stay at the Divi Resort arrived in the mail. Bonnie H. from the reservations dept. at the Divi helped me to build a week-long dive package around the free stay I had won and everything went without a hitch.

 

I returned from my trip a few weeks ago and was it ever a BLAST!

 

Here's a link to my trip report and images if anyone wants to take a peek:

 

Another Vote For The Divi!

 

The moral of the story is that it pays to be persistant. Thank you Bonnie P. for giving me the nudge I needed to pursue this and thank you everyone for your support! Robyn

That's great Robyn! I'm glad it all worked out for you. I'll be in Bonaire in March for my 8th trip. Great place to visit and dive.

BDSC

Wow, reading this thread makes a person think. Why enter contests if there are so many crooks running them?

I always admire the pictures and fell envious of the photographers but hear nothing but bad things about the organizers. Prizes not awarded, photos stolen( credit and royalties not paid ) and it merely reinforces my belief that they are not on the up and up.

Guess it makes more sense to stay away from them and get feedback from other photographers you respect.

I wouldn't paint all contests with the same brush. Seems to be a couple of bad actors only. (heh, and to think earlier in this thread I tried to be similarly moderate toward one of those specifically and was shown very quickly by his behavior he didn't deserve the benefit... )

Bottom line, read terms and conditions of any contests carefully before entering, and keep receipts (or CC records) showing payment of entry fee, and an eye on the results postings deadline. Then don't be bashful if you do show up in the winner's list about pursuing things.

I think the DPG (our world underwater, etc) contests linked thru WP here are pretty much on the up-n-up; never seen any complaints about them. And there were threads earlier about rights which when pointed out to the organizer (don't recall who it was) they immediately corrected them as it was an unintentionally too-stringent specification. So I wouldn't assume from this thread that all contests are bogus. Neither are non-UW contests exempt, witness all the foo-fer-all about that wildlife winning wolf photo.