Entering Contests and Prizes Not Received

1) Contests are only open to US mailing addresses UNLESS otherwise noted. We have found that 99.9% of our sponsorships of giveaways are US mailing only, so this is just a flat policy. If a company has told us they are willing to ship out of the states, that will be noted in the post. Otherwise, please have a mailing address we can send to or you will have to forfeit your prize.

2) You have 48 hours to claim your prizes after they have been announced. You can do this many ways. You can sign into the momdot.com forum page and claim on our contest forum and then PM (private message) alicias account there and give her your mailing address or you can email her directly at momdotsponsors@Live.com . Its also smart to note on the post of the winner announcement that you have seen that you won. This way we know if it seems weird we haven’t heard from you. If you do not claim your prize within the time period, you forfeit the prize and it will be changed to a LIVE giveaway and given out immediately. Due to the amount of sponsorships we have on our site, its very important that we keep prizes going out quickly after the contest ends. This makes it efficient for Alicia to close out the account and the company to fulfill their obligations for us.

3) You must return to MomDot.com to see if you have won. We very clearly label what date the contest closes and in most cases, pull the prize within 24-48 hours after the contest has ended. Only in special cases where we are choosing a winner (for example: Christmas of dreams) will we go out of our way to track you down. We host contests for a few reasons.

  • One, we want to bring you excellent products and help assist and expose companies that deserve our attention. (companies benefit)
  • Second, we want to reward our visitors with a chance to win something great . (visitors benefit)
  • Third, we want new users to come back to MomDot and get to know us and vice versa.  (sites benefit)

Contests tend to bring in, many times, users that drop and run an entry, and never come back.  Think of us like a Casino…you have to be present to win. We want you to visit us as a part of your weekly internet diet, not just come to win a prize.  Its a ton of work to sign up sponsors, arrange prizes, put up banners, run contests, get them on all the contest sites, contact the sponsor and make sure the prize has arrived. So at the very least you need to enter, and then return to see if you have won. Additionally, we run sometimes 50 prizes a month and its very busy around here and this helps us in a huge way for you to come forward on your prize. It wouldn’t be possible for us to continue hosting giveaways if we have to track down every tiny detail, so we are putting some of the responsibility back onto the contest winner.

4) If you do not receive the prize you won after 4 weeks, please notify us immediately. While we are not responsible for a companies accountability, we strive for excellence here and with those we work with.  We have only had 2 out of approximately 300 prizes not fulfill their obligations. If you have not received a prize after 4 weeks and we have no contact with the sponsor on a potential issue, the new policy will go into affect:

  • The next prize that goes unclaimed within 30 days of your original prize win, we will automatically send to you. This means if we have a stroller unclaimed, its automatically yours if your other prize defaults. If its a pencil, its yours. This will make sure that we do our best to set the situation correct and honor a win in your name. You MUST notify us that your prize has not been received for this to go into affect. Do not contact us during a LIVE giveaway and let us know you didn’t receive your prize 2 months ago.
  • If there are no unclaimed prizes in the 30 day period after your original prize was not received, we will offer your blog front page advertising on MomDot for free for 30 days

Sponsorships/Giveaways

1) For the most part, our giveaways have gone flawlessly. We have worked with 100’s of companies and mom businesses and are proud to share links, banners, products and more to our users. Generally, they work very smoothly and with very positive results for our users and companies.

2) We do need to ask a few things of our sponsorships: Please make sure you follow up with Alicia regarding your 125/125 banner by the 1st day of the month your contest will be running in if you are set up from the month before. This is so you can have front page banners here to assist you all month in sharing your site.  Its important that you get these to us in a timely manner to maximize your time on MomDot. If you sign up with us in the middle of the month, please get us the banner ASAP so we can get it up. We do not make those for you, but can recommend the following people:

3) THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT: If you host a contest with MomDot, we ask that the winner receive their prize within 4 weeks of notification of the winners address. If you are having problems getting that prize out, please let us know so we can work something out with you. Its very important that the companies we work with fulfill their obligations to our visitors, as it is a reflection of our blog and your company. To cover yourself, please make sure you receive a delivery confirmation regarding the prize in case any shipping errors occur. This is to protect your property. “The mail lost it” is NOT an excuse that will be tolerated.

Also, MomDot assists companies in sharing their products in exchange for a prize, rather then for payment. If a company cannot live up to the end of its bargain, we ask that you pay the $25 advertising fee for our time. If neither one of these things are fulfilled, all links, posts, advertisements, and listings will be removed from MomDot immediately and we will not host or send people your way for a time period of (1) year. If asked about your credibility with other bloggers, we WILL disclose that you did not complete your commitment.

When we started MomDot, we sorta went into it blindly and of course after some experience on things, we have to change out stuff is done around here to make it more efficient for everyone. We hope that clarification of our upcoming policies for the new year will make giveaways a lot easier for everyone to participate and continue to win with MomDot! Thank you so much for all of our faithful visitors (which gave us over 200K page views last month!) and all the sponsors of the amazing giveaways we have been able to host for them. INCREDIBLE stuff already lined up for 2009!

~Trisha