ByIndia’s $5 million sweepstake – Reality Check
First things first – I have no personal agenda against ByIndia.com. I wrote about them here and found their service to be almost useless.
Now I am surprised to see how ByIndia, instead of improving the quality of their product, is pimping the Indian Internet crowd with $5 million sweepstake.
Here is the $5 million deal – just register yourself with ByIndia. And thats it! You are eligible for the lucky draw.
Yes – 5 million dollar and all you’ve gotta do is register!
Wondering why is this so simple? Read the rules
- The sweepstakes will end on December 31, 2007 or in the event of a winner, whichever comes first [which means 11 months to go - will you remember the sweepstake by then? I doubt that.]
- The sweepstakes winner, if any, may receive a grand prize of $5,000,000 US (“Grand Prize”). The Grand Prize will be payable to the winner in equal annual installments of $125,000 US, without interest, for forty (40) years. Only one Grand Prize will be awarded…. Odds of winning the Grand Prize are 2,404,808,340 to 1.
- For a list of prize winners please send a self-addressed stamped envelope to: SCAinteractive, 8300 Douglas Ave, 6th Floor, Dallas, TX 75225 RE: ByIndia.com Sweepstakes Winners. Requests must be received by January 31, 2008.
Wow! – $5 million spread across 40 years!! and you will never know who won the sweepstake [unless it's you] , till you send out a self-addressed envelope to their US address?
How fair and how real. I am delighted.
Filed Under: WTF
About the author - Ashish Sinha is a Startup Mentor/Product Strategy Coach, and the founder/chief editor of pluGGd.in.
He has launched/managed couple of products (consumer as well as enterprise) in US and India, and now consults with startups/small businesses on their product/media strategy. He can be reached at: ashish (at) pluGGd.in [+91 98452 06443]
Dude
This was an eye opener. Keep rocking!
5 million $ – over 40 years!! THIS IS SO F**KING CRAZY!
Ashish:
Glad to see you’ve been keeping track of the news from ByIndia.com! I just thought I’d correct the misapprehension that we’re making it practically impossible to find out if you’ve won something in the ByIndia.com 5 Million Dollar (USD) Sweepstakes. If you read the rules the way that you did, it could look like we’re trying to fool you, but I think you missed something when you were looking at them, and I thought that I’d point it out to you.
The rules also state that, “potential winner(s) of the Grand Prize will be notified by email, telephone, or registered mail.” The rule that gives you the idea that the winner must submit a self-addressed, stamped envelope to see if he or she has won comes from the “Miscellaneous” section of the rules, and means that anyone who *wasn’t* a winner can find out who the winner *was*. That’s a requirement of US law.
This sweepstakes is underwritten by SCA, one of the leading sweepstakes companies in the US. This means that we’re not spending anywhere near 5 million on the sweepstakes here at Web2Corp, but that SCA has taken a smaller amount from us and then they simply hope that no one wins. Web2Corp, on the other hand, would love it if someone won the Grand Prize, since that’s what we paid SCA for, and we’d like to see someone win 5 million dollars for simply registering at http://www.ByIndia.com
The winner for the contest is personally notified of his or her sweepstakes victory by contact on the e-mail address (or physical address if the winner does not respond to the email) that he or she registered on ByIndia.com with, as notes in the rules. Also, anyone who wins anything on the ByIndia.com 5 Million Dollar (USD) Sweepstakes will have their name announced on the front page.
Bear in mind that winning the grand prize is not the only way to win. You can also receive a free iPod shuffle–we’re giving away 3 each month to new registrants. I know that’s not as nice as getting 5 million dollars, but free remains free, and an iPod Shuffle is still pretty sweet, if you ask me.
Lastly, I don’t know how much you earn yearly, but if I received 125,000 a year for the rest of my life, I’d be pretty happy about it. I could retire and live off 125,000 a year quite easily. Again, it’s not like you’re paying anything for the chance to win. All you have to do is register an account at http://www.ByIndia.com and you’ll automatically be entered each month for a year, unless the contest is won first.
I noted your poor impression of ByIndia.com when you reviewed it last month, and I’m sorry that you were not impressed by our site. I know that you can’t please all of the people all of the time, but I do hope that some of the upcoming new features that we’re adding to ByIndia.com will interest you.
Since you appear to pay enough attention to industry press to notice when we announce a new feature, I look forward to hearing your thoughts in the near future.
Thanks,
Trevor Longino
Communications Director, Web2Corp
Hi Trevor
Thanks for stopping by and clarifying my queries.
I agree that $125K for 40 years is a dream-come-true kinda offer. But honestly speaking – that doesnt come out openly in the contest [until one reads the rules].
Honestly, I would have loved to position the contest as – ‘$5mn over 40 years! – Stay cool for the rest of your life”, instead of 40 years stuff coming as a shock!.
Regd. my earlier impressions of ByIndia, well honestly there are too many things that ByIndia is trying to achieve. A search engine, a blogging platform, directory etc etc..
What I would look forward to is a differentiated product- a product which is relevant to me/others.
I will be glad to be updated by you/ByIndia team on the upcoming features/products.
You can mail me at: ashishk.sinha@gmail.com
Ashish –
I understand your point about how it may seem that the sweepstakes doesn’t tell you that your 5 million dollars is paid out over 40 years. However, at least here in America, every lottery and sweepstakes that I know of where there is a cash reward sees the reward paid out over the course of 20, 30, or 40 years. I suppose that it is simply assumed to be that way. I don’t know what kind of lotteries are running in your area, but I would imagine that if you checked the rules out for them, you would see that they have been designed to pay out in a similar fashion.
I also understand what you’re saying about ByIndia.com having a great number of features. Personally, I think that offering India a unique site where all of the functionality of Blogger, MySpace, Craigslist, eBay, flickr, and YouTube is easily accessed and organized in a Indian community gives Indians an awesome opportunity. Web2Corp is dedicated to leveraging the newest Web 2.0 technologies in new ways, and India is actually getting first crack at out attempt to integrate the best of Web 2.0 in one place to let India form a real, thriving community. I think a strong national presence on the internet really allows a country to to attract developers who will work on tools that are catered to them. Think of how Google’s Orkut is practically defined by its Brazilian community, and how many people interested in developing software for Brazil now take advantage of that.
I understand that this isn’t necessarily everyone’s cup of tea, though. ByIndia.com hopes that as we add features that appeal to netizens of all different ages and technical skills, that more and more people will find compelling reasons to make ByIndia.com part of their daily web surfing.
We don’t have an actual mailing list for updates to ByIndia.com, but if you would like to keep tabs on any news from Web2Corp, you can go look at the corporate blog (http://blog.web2corp.com/) and subscribe to the RSS feed there, and then you’ll know whenever a new product or announcement is made.
Thanks again for your interest in ByIndia.com. I do enjoy hearing from different points of view on any of our products. If you’ve got any suggestions for ByIndia or Web2Corp in general, feel free to drop a line on the blog or e-mail us at support@ByIndia.com
Thanks,
Trevor Longino
Communications Director, Web2Corp
Interesting conversation
Though $5mn is great to have one time, but its shocking to know that its spread over 40 yrs.
I too believe that ByIndia shd have made this clear
Trevor
Also, you are discounting the “Time value of money” in the $5 mn offer. Infact, 5mn after 40 years is not the same as 5mn today?Right?
y dont these stupid websites like ibibo and byindia understand that socialnetworking is about community and not about corporates. now we know that byindia and ibibo community is full of greedy people who are looking for easy money.
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