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This Awards Program Narrowly Avoided a Lawsuit by One Bizarre Entrant

“I Should Have Won–So I’m Suing You”

Have you every wondered what the typical entrant to your company-sponsored sweepstakes is like? Some entrants are casual, while others are competitive, sometimes taking competitiveness to the extreme. No matter what most of your entrants are like, if you run any type of awards or contest, you’re sure to run across one or two entrants who are unrealistic about their chances of winning. One of our customers recently faced such an entrant and was able to narrowly avoid a lawsuit. The would-be plaintiff in that suit was an entrant who was convinced he or she should have won the contest. Check out what happened!

The Case of the Cancelled Payment

Our customer ran an awards program in which entrants paid a fee to have their entries judged. The entry that received the highest scores from the awards judges won the contest. All of this is pretty typical for awards programs. The rules are laid out, people pay their money and then they see what happens.

Unfortunately, one entrant didn’t see it that way. Soon after the program ended, our customer received a notification of cancelled payment from American Express. Upon investigation, the customer found an unsuccessful awards entrant had cancelled the payment. The entrant claimed that if his or her entry had been judged, it would surely have won, so therefore the entry must not have been judged and he or she was not going to pay the entry fee.

American Express, attempting to settle the dispute, required the organization to submit proof that the entry was indeed judged. Our customer used OpenWater to export all of the judges’ notes on all the entries. American Express was able to see cold, hard evidence that every entry–including the losing one whose author was convinced should have won–was read and commented upon by judges and exactly why the entry was not deemed a winner. Thus, American Express denied its customer’s claim and paid our customer in full for the losing entry.

A Matter of Trust

This unfortunate situation occurred because contest entrants didn’t have any way of knowing what happens once their entries are submitted. This is true in many contests–entrants have to trust that their entries are really being judged, that judging is fair and that their entries have a real chance to win.

While the entrant’s claim that he or she should have won may seem bizarre, it’s also a symptom of a wider problem. Awards entrants work hard on their entries and deserve to know that they are being displayed fairly, that judging isn’t biased and that entries aren’t tampered with in order to ensure that a specific person wins.

Creating a Transparent Environment

In order to make sure they don’t face a similar situation, future awards program organizers might want to create a more transparent environment so that entrants know what happens to their entries once they are received. There are several tactics contest owners can use to make sure that entrants understand what is going on.

• Be transparent about who the judges are. List judges and judging criteria in the contest rules. They should also be listed on the awards website so that people who don’t want to read fine print know exactly who is judging and what criteria they are using.
• Make sure awards judges don’t know who entry authors are. Judging should be blind so that it is based on the entry and not on the author of that entry. Require entrants to put their name only on a cover sheet or application sheet that accompanies their entry and remove identifying information before judges read entries.
• Restrict access to results. Judges should provide results directly to the contest owner, who then tallies the scores to come up with winners. Don’t include results in a spreadsheet that third parties have access to, as that could lead to tampering of results.
• Hire an auditor. Hiring a third party to audit the contest procedures and results can help ensure that there is no tampering and put entrant’s fears to rest.

By creating a transparent environment, contest owners can help reassure entrants that their entries are being treated fairly, so that nobody refuses to pay if they lose the awards. Our customer learned the hard way that some entrants feel entitled to winnings; having a transparent environment increases trust and decreases the possibility of a legal conflict over payment like the one our customer faced.

Timothy Spell

Timothy Spell co-founded OpenWater in 2007 with the goal of helping organizations tackle and better manage the oftentimes overlooked awards and contests industry. As an author and speaker in the awards industry, Timothy provides unique insight on how to use awards to boost membership, social media followers and search engine traffic.

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