IN MY years of taking part in contests, I have won many prizes.

The stakes are getting higher and "hotter" and grand prizes are houses, cars or cash of up to RM300,000.

Now, there are some who are willing to offer cash prizes of up to RM1 million or houses worth more than that. (The highest yet so far is US$1 billion in a soft drink contest, but that's in the US.)

I am one of those who have participated in one of the contests offering the RM1 million cash prize.

There will be 12 winners daily for the early bird entries. So far, I have only won one of their early bird prizes despite sending many entries daily for the entire month.

However, this is not my complaint.

I am curious to know how the judging is done and if the organisers are independent or transparent in choosing the winner.

A call to the contest hotline proves to be futile and the universal reply I receive is "sorry sir, P & C".

I start to wonder what is so private and confidential about how the winner is determined, especially with thousands of entries.

The question is: How are the entries monitored and correct entries later retrieved if there is a mechanism to capture each and every ranking and how are the winners pulled out of the mountains of entry forms?

I have seen many contests requiring slogan writing but in the end, the grand prize is not drawn based on the most creative slogan but from a box filled with entries and hand-picked by a VIP and later named as the lucky grand prize winner.

This may be the easiest way to determine a winner but not a very ethical approach especially on the part of the organisers.

This will only disappoint those who have worked hard to come out with their best slogan and some may have taken days or even weeks to do that.

Ultimately, the final decision is made by the organisers, as one of the conditions of entry is that "correspondence will not be entertained".

Most contests dictate that "the judges have the right to disqualify" entries that may seem illegible to them.

Another interesting question is, how do they define "illegible" and as such; where are the lines drawn to determine eligibility?

Therefore, I would like to call on the government to regulate not only SMS contests but also other forms of contests.

Such a call is timely in the wake of the growing number of contests in the market today.

Participants must also realise that big prizes come with a higher level of difficulty in winning. We must know how to justify our purchases with a need and not the need for purchases. Do it in good fun.

The organisers can promote all they want and make us buy their products as much as possible by making us believe that there is such thing as "turning trash (proof of purchases) into cash" but if we are gullible, we may end up turning our cash into trash.

Valdendran Yapragasam
Kuala Lumpur
Source: http://www.sun2surf.com/article.cfm?id=4159
Sat, 24 Jul 2004