Sweeps Praises and Peeves
I do appreciate that companies offer sweeps. Many companies have for a long time, it's good publicity. Unfortunately, it's the frustrating or bad things you remember more than the good things, so the Praises are shorter than the Peeves, but I'll try to work on that.
Praises
Javascript run sites that still work with javascript turned off.
Flash run sites that give an alternate non Flash, means of entry. Not necessarily just a mail-in alternate entry.
Sites that just disregard any additional entry, rather than disqualify you entirely for entering more than the limit. This would be helpful for the times you might have a mouse problem, or you just flat forgot you already entered.
Thank You
Thank you to the sites like The Celebrity Cafe and Classic Heartland for making the entry process so easy. There are others, but these come to mind quickly. Woman's Day giveaways are usually easy to enter also.
You'll here a lot of complaints about Hearst Magazines long running creative presentations, but the entry process is quick and easy. You just need to be careful about subscribing.
Peeves
Many of my peeves are not limited to sweepstakes entry, but to sites in general. I'm neither a programmer or designer by trade, but I can distinguish poor programming from good. Following the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) principle would make things so much easier.
I can see game sites designing to the newest programs and technology, gamers try to keep up the the newest technology and have high speed internet connections. However, I think the designers of sweepstakes (and other) forms should have to design on an older computer, one that is closer to the specs used by the common user. They should also have to test the design on a computer whose only access to the internet is dial-up.
Often neglected is that that lots of people are still using dial-up or limited DSL and some of the forms take quite a long time to load, if you can get them to load at all.
Poor design
Forms that don't work right.
Some of the forms not only require Flash, but the coding is such that it draws a lot of resources sometimes causing your CPU to run at 100% when the sweeps form is loaded. Your mouse slows and doesn't move properly giving the whole form a "shakey or slow " feel to it. In my opinion, that is a sign of bad programming in general.
Recently there was a sweeps that when you used your down arrow to select the state, the whole form moved down, if I remember right, it was a bank sponsored sweeps.
I've also seen forms that the sequence of the fields in the forms makes no sense. the look of the form is OK, but when you start tabbing through the fields, you might go from First Name to Street Address to Last Name, etc.
Javascript & Flash Sites
Many sweeps entries are based on JavaScript or flash (also using JavaScript) and require JavaScript enabled or/and flash to be installed to navigate the entry process. Flash is designed to be somewhat cross platform and cross browser which is one reason it's popular. Some games can be fun, but offer an alternate form of entry, other than possibly just mail.
Bounce and Tide are JavaScript run with no alternate link.
Dial's sweeps have been flash run, usually with no alternate link. They do usually give an alternate means of entry in the rules, you can usually mail entries. But is that really fair to a person who can't use a flash form based on disability?
Entries that limit by IP
This seems it would exclude those who use public computers. There are other ways of determining cheating. Besides, it's way to easy to work around at home. Just turn off your modem and turn it back on or in the case of dial-up, disconnect then reconnect, and viola, a new IP. Not very effective.
I believe sweeps entries of companies using Bravenet services are tracked by IP. At one time I entered about half a dozen different daily sweeps that used Bravenet and would receive a warning that I might be banned, it was seeing my entries as possible spam.
Another example, when I visit my Dad, I use his computer to enter some of my sweeps. Had he entered the same sweep limited to one entry per IP, it would have been duplicate IP, even though it's two different households.
Security Codes
I understand why security codes are used. It cuts automated entry. However, most often, sites using security codes ignore they are using images of letters. As such, there is no reason that they have to be so distorted or blended so much into a background. Most do not offer a sound alternate to the visual code. While sweeping, I can only remember seeing one site, offering a small sweeps that offered a sound alternative. I wish I could remember the name of the site. Update 11/16/08 I have seen more sites using an alternate method of entering a security code. Hope to more of them change.
Sweepstakes sites are not the only villains. My current ISP is SBC (ATT) Yahoo, when I have needed to enter a security code, quite often it takes three tries or so, the images are so distorted, and there is no sound alternative. It's really frustrating. Some sites are worse (like Yahoo) than others. Gmail's is easier to read and I think Hotmail's is too. Both offer a link to listen to the code for those who can not read the code.
Sites Programming Changes to My Browser Window
It's extremely irritating when a site changes the size of my browser window or tries to take the menu & toolbar. Using Firefox, I have my setting to disallow a site to resize my browser window or take away my menu or status bar, but I still experience the problem in IE.
See My Praises & Peeves Blog for specifics.
