I thought about an idea for allowing contests to be available to those of us outside the USA/Canada as well.

Why not create a webshop where the winners of a competition can "buy" the items for free using a special "discount" code or similar, maybe just open up a certain item for that user only. Then let the user that won "buy" that item for free and having to pay for postage/taxes himself. Maybe having a discount on the shippingcost to allow for free delivery in USA/Canada and also making it a bit cheaper for the rest of us also.

This way we could choose if we want to pay to get the stuff, and maybe even sell or trade the prize to someone that did not have to pay to get it...

The reasoning for not having prizes outside of USA/Canada is nothing to do with shipping, it has to do with legal issues in each country covering prizes. Different countries have different rules governing the distribution of prizes and as such most companies restrict themselves to the North American region to reduce legal implications. This is also why Mexico is not included as one of the countries allowed to compete.

If there was to be a contestant argue the prize allocation, the contestant could argue it using the law from their country. This would result in huge annoying legal fees and complicated proceedings which most companies awarding prizes would like to avoid.

Ultimately the only way to have prizes outside Canada/US is for companies in those countries to offer it or for local distributors to offer it, unfortuantly while the games companies are American then they will not actively market to minor countries.

For an equivalent example: Australian and New Zealand companies will often not allow entrants from other companies, likewise UK companies will not allow entrants from other countries.

Unfortuantly, while your idea has merit, it also falls under the same problem of rewards for people in specific countries... this results in the same legal dilemmas.

In the Lapworks giveout I copied the following:

NOTE: We are sorry, but due to shipping restrictions we are unable to offer this contest outside of North America (US/Canada).

So in this case at least shipping is the issue...

And I have gotten prizes from US companies before, without problems... I'm in Norway, and my country together with many others don't have so many restrictions other than perhaps taxes on the items that is beeing taken in...

There are a range of reasons for regional restrictions on contests. Generally, when we do limit them, it's because of shipping. Sometimes it's just not practical to ship anywhere on the world. That can vary from contest to contest though.

Originally posted by Dana

There are a range of reasons for regional restrictions on contests. Generally, when we do limit them, it's because of shipping. Sometimes it's just not practical to ship anywhere on the world. That can vary from contest to contest though.

Then would it not be possible to do it the way I suggested in the first post ?

Originally posted by Flaps

Originally posted by Dana

There are a range of reasons for regional restrictions on contests. Generally, when we do limit them, it's because of shipping. Sometimes it's just not practical to ship anywhere on the world. That can vary from contest to contest though.

 

Then would it not be possible to do it the way I suggested in the first post ?

It's a neat idea, but I suspect wouldn't be practical for a host of reasons, unfortunately.

Sending packages back and forth between the US and Europe is, these days, trivially easy. I can't vouch for Asia, Africa or South America, but Europe, at least, is easy, and not hugely expensive - at least it hasn't been the innumerable times I've sent packages to the US, or my mother-in-law has sent packages to my wife here in Sweden. So 'shipping constraints' sounds a bit thin, to me.

Originally posted by Auton

Sending packages back and forth between the US and Europe is, these days, trivially easy. I can't vouch for Asia, Africa or South America, but Europe, at least, is easy, and not hugely expensive - at least it hasn't been the innumerable times I've sent packages to the US, or my mother-in-law has sent packages to my wife here in Sweden. So 'shipping constraints' sounds a bit thin, to me.

There has to be some reason they can't. If it was really "that easy", do you think this would be an issue?

Thank you for the suggestion, but we really don't have the resources to setup an online store to sell/give prizes and coordinate this with our sponsors.  I have an unofficial policy against collecting monies from the MMORPG.com community, I really don't want to open up that can of worms - once I take someone's money I add all kinds of responsibilities and liabilities that I don't want to be honest. 

Also note that generally (like 95% of the time) we don't ship the prizes at all - we just send a list of winners to the sponsor and they ship the prizes to them.  The geo-restrictions are not from us but from the sponsors themselves.

In the contests of the past where I would personally ship prizes worldwide I did see all kinds of problems though.  It was really frustrating to ship a package for $40 to some country far away only to discover the winner was not willing to pay the tax/tariff on the item.   Which depending on your country this fee can be completely rediculous.  In addition to this I had to fill out 2 pages of forms for each prize going outside the US and the time spent was just not worth it.  I am guessing this is also why our sponsors shy away from this.

Whenever possible I try to push sponsors to offer these up to all countries, but in the end the day it is up to the sponsor.  As the world stands now there are a lot of barriers to moving goods around the world efficiently and affordably.

I dunno, but doesn't it seem like some bad publicity for their game/product if it looks like they only focus on USA or Canada??

Originally posted by Admin

Also note that generally (like 95% of the time) we don't ship the prizes at all - we just send a list of winners to the sponsor and they ship the prizes to them.  The geo-restrictions are not from us but from the sponsors themselves.

Whenever possible I try to push sponsors to offer these up to all countries, but in the end the day it is up to the sponsor.  As the world stands now there are a lot of barriers to moving goods around the world efficiently and affordably.

Well, could you at least ask the sponsors to either offer a service like my idea state or move over to e-mailable prizes instead (like discount offers or similar in whatever webshop is appropriate) ?

Or if that is not possible, or if the sponsors won't do it, please remove those banners from showing in the areas outside where you can offer the prizes so we don't have to aggravate ourselves towards MMORPG.com or the sponsor in question about the lack of willingness on their part ?

 To the reasonable observer it must. But that seems like standard procedure these days. Europe is only just now getting the Playstation 3's movie service, for example. Games are commonly released between a few months and a year later here - if at all. And MMOGs often divide their communities into EU/rest-of-world seeming to specifically firewall us dirty Euros away from all the others - and then of course neglect the European community, even when they lavish events and special stuff on the other one.

Bitter? Me? Noooo. What gave you that idea?

They have those restrictions so US/Canada people can receive more prizes, duh! I thought everyone would know that.

Another "You must reside in the United States or Canada to enter this contest."

WHY DO I HAVE TO GET THE MAIL ABOUT IT THAN ?!?