First of all, my appolagies if this isnt the forum to discuss this. But I wasnt sure where to put it.

I am writing mostly because Im sad. Not angry mind you, I rarely get angry. But I am sad and dissaponted.

I am one of the runner up winners of MoP giveaway on MMORPG: http://www.mmorpg.com/newsroom.cfm/read/26370/World-of-Warcraft-Mists-of-Pandaria-Collectors-Edition-Giveaway.html

I won a copy of standard MoP.

As I dont normaly win things, just like everyone else, this was great news. I was very happy, even braged abouit to my wife. Sceptical as she is he only comment was - "And I won a trip to the moon, going just as soon as you receive your game". Snarly remark from a cynic I thought. This giveaway is sponsored by Blizzard after all.

Today I received this message from MMORPG staff:

"Hi there!

Unfortunately, we are not going to be able to honor your prize due to associated shipping costs. Please accept our apologies!

Regards,

Michael Bitton
Community Manager, MMORPG.com
http://www.mmorpg.com/
mikeb@mmorpg.com"

You can imagine my dissapointement. I asked if there is any conciliation prize, but due to time difference it will be some 18 hours at best before I get a reply.

Still it sadenes me deeply to just get a message stating, sorry you dont live in US or Canada. Sure everyone was eligable to enter the contest. We even featured it on Facebook, where anyone and everoyne from all over the workd can participate. But they cant really receive the prize as such.

Now there are many giveaways on MMORPG that I cant participate since its US / Canada only. Fair enough. But when you enable us from rest of the world to participate and / or even win, we actually expect to receive the prize regardless. Especialy one that is sponsored by a company size of Blizzard that cant afford shiping fees.

Chances of geting something else in return are slim to none. And before you ask what do I have in mind, something small, like in game pet, email from Blizz with - sorry we cant give you your prize, but heres a pic of Blizz staff waving at you. You know, something. Its not about the prize, its about that warm feeling of awsomeness that you get when you win something you never thought you would.

P.S. I would kindly ask MMO staff to give my prize to someone that can receive it. Since I wont get anything, it would be a shame for it to go to waste. Im sure there is someone in that pool of dedicaded MMORPG readers that is eligable.

Whats your take on all of this MMORPG readers ? Would you get mad or would you simply feel like sh*t and make a post like this ?

P.P.S. Actualy I am angry at one thing. Adminitng to my wife she was right. At work ATM, but that smug smile saying - "I told you so".

If it's for everyone and they're not willing to ship it why the hell make the avaible for everyone?

IMO they could buy a collectors editions from a store in your city, then they don't have to pay for shipping cost.

I guess there is something you can do!! 

Talk with MMORPG directly in regards to having serial codes transferred. This way you should be able to attach it to your battle.net and thus not miss out on your game.. I know the novelty of not having the box will be slightly revoked. But MMORPG should honour your prize!

Let’s hope you get your prize!

I am sure it wil work out. MMORPG are really good at working out solutions.

I remember some years back i got a free AoC game due to some snafu in a competition. So just keep calm and be polite in your conversation and give them the chance to work things out (a bit late as this thread is here but at least try to not make it worse)

I had the same experience a couple of years ago. Won an EVE minmatar ship statuette and when fedex knocked on my door I found out that mmorpg.com picked the most expensive delivery method and expected me to pay for it fully. It was cheaper for me to buy the same statuette directly from eve store and pay for their shipping costs than pay to fedex what they asked on that day.

Obviously, I refused to pay and I know now that mmorpg had to pay fedex for both shipping it here and shipping it back... Now I'm qutie sure that my account got "marked" to not participate in any contests of such kind after that incident, since I was unable to get into any one of them since then, even not the worldwide ones :)

Oh well, am used to be treated like s**t for not being a US citizen in anything mmorpg-related anyway :)

Originally posted by Paske

I won a copy of standard MoP.

 

Today I received this message from MMORPG staff:

"Hi there!

Unfortunately, we are not going to be able to honor your prize due to associated shipping costs. Please accept our apologies!

Regards,

Michael Bitton
Community Manager, MMORPG.com
http://www.mmorpg.com/
mikeb@mmorpg.com"

maybe they can open the box and email you the game key?

What a major snafu! 

When I saw the thread where one could post one's stories etc. I wondered if it was only open to NA...but I checked and it wasn't written anywhere that it was only open to NA residents!

Like the other promotions and offers, to which I no longer subscribe to because of these "restrictions" I should've known better.

I even checked to see where the other posters were from and they were from all over! 

I want to see how this gets resolved.

MMORPG.com. By North-Americans, for North-Americans. BNANA. Hey, Banana.

Originally posted by Scarfe
Its strange, a few simple T&C's would resolve the entire issue.  Only open to residents of the US for example. 

Yes.  Very odd indeed if true.

Wow that's pretty awful man.  A digital copy should be should be yours in my opinion.  You won it, they should make it happen.  Ouch.

well that sucks.

And you live in Europe, not as if you are asking them to ship to Outer Mongolia.

Originally posted by Arun
Digital copy makes complete sense!

Excactly what I was thinking.

Perhaps here at mmorpg.com they don't realize where living in 2013 and not in the 1990's anymore where I would expect it's harder to ship software. But in today's age of digital distrubution such a price should not be a problem to give it's over seas members.

a similar thing happend to  me

just before xmas  i was sent a email by scan.co.uk asking  me to enter a  survey and  if i did   i would be sent a free copy of batman arkhem city

i spent my time doing the survey  and sent it off waiting for my copy of batman after  i didnt recive a copyy  i wrote to them asking why not they said it was only open to people who had bought a gt nvidia card  in the previous 12 months

when i pointed out to them i had bought a gtx and it containd the letter gt but this wasnt  good enough

since then  ive been wondering to myself   if its only open to certain purchases  why did they send me  the survey  it should be easy to  figure out  who bought a certain card  and  who to send the survey to

i guess it was to fool me in to thinking i would recive a free game  for  my info  and  as such  scam me

the end result  was alough they now have my info and i didnt get my  free copy of batman  (which was more anoying as steam had it on sale really cheap but i didnt buy it thinking i was getting a copy)

i now refuse on principal to deal with scan.co.uk so much for  getting info they just lost a customer since then i purchased a few bit none of them from scan.co.uk  which now joins my ever growing list of companies i refuse to deal with

Seriously, you're going to cry because you didn't read the rules of the contest?

It was pretty clear when you quickly look at it where you have to live to be elligible. You're right MMORPG.com has lots of contests, they're a global website (like any site these days is), but that doesn't mean they have to cover the overhead of running contests globally, different countries have different rules for such things, not only the cost of shipping.

While it would be nice if they offered a substitute, they don't have to either - what they had was physical boxes to ship out, hence the limitation of the contest entrants.

Sorry you weren't elligible, but doesn't make you look like the underdog coming here to get burned and flamed in an attempt to drag MMORPG down.

Originally posted by Rosha

Seriously, you're going to cry because you didn't read the rules of the contest?

It was pretty clear when you quickly look at it where you have to live to be elligible. You're right MMORPG.com has lots of contests, they're a global website (like any site these days is), but that doesn't mean they have to cover the overhead of running contests globally, different countries have different rules for such things, not only the cost of shipping.

While it would be nice if they offered a substitute, they don't have to either - what they had was physical boxes to ship out, hence the limitation of the contest entrants.

 

Sorry you weren't elligible, but doesn't make you look like the underdog coming here to get burned and flamed in an attempt to drag MMORPG down.

Someone got out of bed on the wrong side this morning...