Perhaps it's in reference to something else? http://whippingpost.com/pages/about
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https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-are-they-only-open-to-u-s-residents.1918337/
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MacRumors Giveaways... Why are they only open to U.S. residents?
- Thread starter Fabian90
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But I mentioned that; there are legal things to go through to make it happen. You just get them sorted out. I was able to do it on a smaller scale, friends+peers with other companies have done it with larger ones. It takes a lawyer.
cant macrumors have a look at their stats, and then for the 'big' countries, check the rules for them, say UK, Canada.
what would be good also would be to have different front pages for different countries, so you could have macrumors.co.uk and youd see all content except us only giveaways, but uk based giveaways could be directed here.
what would be good also would be to have different front pages for different countries, so you could have macrumors.co.uk and youd see all content except us only giveaways, but uk based giveaways could be directed here.
That's what we're doing, but unfortunately it's been taking much longer than we'd like to get the lawyers working through whatever language and policy tweaks we need.
You must not have read the first page. Multiple people are asking for international giveaways.
Hi MR, any chance ever of offering those who do not live in the USA anything at all?
I am getting tired of the US centric offers.
Would also be interesting to know the readership figures for the US and the rest of the world.
I am getting tired of the US centric offers.
Would also be interesting to know the readership figures for the US and the rest of the world.
Nope. Will never happen. Despite it being pretty easy to do (we used to do global giveaways).
It's apparently because shipping and giveaway/contest laws get more complicated as you include other countries.
But don't worry. It's not like all of us here in America are winning a prize.
The way around the international laws problem (and what every other website that isn't too lazy to read the law on these giveaways does) is to make entrants answer a question (it could be anything relating to the prize) and then pick a winner from the correct answers.
Loads of US based websites that I visit do this all the time, and entrants from all over the world win. MR writing 'Due to the complexities of international laws regarding giveaways...' shows that they don't care enough about their readers to look up the facts. If others can do it, then they can also!
Part of the question there would be whether or not others who are doing it are in fact complying with everything they need to or just doing it without really fully realizing and/or caring about that.
Adding a question (even a simple one) makes it a skill-based competition, which makes it illegal in some countries. In other countries, random sweepstakes are illegal and a skill question is required. Obviously these are at odds.
As noted, these sites are ignoring the law if the contests are simply open to everyone. Yes, there are other countries where we could make ours available, and I'd love to do it, but until we have the okay from our lawyers and the proper wording included in our giveaway terms, we can't open it up. I'm possibly more frustrated by this than many of you.
It is really strange as each countries laws only are valid for contests hold in their country - They are *NOT* valid for contests run in other countries that citizens of another country can enter.
The only problem is international postage and import taxes.
The only problem is international postage and import taxes.
Arh come on... You guys really need to open up for this - You have tons of readers in Europe!
I live in the DR. Im subscribed to a company that receive packages in Florida and then send them to me here in my country.
Can I put that address, so if i win i can receive the prize there, and then get it here??.
Can I put that address, so if i win i can receive the prize there, and then get it here??.
Agreed. Especially at Christmas it would of been nice to acknowledge international readers
Forget it. I've been down this road before. They couldn't care less that these things don't apply outside the US.
Yeah, yeah. I've been pointed to that before. At the end of the day. there'd be a way around all of these 'complexities' if you wanted to find it. You don't, that's fine. Really, the only thing you should do is acknowledge that running a successful international site with dedicated and active users and then offering a US-only rewards system stinks for a great many of your users and creates ill will every time, clearly. Offering up some reason about complexity does little to make it better.
What do I have to do with it?
Thought you were an admin. My bad.
Change 'you's to 'they's and it'll all make sense in a less provocative way.Not that his matters now that everyone's been moved to the echo chamber where we can shout at the wind and be ignored while we get it out of our systems.
You can always find excuses if you don't want to do something. Perhaps, at the very least, MacRumors could offer the option to filter off these inaccessible (to 95% of the world's population) giveaways from the main page (both the main and side containers) ? It's rather annoying. And please don't use geolocation for it, a single checkbox in the profile will do it (better).
Must be pretty hard these days to send license keys to users outside the US…
Just as a tip, in case you haven't heard about this new revolutionary invention called E-Mail.
I know you bolded the second half of the sentence, but the first half answers your concerns pretty clearly.