Sweepstakes

Lottery is a promotional device that contains prizes, chance and consideration (a purchase or fee). Items of value (prizes) are awarded to members of the public by drawings (chance) but unlike Sweepstakes, lotteries require some form of payment or purchase (consideration) to participate. The most common examples, of course, are the local state lotteries in which consumers must purchase an entry ticket for a chance to win. Lotteries are illegal except when conducted by states and certain exempt charitable organizations. If you believe you have received a solicitation in the guise of a sweepstakes which is an illegal lottery (requiring you to pay to enter), you should contact your local Post Office or consumer

Premiums are free gifts that companies make available to all recipients who respond according to the company’s instructions — for example, a travel bag received with a new magazine subscription. When everyone who responds to the offer receives the same gift item, without any element of chance, the offer is considered a Premium, not a sweepstakes.

At Paws of Honor giveaways are promotions that award prizes based on chance to entrants. Each giveaway has starting and ending dates, a planned number and amount of prizes offered, a winner selection methodology, eligibility requirements, a defined distribution of entries (such as geographic distribution, specific bulletins or groups, etc.) and an estimated odds of winning for each prize offered.

Paws of Honor assigns a Giveaway Number to each giveaway to identify it and help us keep track of it. The Giveaway Number functions as a name for each giveaway.

An entry deadline is the date by which an entry must be received in order to be eligible to win the prize offered in the promotion.

Every entry has a unique prize number that corresponds to the entrant and the promotion from which the entry came. The entry deadline is the date by which the prize number for an entry is due. Most prize promotions last for 4-8 weeks and have an entry deadline within that timeframe. Some of our giveaways last a year or more. The giveaway end date is the last day when any entry will be accepted for the giveaway before it closes for the final drawing.

At the beginning of a giveaway, the sweepstakes agency decides the amount of prizes and their value. Throughout the life of the giveaway, different types of prizes may be shown to be purchased by or funded by the dollar amount being offered. For example, a giveaway offering a $20,000 prize could be promoted as $20,000 Cash, or a New Pick Up Truck ($19,999 MSRP). The sweepstakes agency keeps track of what prizes were offered in each different promotion. When a winner is selected, the prize promoted will be offered to the winning entry, as defined in the Official Rules.

A prize number is a 12-digit number assigned to an entry for a prize promotion. A giveaway number identifies the prize promotional pool into which entries will be submitted. Throughout the life of a giveaway, you may submit many entries, and each one of them will have a new, unique prize number. But, the giveaway itself will always have the same number, because the number functions as its name.