We have a small business and it is our 5 year anniversary. We are giving away 5 $100 vouchers this week to celebrate – every $20 people spend gets them an entry into the day’s raffle. Our first drawing was on Wednesday (for Tuesday’s sales, we don’t open on a Monday).
We drew the first name and it ended up being the last person to buy the previous day. She actually ended up getting someone else’s order as we had already sold out and the very final order was for a regular who we had yet to tell we were bringing the order (they buy weekly, but don’t really care which day they receive their order). I did tell her about the promotion and took her name and whatsapp number.
So after drawing her name, I contact her via whatsapp and let her know she is the winner. I ask her for her name and if we can publish her pic on our SM. She reads the messages and does not respond.
About half an hour later, I again request acknowledgement and let her know that if she does not respond within the next 30 minutes we would be drawing another name. Again the message is read with no response. So I go ahead and draw another name. It ends up being one of our regulars which makes me very happy.
This morning I woke up to a barrage of texts from the original winner saying that she will be claiming her prize and that we had no right to give it to someone else. I let her know that she is no longer a winner and that we have a different winner. So AITA for drawing a different name? I cannot afford to give her a voucher as well. I don’t think I am an AH but maybe I’m wrong?
Comments
^^^^AUTOMOD Thanks for posting! This comment is a copy of your post so readers can see the original text if your post is edited or removed. This comment is NOT accusing you of copying anything. Read this before contacting the mod team
We have a small business and it is our 5 year anniversary. We are giving away 5 $100 vouchers this week to celebrate – every $20 people spend gets them an entry into the day’s raffle. Our first drawing was on Wednesday (for Tuesday’s sales, we don’t open on a Monday).
We drew the first name and it ended up being the last person to buy the previous day. She actually ended up getting someone else’s order as we had already sold out and the very final order was for a regular who we had yet to tell we were bringing the order (they buy weekly, but don’t really care which day they receive their order). I did tell her about the promotion and took her name and whatsapp number.
So after drawing her name, I contact her via whatsapp and let her know she is the winner. I ask her for her name and if we can publish her pic on our SM. She reads the messages and does not respond.
About half an hour later, I again request acknowledgement and let her know that if she does not respond within the next 30 minutes we would be drawing another name. Again the message is read with no response. So I go ahead and draw another name. It ends up being one of our regulars which makes me very happy.
This morning I woke up to a barrage of texts from the original winner saying that she will be claiming her prize and that we had no right to give it to someone else. I let her know that she is no longer a winner and that we have a different winner. So AITA for drawing a different name? I cannot afford to give her a voucher as well. I don’t think I am an AH but maybe I’m wrong?
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
Welcome to /r/AmITheAsshole. Please view our voting guide here, and remember to use only one judgement in your comment.
OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> I was called an AH for giving away a prize when the person who won didn’t claim it within the time frame specified.
I could have waited longer before giving away the prize to another customer.
Help keep the sub engaging!
Don’t downvote assholes!
Do upvote interesting posts!
Click Here For Our Rules and Click Here For Our FAQ
Subreddit Announcements
Follow the link above to learn more
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
Contest mode is 1.5 hours long on this post.
INFO: Why did you need a response within the hour ? Was this rule communicated with the contest sign up?
YTA
There’s zero reason to have such a strict time limit.
People are busy, some people can’t be seen texting at work, some people are driving or at the gym where they can see the notification but can’t respond. I should even need to give you examples, this should be obvious!
You owe her a voucher. Cover the costs because this is your fuck up.
NTA. You gave her a fair chance to claim the prize, and she just ignored you. It’s not your responsibility to chase someone down forever, especially when you made the rules clear about needing a response. Plus, you can’t just give away money you don’t have. It sucks for her, but you handled it pretty fairly by redrawing after a reasonable wait.
You have to go back to the way you set up your contest. Unless you told everyone who participated that they had to respond within an hour, you are in the wrong. And you may very well be illegal about your drawing.
I would check your local laws very carefully to make sure you’re running this raffle in a legally allowed way
YTA
I often get messages while I am not able to use my phone (driving or at work) that come through to my watch, so it looks like it has been read, but either I have not been able to read the full message or I cannot respond to the message for a while.
It seems that it was not in the rules that the winner must respond within 1 hour of the draw and you just didn’t want to give the prize to a customer who is not a regular/your friend.
YTA. She had to reply immediately to claim her prize? That’s ridiculous. She may have been able to read her messages, but not reply. Sounds to me like you just didn’t like that her name was drawn and would rather give it to someone else you know.
YTA.
It’s just a voucher, and it’s bad form she’s being so demanding about something to which she is hardly entitled (and wasn’t even aware of in the first place); but for you to require a response within the hour in the middle of a workday is simply unreasonable. Plenty of times have I had the time to read my texts but not to respond. You don’t know this person. Maybe she works on her feet. Maybe she’s a delivery/ride service driver and her phone displays texts while both her hands are on the wheel. Had this been one of your favored regulars, I have a feeling you’d have given them more time. Seems much more about the identity of the winner than any rush on your end.
You also note you have five of these vouchers and her name was the first to be drawn; why can’t you afford to give her one of the other four?
It does not appear from your post that there was any requirement that you needed to be present to claim the prize. Obviously that’s why you were calling the winners. Since you did not limit the terms of claiming the prize, YTA because this other woman followed, your rules, made the required purchase, and her name was drawn. It seems you arbitrarily instituted a new rule and that’s not fair. YTA.
YTA – is there going to be such a strict time limit for your regulars? You didn’t mention having less than a day to claim the prize so you’ve no right to give her prize away
Are you the criminal?
YTA 24 hours to respond is reasonable, 1 hour isn’t. I’d actually say 30 days to respond is how the competition should have been set out.
If there were time parameters they should have been shared from the beginning, not made up on a whim. You have no idea what can be happening in someone’s schedule that prevents them from responding to a message even if they read it. An hour is ridiculous. YTA
If there were time parameters they should have been shared from the beginning, not made up on a whim. You have no idea what can be happening in someone’s schedule that prevents them from responding to a message even if they read it. An hour is ridiculous. YTA
INFO was the immediate response part of the terms of the original contest or did you add that arbitrarily later? Why did you need a response within an hour?
YTA
You can’t afford fifty bucks? Maybe you shouldn’t be giving stuff away.
YTA
If you didn’t make this arbitrary time limit CRYSTAL CLEAR when they spent that $20 and entered the draw, then you’re basically a scammer.
I have a job where I can see messages on my watch but often don’t have time or opportunity to have a conversation every hour of the day. I’m sure millions of other people are the same.
Also, you prioritizing someone you know over the actual winner makes you more of a scammer.
YTA
Lets me rewrite it for you. Someone that I didn’t like won, but I wanted someone else to win. So I made ups some bull— rule and arbitrarily pick up a winner of my liking. The end.
YTA
This reflects very badly on your business. If you are going to place parameters on the winners, such as responding within 30 minutes, that needs to be announced when the contest begins.
You write that you cannot afford to give her a voucher but your post seems to indicate that the contest is not over. While it would be fraudulent, couldn’t you simply pretend she wins a future drawing?
Info: Why was it so important they claimed it within the short timeframe?? Was it specified when informed about the promotion of the time limit??
I hope you set up your contest legally – there are actually a ton of laws about contests (in the US anyway). If she reports you to the state, it could cost you a heck of a lot more than $20.
I work in a school. I cannot be on my phone during my work day. I do have a smartwatch tho, so I get notifications. Not an emergency with my kids or my elderly parents? I’m not answering for hours. And reasonably so! The kids I am employed to watch are my priority, not my phone.
YTA
[deleted]
YTA. People have lives and responsibilities, and let’s face it, you pulled that arbitrary time limit out of thin air. This sounds power trippy as hell.
YTA because giving someone an hour to claim a prize is ridiculous, she may have been busy. Messages that go through to a watch show as read when they might not have been. You just didn’t want that person to win and it’s clear. You need to honour both winners now and not be so ridiculous going forward!!
NTA. There are plenty of contests where you must answer your phone to actually claim your prize. If she doesn’t respond, that’s on her.
YTA unless you specifically told them they had a deadline to respond before being disqualified
I wouldn’t frequent your business if that’s your shady ethics
Most competitions / draws offer people a few days or even a week to respond. An hour is ridiculous and had it been a regular, I doubt this “rule” would’ve been in place.
OP, YTA.
YTA You were extremely impatient & ridiculous. People have lives. You have no idea what they were doing & why they didn’t respond. It’s absolutely asinine to expect someone to respond within the hour. You owe them a voucher.
YTA an hour is such a short time to respond. Maybe she was at work. She messaged you THE NEXT DAY.
It’s not like she ignored your text for days.
I’ve worked 12 hour shifts before. Maybe she was at work.
Or maybe she was running errands after work.
Stuff happens. Who knows.
YTA…God forbid someone doesn’t abide by your arbitrary schedule to get back to you, especially when you never even told them they’d need to be available to get back to you.
It’s obvious you just didn’t want her to have it.
YTA and you have risk since contests like this have specific laws.
YTA
An hour to respond in the middle of a weekday is ridiculous. And it doesn’t even sound like this was a rule for the drawing until you spontaneously made it one. Im confident that had you drawn the name of one of your favorite regular customers there would not have been such a limit. Next time just give your preferred customers gifts and drop the pretense of a fair raffle. You could likely get in trouble for this raffle because most communities have very strict rules for how they can be done legally and I HIGHLY doubt your spontaneous time rule doesn’t line up with those.
YTA. There are several reasons a person can be unreachable for an hour. Family emergency. On a plane. Phone battery ran out and can’t find charger.
If the rules stated available hours, that’s different.
If you didn’t clearly state in the competition that they have one hour from being contacted to claim the prize, then you’re 💯 TA
Why did you need them to respond so quickly to claim their prize? This seems silly, and unless this was communicated when you entered the drawing, YTA. Where I work I am so busy I do not have a chance to respond to texts or emails. However, I look at my phone frequently (I work in a hospital and have to document when I enter and exit a patient’s room. My watch broke and I haven’t replaced it so I just check my phone to write down the time) so it’s easy for me to see that I got a message and even read it if it’s just a line or two, but I can’t respond because my day is so full. So I respond after work and even then if I have a workout class after or meeting up with someone for dinner, it could be evening before I’m ready to respond. I would be very upset if this happened to me. I wouldn’t have been upset if I hadn’t won but then to be told I won and then taken away just because I didn’t respond while I was at work? That’s shitty. And no, it doesn’t matter what time the announcement came either, people work different shifts and aren’t just busy during business hours.
YTA. People have busy lives and might not be able to use their phone in the hour(?) time frame you gave her to claim her reward. You should’ve given her at least 24hrs to respond.
Yta and its stuff like this that would make me never want to patronize a business again. If I read a review someone left of a place that details what happened to your original winner, I would think twice about going there.
Nta
Info: Did you give the other regulars longer than an hour?
Was it communicated anywhere that winners have one hour only to claim prizes?
Do you answer every single message on your phone within an hour even when at work / sleeping / out with friends and family / etc?
NTA – You stated she read it and didn’t return your message. You gave her a deadline and she didn’t respond. That sounds like it sucks for her 😂. You can have a contest and set the rules how you want!
Did you post any rules about how long winners have to respond to notifications? If not, YTA.
YTA: you have no idea what was going on with that lady today. You gave absolutely no rationale for why you needed her to respond RIGHT AWAY. What difference could it have made to you? It might have been reasonable to pick a new winner had she not responded within, say, two weeks/one month/something like that–but an hour? Sorry, but you need to pay her that voucher and ask yourself why you are so impatient that you cost yourself a customer.
It’s funny how you don’t reply to people when you’ve been voted TA. You knew what you were TA when you wrote this especially as you stipulated she was a new customer last one of the day ect. You never wanted her to win you wanted one of your regulars/friends to win hence you arbitrary made up the hour rule. I hope she goes to your gambling regulator and you get fined.
Nope, NTA.
Kinda YTA because you only gave 1 hour to respond, and multiple devices could be connected to the whatsapp that aren’t her. Like kids on a tablet, etc.
Boy, if she actually contacts a regulator, you are fucked. YTA for breaking your own rules arbitrarily.
YTA
I hope you sincerely make this right. These days especially, a small business cannot afford the bad press that something like this provides. You’re best bet is to own up to your mistake and eat the cost, it’s either $100 now or the loss of untold revenue going forward.
YTA. Just because they didn’t respond as quickly as you would have liked is no reason to declare their win void. If they hadn’t responded within a few weeks, I could understand, but an hour or so during the working day? They might have been in a meeting or something and only responding to truly urgent messages, which yours was not.
If I were the original winner, I’d push my case as far as I could, just out of badness, and to teach you a lesson about your high-handed and impatient attitude.
YTA and it was probably illegal. Very strict laws about things like that.
YTA
Half an hour??? I can see giving her a week. Your time frame is completely ridiculous.
Even then you should have put it in the rules of the contest.
YTA. Sometimes people are not in a position to respond to a text or message immediately. For example, I might see a text while I am in church, or at a doctor’s appointment, or in a work meeting, but I would never pick up my phone to send a reply while in those places. I was in the ER with my MIL last week for more than 6 hours. I could see texts, but I was far too busy to respond. No one got upset or felt slighted because they understand basic life.
You were giving away a prize. Why the incredibly short time for the winner to reply?
I think YTA because of how you have the contest set up. If you are giving away 5 vouchers in total, you should not reneg on the first one awarded.
Yes, yes you are TA. You made up the rules to fit your own itinerary. You never say what kind of business this is. Food? Exotic plants? Bugs for reptilian pets? You said you needed her name. Do you often deliver goods to people and not know their names? It’s no wonder another $20 voucher is outside your budget.