In a previous blog post, we mentioned our ridiculous Christmas subscription offers. One in particular has caused us some angst.
We put up the following offer:
The person who buys the most magazine subscriptions between the 20th of Nov and the 20th of Dec gets them all for free.
We also mentioned in that blog post that we had thrown in some terms and conditions to satisfy our “legal department”, which is me. People still mistake us for a large multi-national organisation, forgetting that mag nation is obstensibly run by two guys. We don’t have lawyers and accountants and other smart people to help us run our business. We make do with the four hands that we have. Between us, not each.
Luckily however we do have some friends. So Adrian, who is a lawyer, and a smart one at that, emailed me and told me that having read our terms and conditions, we were being a little naughty.
We said in relation to this offer that if two or more people had bought the same number of subscriptions, that we would choose one at random to win the prize. Bomp Bow (I have no clue how to spell that you lose noise, but you know what I mean). According to Adrian, this is a “lottery” as it has an element of chance involved. We therefore might need a licence to do this. And a different one for each State.
Screw that. I wouldn’t even know where to apply for one. Sooo – we are changing the terms and conditions. If two or more people buy the same number of subscriptions, then the winner for the purposes of this offer will be the one that purchased the first of their subscriptions before any of the others.
There you go. No ambiguity, chance or lottery in that. Bloody lawyers. Bloody government and need for stupid licences. Just impede honest retailers from having fun and putting up crazy offers. Thanks Adrian. You created lots of extra work for me when I doubt anyone would have even noticed. At least I won’t go to jail now.
Damn. Could you imagine the amount of, well not exactly free, publicity, but publicity nevertheless, that would have come along with that kind of a scandal had your lawyer not picked it up… Jail could have been so worth it.
Ahh, the old gaming and lotteries departments. The biggest lottery of them all is getting approval from one of those departments.
I am pretty sure that if the total prize value is under a certain dollar amount (of course each state varies) that you don’t need a permit. I think it varies between $500 to $1000 depending on the state. NT QLD WA & TAS don’t require permits. I use Salmat for applications if you need a refernce for future.
Thanks Siobhan… Problem is that we don”t know what the prize is worth. Depends on how many subs an individual might buy. That said, we assume it will be over $500! Great to know that a service exists for this sort of thing. Better however if we come up with clever ways to avoid needing one!