Hey everybody, thank you VERY much for the great feedback!! We're digging into this very closely to figure out what's going on!
Some background: We've worked with Purina for many years and they are a great supporter of our work here on BYC. Without sponsors and advertisers we wouldn't be able to offer these great resources for free to millions of people (it's SUPER expensive to run a site this big). You'll notice that not all the ads on BYC are chicken related... that's because it's SUPER hard to find enough sponsors interested in advertising chicken related products. That being the case, when we finally do find companies with products that match our site, we are extra happy to have them on board.
They came to us with a great offer. They want to understand peeps more to serve them better. They offered a free bag of feed to anyone who filled out the survey. We asked for specifics on who did and didn't qualify (since I hate the ol' bait-n-switch "you could be a winner" type of stuff as much as anybody) and here is what I was told:
Quote:
To qualify for the coupon for a free bag of chicken feed, they will need to complete the survey. Note there are a few screening criteria in the survey, i.e. have to be a chicken owner, NOT work for manufacturer of animal feed, NOT feed only bulk feed, etc. if they do not pass the criteria, they are not eligible for a coupon.
So, if y'all meet the criteria, filled out the survey, and didn't get a coupon for a free bag, then I can promise that I'm just as upset as you... if not more so because I work SUPER hard to maintain this great community every day!
Again, we're digging into this to figure out what's going on and will update y'all as we find out more info.
Thanks for your patience and support as we work through this!!!
UPDATE 1:
Let me clarify: This is not a spam, spoof, scam, etc. This was a planned email from a very legitimate company (Purina). As I mentioned in this post, we thought pretty much all our members would qualify for the free bag, which is the only reason that we agreed to it.
We care deeply for this community and are extremely careful with this kind of thing.
My guess is that this is probably a glitch with the way they did the survey.
When I click the link I'm simply taken to this page:
It looks like Purina, or the company they are working with, simply didn't code the survey properly.
Again, we're looking into it and will keep y'all posted.
UPDATE 2:
We found out that they had a limit on the number of people that could take the survey. They didn't expect the response to be so huge (so, great job everyone!) and so anybody who clicked on the link AFTER the limit would get the notice like the one pictured above.
I also learned that here were also some questions that would disqualify someone from receiving the coupon, like if you were under 18, didn't have chickens, had over 200 chickens, already buy feed in bulk, etc.
I'm very upset that these requirements weren't posted in the email and also in the first page of the survey!