Who enters competitions like the "Sweepstakes"?

[Fierlin1182]

We occasionally get letters saying one of us has been picked as one of the people who have a chance to enter Readers' Digests' Sweepstakes.

My mother is insanely paranoid about this kind of stuff. She thinks the $300,000 doesn't actually exist, they're just trying to while out addresses from everyone so they can bombard us with advertising. She also reckons the people they send us pictures of holding cheques are the people behind the "scam".

I always read the small print on anything I'm thinking about entering, so I found out that they ARE actually intending to use your address for advertising, but there's a hotline you can call any time to stop the mail.

There are also a couple of smaller options where they force you to subscribe to the magazine afterwards, but the entries for the big sum of money are no strings attached besides the ads.

So what do you reckon about these sorts of things? Enter or not?

 

[kuntrygirl]

I would use caution when entering sweepstakes or not enter at all. I think there is always something fishy about those sweepstakes. I wouldn't want any unwanted solicitations from businesses selling products or unwanted junk mail or harassing phone calls.

 

[Fierlin1182]

The main thing that I found dodgy was that the people organising the sweepstakes never give their full names.