Friday, January 11, 2008

TAKE ONE? TAKE TWO!

(Be sure to scroll down to read about how Home Depot allowed the winners of their $25,000 YouTube contest to re-edit their video AFTER the contest was over, to avoid being disqualified... what I believe was a real "Meltdown")


IMPORTANT! After reading this post, scroll down and take action ("YOUR VERY OWN CONSUMER ADVOCATE")



Part of what this blog alleges is that the winning video was re-submitted after the contest deadline (which I think was completely against the rules), and as such it's vote count (which is 20% of the vote) should have been reset to zero. That would further impair the winner's tally. It seems to me like a no-brainer. However, some disbelievers of this blog have offered their take on how to discredit this claim. They say that it really is only one video, one entry, the "same" video, so I'm completely wrong...the winning video was submitted before the deadline. That kind of logic doesn't make much sense to me. But in any event, behold! Below is a screen capture from December 21st, right after the winners posted their re-edited version. You'll see that to the right of the new video, YouTube itself has suggested a "related" video, a DIFFERENT video on its site that it thinks you might want to check out. Wouldn't you know it, it's the original video!



In other words, it looks as though the Long family had TWO submissions going at the same time. Two different videos with two different vote counts. And, if we look at the contest rules:
"Limit one entry per person."
So, there you go. I'd like to thank the naysayers out there. You helped me discover ANOTHER potential violation for our growing list. Entrants are not allowed more than one entry. I think the conduct of Home Depot and Imre Communications is absolutely atrocious. Now, read the post below and contact your attorney general about this contest!