An interesting little Wal-Mart Story...

[youthere]

My husband and I went to Wal-Mart tonight to pick up a prescription for my mother-in-law..yes I know..boo hiss Wal-Mart...Anyway, we walk in and they are holding a drawing to win a really nice grill so my husband goes over to fill out an entry form and notices there's all this print on the back. It reads:

Contest Rules: No purchase necessary. Limit one per household. Must be 18 years or older and legal residents of the US to enter. Entry is invalid unless form completely and legibly filled out. All entries and the information contained in them become the property of the sponsor. Prize winner to be selected random drawing by winner....etc..


So they hold these drawings to collect information they can then SELL? WTF?

[5X]

1. Be careful, they sometimes change your long distance provider...

by filling out the form, you agree to it.

Who knows what else they might do with it.

[MonkeyFunk]

2. yeah

pretty standard. All those free gym memberships or caribbean cruise things are the same way. Nothing new.

[youthere]

4. I've never seen that before on a drawing form..

My eyebrows went yay high when I read that.

[Lars39]

3. It's not just Wal-mart that does this.

There's money in all that info.Companies have been selling contest info for a long time. :(

[youthere]

6. How outrageous is that?

You enter a seemingly innocent contest and who knows where your personal info ends up. Jeebus.+

[Redstone]

9. Well, you gotta PAY ATTENTION! It's not that hard to do. Read the label. Read the fine print.

Redstone

[youthere]

11. Why, oh WHY would I pick NOW to start paying attention?

Give me another 19 months before I have to wake up...okay? Jan 20 2009 I promise to be alert.;-)

[Systematic Chaos]

5. That's pretty commonplace.

And on the internet it's a million times worse if you sign up for one of those "Free iPod!!" things.

[youthere]

7. Honest to Cripes I NEVER knew they did that...

of course, it's not like I enter a lot of contests either.

[beyurslf]

13. I hate the interent ones that have that little tiny box to scroll down and

read. It only lets you see like 1 or 2 lines at a time.

[Redstone]

8. Uh, just about EVERY giveaway by EVERY company has a similar disclaimer.

It ain't just Walmart. Read the fine print EVERY TIME and you'll find that to be true.

Redstone

[youthere]

10. Apparently I'm the ONLY person in the free world who didn't know this...

well, besides my husbands. Of course, we never usually enter contests or drawing either.

[demobabe]

15. Well, there is another reason aside from selling the marketing info

If it's a drawing contest or skill contest of some kind, usually in the rules they will say "all entries become the sole property of corporation_name_here" because they want to be able to use the result as they see fit in their marketing materials.

"See this nice kitty drawing Grandma Dee entered into our contest? Here's her picture. Isn't she sweet? She just won a year's worth of catfood..."

Then suddenly you're a spokesperson for a corporation you don't even like... ;)

[live love laugh]

17. You and your husbands have to be the only people as that is par for the course. n/t

[txwhitedove]

12. Local Wal-Mart gas pumps each have 24-hour TV....

which means each 2-sided pump has 2 TV's going, very loud,
and tuned to a station showing Bill O'Reilly......
I now buy gas anywhere else, at any price, and praise the
operator for NOT having the nasty blaring people pacifiers.
:scared:

[Rydz777]

14. And all the information they have collected has probably

been outsourced to some database in China - so that it can be near all Wal-Mart's suppliers.

[Big Pappa]

16. This

is a time share companies bread and butter.