I joined online-sweepstakes.com in 2005 and soon after became a premium member. Although I encountered some rudeness and was often ignored when I'd contact support with any questions, I found the site to be well laid out and I won a lot of nice prizes.
About two years later the site became overrun with tons of blog-entry sweeps and other sweeps that requires a comment or a review to be left. Many of the blog sweeps were run by site moderators themselves. Due to how much work was involved with these ungoverned sweeps many people started complaining that it was too much work to weed through these unwanted sweeps for such small prizes, including myself. Others, and myself, asked that they be put into their own category. At first our requests were ignored. Then people were starting to be threatened with being banned if they dared start any threads regarding the issue.
I received a private message in early May from a fellow disgruntled OLS member saying that she'd started a blog to not only expose OLS for what it had become, but to allow members a place to vent their frustrations since they were not allowed to do it at OLS or else they'd be banned. I let my feelings be known on this blog, and was banned just a few days later. At first I could still access the site. All I was no longer able to do was post comments in the forums or in regards to any of the sweeps. My banned status was listed as: No reason given. Date the ban would be lifted: Never.
So I said fine, I'll just use their site until my $30 yearly membership expires on November 20th and then I'll be done with them. However, about a week ago they went a step further than forbidding me to leave comments. Now they've got my IP# completely blocked and it tells me I'm forbidden to access their server. I know that others who have vented at the blog have said the same thing about being blocked completely with a few months left on their subscription.
I don't know if I can ever get my money back, but I felt compelled to warn others about the site's shady practices.
Tom
Auburn, California
U.S.A.
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