I don’t consider myself a confrontational person.  In fact, I try to avoid it as IAngry Smiley don’t handle it well.  However, when honesty, ethics, family and friends are involved, you’d better believe that I will address the issue at hand.

Chances are, if you are reading this, you know about the Samsung “Where is the Heart of my Home” contest.  Twitter Moms was hosting it and basically bloggers had to write a post about The Heart of the Home, link back to Twitter Moms and Samsung, tweet about it on twitter and post a Samsung badge.  The person with the most comments on their post would win a new Washer and Dryer from Samsung Appliances.  I put up my post, and started recruiting friends and family.  I watched the others who were close to me in numbers simply because we were competing against each other.  I e-mailed the head of Twitter Moms, Megan Calhoun because I didn’t know what type of comments would be accepted.  She said that anonymous comments and comments by the entrants would not count.  Simple enough, I could follow those rules.

My oldest brother is a computer programmer and has been for years.  A few days into the competition, he started noticing patterns in another blogger’s comments.  Then it got more extreme.  This particular blogger would have hardly any comments during the day, and then jump by the thousands in the evening.  One “reader” would comment multiple times and then another reader.  We found this fishy as the comments weren’t intertwined.  At one point, I even saw that a comment about an “automated system” being posted multiple times.  My brother said it was probably scripting.  Up until this point, I had no idea what scripting was.  It’s basically when someone writes a program and then sends automated comments to a blog, making them look  real.  I also started looking into blogger profiles and many of the “commenters” had brand new profiles and some random picture.  I tried posting a comment as well as others in my family.  The whole process took over 30 seconds which let me know comments were coming in at rates that didn’t match up.

I e-mailed the head of Twitter Moms, Megan Calhoun with my concerns, and received an e-mail saying they were dealing with unintended consequences.

She also replied with this:

I can’t change the rules now, but we are going to go through each blog post and determine if the comments were made legitimately. If not, they will be disqualified.

I felt much better after knowing that they were going to go through each comment to see if they were being made legitimately and disqualify comments that were not.  I told friends and family what was going on and they began commenting again.  It was inspiring to me to see my family unite, and I can’t count the hours that everyone put in posting.  The last day of the contest, my sister and husband stayed home from work, and everyone was posting away.  My brother was watching the other two blogs that were close to me and noticed a pattern with the other blog.  19 comments per minute for hours on end.  Then upped to about 24 comments per minute and so on.  He offered to write a program for me to auto script to my blog.  I declined as I wanted to keep the contest honest on my part.  I had a big blog crash for 3 hours the final night of the contest.  Yeah, I’m looking into new hosting now.  I ended up in 3rd place, but hoped that honesty would prevail.

I e-mailed Megan Calhoun 3 more times, and 2 different Samsung PR reps – NEVER heard back.  Instead I got generic e-mails, this one being the latest:

Hello Moms,

Thank you for participating in the Samsung “Where is the Heart of Your Home” promotion. I’ve enjoyed reading all the wonderful blog posts and I know how much time and effort you all put into this contest. However, I’m saddened by the behavior of a small number of people (and the allegations by others). The spirit of the contest was lost and it is time to close this one out and look forward.  We have carefully reviewed the entries for the promotion and concluded that we are not comfortable with the integrity of the contest and as a result we have no recourse but to cancel the judging mechanism in the promotion.  We still want to award these fabulous Samsung appliances, so we will be holding a random drawing to select a winner from all of the entries submitted.  The winner will be announced next Tuesday.

Thank you for your continued support.

Megan

On top of this e-mail, another one was sent saying Samsung was giving everyone who participated a $75 gift card to Best Buy.  Although I do think it was a nice gesture, I’m declining it because the actual problem was still not addressed, and it seems like they are trying to pacify everyone.

Obviously I was making allegations but I hate to be lumped into the “cheating” group.   Since when does calling someone out “sadden” someone.   If I recall, in a previous e-mail Megan told me they couldn’t change the rules.  However, it’s ok to change the rules when it’s all said and done? How FAIR is that?  If Samsung & Twitter Moms had done the right thing at first, they wouldn’t have let us continue to solicit comments.  I would have stopped friends and family from spending hours on end commenting. Did they REALLY go through all 125,000 comments?  I HIGHLY doubt it.  If it only involved me, I think I could brush it off, but where everyone else put so much time in, I can’t.  In the end, I’m not so much upset at the fact that I didn’t win but that honesty and integrity wasn’t exhibited.

The lack of communication in this whole process was ridiculous. I’m mad that Megan couldn’t kindly e-mail me back when I e-mailed her, but that’s what you get when you have a big named blogger who makes $10,000 a twitter party vs. a smaller blogger who wants a chance to win a washer and dryer.  (Twitter moms claims to not have investors, but I’d say $10,000 is a pretty hefty investment.)

I finally felt like my frustration was being heard last week as I was able to talk with a Samsung Appliances rep.  He was very nice and heard me out, however a week and a half later, I’m still sitting in the dark about the whole situation.

And remember how above Twitter Moms was supposed to choose a random winner this last Tuesday?  I haven’t heard anything about who the winner is, or what is going on with the contest.  Just another example of bad communication.

I’m disappointed that Samsung Appliances didn’t step up as they were the sponsor of the contest,  and now I definitely have a sour taste in my mouth.  I can think of much better deserving Mom Communities that they could have worked with.  In fact, I have one backing me on this issue and will link their posts to this post as they come in.

Kate – The Shopping Mama
Shellie – Blog4Mom
Night Owl Mama
Amanda – Confessions from a Household Six
Kim – Accidental Mommies

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