I May Already Be A Winner

I was definitely a winner three weeks ago. Now, I'm not quite so sure. Last month, G4TV held a sweepstakes rather uncreatively named "Free Stuff." Basic premise was they would show off new gizmos on a half-hour TV show, viewers would enter online to win the gizmos in a random drawing. The catch, of course, was that you had to watch the program live--no TiVo--and the passcodes to enter were shown during the commercial breaks, so you had to watch live and watch the ads. At the end of each half hour, the winners would be listed onscreen.

I spent 20 hours or so in June shuffling between the TV and the laptop to enter passcodes, and never saw my name come up, so I thought nothing more of it until a couple of days ago when I checked a seldom-used email address that I had given on the sweepstakes entry form. Apparently, I had missed something on the list of winners on June 22, when, it turns out, won a rather sweet sound system and DVD player. Sure enough, if you go to this page listing the winners and scroll down to 6/22/07 6:30 p.m., and look next to the Panasonic SCPT 950 Home Theater System you'll see "Janet H., OH." That would be me.

That's the good news. The slightly less good news comes about halfway through the small print of section 5 of the contest rules:

Failure by the Selected Entrant to respond to such notification within a reasonable time frame, as determined by Sponsor in its absolute and sole discretion, may result in disqualification of the Selected Entrant,

I responded within 5 minutes of receiving the notification, which was, rather unfortunately, about 3 weeks after it was sent. Now, I am waiting on the edge of my seat to find out if 3 weeks is "reasonable" according to Panasonic's absolute and sole discretion.