Happy Holiday's Random Giveaway Contest - 2014 Edition

We have arrived in December! This year has flown by quicker than any I've experienced to date. I'm honestly not sure where all of the time went, but here we are, right in the thick of the holiday season. With that, I am very excited to get started with the random giveaway contest this year, so I thought that now would be a good time to lay out the ground rules for any and all who would like to participate.

*Image found here

First and foremost, this is not meant to be anything stressful or difficult. I want to be able to have the opportunity to share a little something this time of year, and hopefully everyone will have a good time just participating.

Additionally, I know there are many different people who read here that also celebrate a variety of holidays this time of year. Please know that I do my best to keep things as general as I can, but I will apologize in advance if an occasionally-Christmas-specific item pops up. If it does, please feel free to insert your own preferred holiday instead, as I in no way mean to offend or upset anyone.

In the past, I have randomly posted a question or asked for an opinion on a random day and provided a time cut-off for entries. It may be something simple or it could be slightly more complicated. As an example, perhaps I would ask for your favorite holiday song or it may have nothing to do with the holiday season and I'd ask for your favorite bike tale. Really, I've left the possibilities quite open (because sometimes it's nice to have a simple task, and other times it's fun to dig in a little more), so who knows what thought may cross my mind.

As you may notice (if you played the last round a few years ago), the overriding rules have remained pretty much the same. In case you missed the last iteration or need a refresher, here they are again for your review.

These are the things you should know for each giveaway (though exact rules may vary from giveaway to giveaway, these will remain the same, unless otherwise noted in the specific contest):

1) Entrants must have a mailing address within the U.S. to win, but anyone is welcome to share and participate in the individual contests just for fun. Also, if you are outside of the U.S. and are willing to pay the shipping costs of the item, I am happy to send it off to you (or I will pay the costs of shipping in the U.S. and you would pay the difference). If this should apply to you during the game, we'll have an email chat and you can let me know what you've decided. Otherwise, another name will be randomly selected to win the giveaway item.

2) Anyone may enter. As with prior contests though, entry is limited to humans, and my family members are ineligible, though friends... and enemies... are welcome to play along. As stated in the past, I truly hope I don't have enemies, and if I do, please don't identify yourself. I prefer to live in my fantasy world in which we all get along. You may re-gift the item (I'll honestly never know the difference), or if you want me to send the item to a friend instead of you, that's acceptable as well (see rule #1 above if this is applicable).

3) Having the ability to post anonymously on the blog is great - but, for a contest or giveaway, not so much. Because of this, if you are someone who generally posts anonymously, please do include your name (or a nickname, if you prefer to not tell others your real name) with your answer/entry so that I can add you to the entries. If you don't provide a name in some fashion, I won't be able to put your name in the "hat pull" so to speak.

4) Participants may only enter each contest once, but may enter any and all contests.

5) Any taxes, fees, and so on for reporting purposes and other reasons are the responsibility of the winner (Check with your professionals, which is certainly not me. You don't even want to know about the tax bill we received recently because of my mistake three years ago. Needless to say, I am not a tax professional, and probably shouldn't even be doing our own taxes - but I digress).

6) Shipping of each prize will be paid by Endless Velo Love (except as indicated in rule #1, if applicable to you).

7) Please read each contest requirements carefully, as they will likely vary.

8) All winners will be chosen by a random name generator selection process online... which also means that it is possible to win more than once. However, I am placing a limit of two wins for any single person throughout the contest (we have to keep this somewhat fair and spread the love around...you know, to all three of my readers). I don't think anyone was a winner more than once with the last round, but it is possible. 

9) If a prize isn't claimed in a reasonable amount of time, or in the time frame given after the winner is announced, and/or if I am unable to reach the winner, I will move on to the #2 participant or possibly do a new giveaway (completely at my discretion). 

10) Though I'm not a very good rule follower myself, participants must abide by all rules for each contest, or the entry will not be included in the selection process.

For anyone who may be wondering about the random selection process, I don't want any means of interfering with the selection, so I use an online random generation process by putting all names into a list like this:

A sample list of entries for any given giveaway
*Generated at random.org

Then, I hit the "randomize" button toward the bottom of the page and it provides me a ranking for each entry like this:

This is a sample of what might turn out given the list above. In this case, Bernie would be the winner of the giveaway.

It makes things really easy for me so that I don't have to pick favorites from a bunch. Whomever is listed as #1 gets that specific gift. If s/he doesn't respond by the time cutoff, then I move down the list to the #2 person (or do a new giveaway) and so on. If the prize isn't claimed, it goes back into the prize pool and someone else can win it at a later time.

Time is of the essence, both with entering the giveaways and with responding if you are a winner, so please do check in often. Generally speaking, only a few folks have entered each contest in the past, so there are decent odds that you will win something.  I do my best to provide a reasonable amount of time for entries and responses for those who've won; however, having said that, I may allow shorter or longer periods of time for entry, depending on the giveaway, what I have going on in life, and so on... so, as stated early on, please do read each giveaway carefully to know how long you have to enter and check back soon after the end point to see if you've won.

There haven't been an exact number of giveaways set quite yet, so it could end up being just a few or it may turn into more. There may be more than one giveaway in a day, or they may end up being several days apart. Regardless of when they show up here, I hope that you'll participate in the giveaways.

So, what's going to be given away exactly? That's still a bit up in the air, but in the past giveaway items such as a year subscription to a bicycling magazine of your choice, bicycle decor, small personal items, and other such sundries were up for grabs. Generally speaking, all of the giveaways will more than likely have something to do with riding a bike.

I'm excited to get going, so the first giveaway could go up at any time. If you have questions, please feel free to ask away. Otherwise, I'll look forward to hearing from you all soon in the form of your entry. Happy Holidays!!