Giveaway Terms

# Harvest Giveaway — notes for legal review Not legal advice. These are the points a reviewer will most likely want flagged. There are no blanks left to fill. Section numbers below match the current rules (1–17, sequential). ## Nothing left to fill, and nothing to come back to Every bracketed placeholder is resolved. The document is deliberately closed-ended: once the giveaway is over there is no date to update, no list to publish and no request window to service. Hide the entry page and you are done. Resolved in this pass: notification window (three business days), winner response deadline (five days), affidavit return deadline (seven days), privacy policy URL, last-updated date, and the entry page URL. ## No winner list — the social announcement is the disclosure **A winner list is not required at this prize value.** The obligation people associate with it comes from state registration statutes, and those only bite above a threshold: Florida and New York require a filed winners list only for total prize value over $5,000. At a $499 ARV neither applies, and no federal rule requires one. The old §17 offered one anyway, by self-addressed stamped envelope, available from mid-October and open to requests until March 2027. That is five months of a mailbox someone has to actually check — an obligation with no upside here. So §17 is gone. §9 now carries one sentence instead: Sponsor expects to announce the confirmed winner's first name and last initial on its social accounts after verification, and no separate winner list will be maintained or distributed. That is truthful, it matches what you are actually going to do, and it ends when the post goes up. Sections renumbered 1–17. **One thing to keep live.** Hiding the entry page after the giveaway is fine. Keep the Official Rules page published — it is the contract with every entrant, it costs nothing to leave up, and it is the document you would want to point at months later if anyone questions how the winner was picked. If you would rather unpublish it, save a dated PDF first. ## Mail-in entry has been removed — online only §4 previously offered a mail-in alternative. With a five-day giveaway period its deadlines were postmarked by Sept 21 and received by Sept 25, which gave a mail-in entrant one day where an online entrant had five. "Equal dignity" — the principle that a free alternate method must carry the same real chance as the primary one — is the standard that gap would have been tested against, so the method has been taken out rather than left in as a paper formality. What supports the promotion now is that **online entry itself is free**. No purchase, no payment, no substantial effort, so there is no consideration; without consideration the promotion is a sweepstakes and no alternate method of entry is required. Changes made: - §4 now opens with "No purchase, payment or other consideration of any kind is necessary to enter or to win", states that entry is by internet only, and adds that an entry is not counted until Sponsor receives it (proof of submission is not proof of receipt). - The mail-in paragraph, the mailing address block and the postmark/receipt deadlines are gone. - §5 no longer says "regardless of method of entry" — there is one method. - §13 no longer disclaims responsibility for "postage-due" entries. - Nothing in the rules now asks an entrant to mail anything anywhere. A reviewer should confirm they agree that free online entry alone is sufficient here. It is the standard position for an online-only sweepstakes with no purchase path, but it is the one load-bearing assumption in the current draft. ## Registration and bonding — you are under the thresholds, but not by much Three states require a sweepstakes to be registered before it opens. At a $499.00 ARV none of them are triggered, but the margin on one is a single dollar, so it is worth knowing where the lines are before anyone rounds the prize value up. - **Florida** — registration plus a surety bond for the prize value and a $100 filing fee, required for total prize value **over $5,000**, filed at least 7 days before the promotion starts. Florida is generally considered the most active enforcer. Not triggered at $499. - **New York** — registration plus a surety bond for the prize value, filed 30 days before launch, with a winners list due 90 days after the end. Required **over $5,000**. Not triggered at $499. - **Rhode Island** — registration required at **$500 or more**, but only for sweepstakes offered at **in-state retail establishments**. An online-only promotion run from Utah should fall outside it on both counts. Not triggered at $499 — though note the ARV is one dollar below the threshold. **The practical risk:** if anyone decides the custom finish adds value and restates the ARV as, say, $549, or if a second prize is added, Rhode Island's threshold is crossed and the retail-establishment question stops being academic. Keep the stated ARV and the actual prize aligned, and re-check if the prize changes. ## Points a reviewer will want to look at **Sponsor identity.** Written as "L'Chef, LLC d/b/a NutriMill" — the legal entity with the DBA, which is the form that makes the Sponsor identifiable and the obligations enforceable. The customer-facing page copy still says NutriMill throughout; only the rules name the entity. **The custom-color obligation (§6).** This is the clause most specific to this promotion and the one worth reading closely. The prize is a mill in a color the winner invents, which creates an obligation you may not be able to physically meet. §6 now does four things, in this order: it makes the pick a preference rather than a guarantee and says on-screen color is not a proof; it commits Sponsor to **working with the winner** — reviewing the color against what the finish can produce, discussing the options, and confirming in writing before anything is manufactured; it states plainly that **not every color can be reproduced**, sets the standard at commercially reasonable efforts to get as close as the process allows, and leaves the final call on what is achievable with Sponsor after that discussion; and it gives the winner the option of any standard production trim color instead, at which point the prize is deemed fully awarded. A closing paragraph notes that because the unit is finished to order, delivery follows color confirmation rather than a fixed date. Two things a reviewer should look at here. First, the middle paragraph is a real obligation, not a disclaimer — "will discuss the available options with the winner" is something you now have to actually do, and it should be someone's named job when the winner is confirmed. Second, §8's "as is, with no warranty or guarantee of any kind" is now expressly carved back with "Except for Sponsor's commitments regarding trim color in Section 6", so the general disclaimer cannot be read to cancel the specific promise. Without that carve-out the two clauses argue with each other. **Page copy had to move with it.** The entry page previously read "we'll finish the winner's mill in exactly that shade", which contradicted §6 outright — and the advertisement, not the rules, is what an entrant actually reads and would point at. It now reads "we'll work with the winner to get their mill as close to it as we can", and the fine print and the CMYK note were adjusted to match. Keep them aligned: if marketing copy anywhere — an ad, a TikTok caption, an email — promises an exact color, it reopens the exposure §6 exists to close. **Social media (§7).** Added because the page now invites entrants to follow NutriMill on TikTok and Instagram. The operative sentence is that following, liking, sharing, commenting or tagging is optional, does not increase anyone's chance of winning, and is not a factor in selection. Keep the page and the rules aligned on this: the moment a follow starts sounding like a requirement — in the page copy, in an ad, or in a TikTok caption — the promotion has arguably added consideration and the analysis changes. §17 disclaims affiliation with TikTok Inc./ByteDance and Meta. **SMS consent.** The page collects a mobile number directly rather than routing through Attentive's own sign-up unit, which means the consent language on the form — not Attentive's — is the consent record. It needs review before launch. The current wording covers the standard elements (identified sender, recurring automated marketing messages, consent not a condition of entry or purchase, message and data rates, STOP and HELP) but the specifics of how consent is captured, logged and retained matter as much as the wording. **Free entry method.** There is no separate alternate method any more; free online entry is the whole of it. See the mail-in section above for why, and for the one assumption a reviewer should sign off on. **Eligibility.** Fifty states and D.C., 18+. Territories and Puerto Rico are excluded. Employee and household exclusions are drafted broadly. **Publicity release (§10).** Drafted broadly and perpetually. Some reviewers narrow this; it is a business call rather than a compliance one.