Updated: Feb 11, 2010
You know about our Swag Auction, right? Every point that you earn from contributing to The Kartel, whether making a comment, creating up a forum post, or writing a blog, you can earn $Karma Points. These points can be used to earn some exclusive items here in our Swag Auction. Here's a FAQ to help you get started.
Where is the Swag Auction?
You can get to the Swag Auction by click here.
How do I earn $Karma Points to use in the Swag Auction?
You earn points mostly from blogging, commenting, or forum posting. You can read all about earning $Karma Points here. There are some rules, so make sure you follow them, or your swag winnings could be invalidated.
What types of auctions do you have?
We offer three different ways you can earn some swag:
- Purchase – We’ll offer you the chance to exchange points for swag. We simply list how many $Karma Points we’d exchange the swag for, you offer it up, and you win. It's that simple.
- Raffle – In a raffle, you buy a ticket for the chance to win the prize. Generally speaking, it cost much fewer points to enter into a raffle, but you there’s no guarantee that you will win. A raffle will often allow you to enter multiple times however, so you can increase your chances to win. Once the deadline is up, we’ll then randomly pick a winner from all entries.
- Auction – In an auction, you place how many points you want to bid on the item. The latest highest bid is listed on the site, so you need to make sure your bid is higher than that. When the deadline is up, the highest bidder wins. That’s easy. Please note that the way the Auction format works is based on set incremental points that we determine. So if you are outbid, your next bid goes up by a set amount. Please note that any bids committed to an auction are locked in until the item is won. Only then are the bids freed up.
Can I win multiple times?
If you do win an item, we do not prevent you from bidding again and winning something else. If you earned the points, then we’d prefer that you can spend it when you want. However, for highly active bidders, you’ll want to read the next item, because we do try to limit how you can bid on everything at once. For purchase items, we may stipulate that you can only buy one of a certain item.
Can I bid on multiple items at once?
If you bid on an item, and then are outbid, you can bid again at a higher amount of points. However, those bids will not be freed up til the auction is over. We do this to encourage people to go after prizes they really want, as opposed to bidding on everything. It’s a new system we are trying out, so we’ll see if this works out better. So make sure that if you really want to win to items, that you have enough points to try and win all of them, or you are potentially limiting your chances for both.
When does an auction ends? I only see the end date, but not the exact time.
Unlike eBay, which has a clear countdown clock when an auction is over, we only show you the date the auction is over. We do this to deter ninja bidding, where someone comes in at the last second and outbids you. Trust me, ninja’s suck. This method encourages people to make the best bid possible early on.
I won something! What happens next?
Once you bid on something, and won it, we then verify if you qualify to win (ie. we make sure we can ship it to you, we confirm that you did not gain points by posting up useless posts.) It could take up to a week to verify. Once that is all done, you will be contacted by The Godfather/Admin (that's me), and I will verify your contact details. Please do not give away your contact details to anyone else. We WILL NOT ask for your social security number, credit card number, or bank info. Items that need to be shipped can take additional time as well.
Who can enter to win? What if I live outside the US?
Right now, most we have can be shipped throughout North America. A certain number of items marked with an -INT in the title, and in the description, indicate that particular item can be earned by most people around the world. There may be stipulations so please read the fine print. Generally speaking, most items available for international people are digital download products or merchandise (ie. T-shirts, bags). This is due to several reasons. First, shipping costs are high for big and heavy items, as much as $75 to some places. Second, certain items like console systems, and games, have regional compatibility issues. We simply don't have the resources to verify which games/systems work where.
Who pays for shipping?
At this point, we will try and cover shipping on all items. If there is a big ticket item that may be tricky to ship we’ll indicate that there may be shipping cost, and clearly mark how much it is. We’ll pay for shipping as long as we can. We prefer to do it this way.
When we ship items out?
Please allow up to 4-6 weeks for delivery. We typically ship items out on a weekly basis, and it could take the US Post Office up to 3 weeks for delivery. However, because we are a small crew, if we are on assignment, ie. covering E3, we won’t be able to get items shipped out right away. So please be patient. If you don’t receive your item within 6 weeks, feel free to ping us so that we can check up on it for you. To reach us, just click on the Send Message link on the left.
What happens if you can't send me something I won?
While we try to do our best to send you the item you won, various unforeseen issues could plague us. So we reserve the right to send you a comparable prize, give back your points, or send cash equivalent.
Please note that if the item you bidded on wasn’t delivered properly or was damaged, we cannot resend you another item. We do insure big ticket items, and for all smaller items we may provide delivery confirmation. We also cannot reimburse your points. We realize that this seems unfair, but so far, given that the team here have collectively sold a couple of hundred items via eBay, we haven’t yet run into an issue with the US post office, despite that some people sometimes perceive them to be unreliable. In addition, if there are any issues with trying to fulfill prizes, we reserve the right to determine what is an appropriate course of action.
How long do I have to claim my prize?
You have 45 days from our initial contact to reply to us so that we can verify you as a winner. After that point, if we do not hear from you all winnings will be nulled. You will not get your points back either.
How do we decide what items to give away?
The Swag Auction was brought to life thanks to a donation of swag from John Master Lee. Don’t worry about him, he’s freeing up 4 closets so that his wife can finally store all her junk, so that makes for a happy marriage. We also proactively work with game publishers to get our hands on cool items as well. Some items are given away at tradeshows, and we hoard as much items as we can, so we can give it out to you guys.
In the long run, we want to give away items that a true gamer would love, exclusive items that you can’t buy anywhere. Perhaps they are items that are given to the press only. Or perhaps they are limited edition stuff. Every now and then we’ll give away a big ticket item, but for the most part, we find that gamers prefer a lot more chances to win smaller exclusive items, than have one generic big prize.
We’d be happy to hear any suggestions you may have as well. Just ping us.
How often do we update the Swag Auction?
Right now, we’re trying to give away at least 3 items a week. We hope to increase that over time if there’s interest.
How do I find out when you guys update the catalog? The good stuff goes so fast!
Right now, we don't have a set schedule when the Swag Auction is updated, we we generally update about once a week. Sometimes we do update outside that rotation, so if you really want to get your hands on stuff first, you may want to check back daily. We are evaluating putting together an email newsletter that will let members know when we have new items. We'll let you know if that comes through.
What if I want to jack up the points I earn?
Quite simply, if we discover that you are fraudulently earning points, we will take away your account, and your points, and any items that you may have won but haven’t sent out yet. And trust us, we know. We track all activity. Not only that, the community can also flag your activity if they feel that you are creating a bunch of crappy posts just to jack up your points. Sometimes you may get a warning. Sometimes you get your account suspended. Other times you will get banned. We generally will not honor any swag you earned if you engage in unapproved activities that jack up your points.
We basically track two patterns of behavior. If you post significantly more posts than average, and if your posts are significantly shorter than average. You can read more about how we handle rule breakers here.
Please note that we reserve the right to update and change the rules, so you may want to double check this page every now and then so that you understand how things work.
[Edited By Moderator]
