Borders Australia put up two copies of each of 100 book titles by the "World's Best Fabricators" to give away, a short while back, in what it called the "Win a Bookcase to Brag About" competition.
I was between disappointed and offended that neither Douglas Adams nor the Holy Bible was featured in the prizes, and took little interest at the start. Mrs Mean, on the other hand, said she wanted to win a book, and wasn't sure "how the game worked", but it frustrated her to see the prize pool shrink even as she tried her hand at it. Now, there are occasional advantages to being without gainful employment — even a trivial endeavour can appear to be a more productive use of one's time, than doing nothing with it by default, and so I set out to discover and explain the "how".
We ended up with 137 out of the 200 books, including of course the "major prize" of the 100-title lot, which was held back as expected until the final hours of the competition.
Reading the terms and conditions of the competition, I got the distinct impression that the winners would be announced in The Australian on 25 August, 2007. Now, if you knew you have won the lion's share of prizes in a competition, wouldn't you gladly buy a copy of that issue of the newspaper, just to see your magnificence proclaimed? I wouldn't, even though I was admittedly itching to see in print the dozen or so names of people-with-too-much-time-on-their-hands who scooped up all the books up for grabs.
To my surprise, I couldn't find the promised announcement in the local library's copy of the paper, and to this day I don't think a copy paid for by me would've given more satisfaction. How cheated would you feel if you'd actually bought the paper?
Was the man in charge being forgetful, tardy, cheap, or simply embarrassed? The mind boggles.
The winners would also supposedly be notified by e-mail, presumably on that date, and prior to the prizes being ready for collection. That didn't happen, either, and so it was that for another 30 days we were consumed by the existential angst of not knowing…
And when the first (and only) e-mail from Borders on this matter arrived in our Inboxes, it was after business hours on the date the second e-mail was due to arrive. Still, I was grateful that it confirmed I had won "(a) prize" and that it was ready for collection, although the message didn't exactly state what it was, and the "To:" address field was blank.
As it turned out, Borders Australia head office had sent the books, apparently unsorted, to our local store in fragile fold-up archive boxes (of "Standard Strength", I noted the writing said on the sides) on which some handles were broken, edges were ripped, and barely held together by tape, and carrying them safely as-is out of the store and several blocks down the street was quite out of the question.
Now, I didn't really expect them to throw in a bookcase for the major prize in the "Win a Bookcase" competition, but I wonder what it was that the winners were supposed to brag about — the tattered boxes, or the $7.95 edition of Emma in the stead of the $14.95 edition displayed during game play on their Web site (although the Terms and Conditions only stated, "Where a prize, or part of a prize, is unavailable, the Promoter retains the right to substitute the prize (or part) with a prize (or part) of equal or greater value.")
The Service Managers at my local Border store were quite helpful (Thank you, Amy and Eric!), and held our prizes for us while we collected the books in smaller lots.
Let me tell you, moving 60 kgs of paper without a car is not fun.
Giving away part of the spoils seems the only logical thing to do, and we've decided the following 50 titles are up for grabs to friends who are keen to read them. (Each title below is hyperlinked to Amazon.com or the publisher's web site to give more details about the book, and when somebody puts dibs on a title, it gets crossed off the list.) Don't expect me to provide delivery service, though!
Wednesday, 3 October 2007
Won! Hell. Offer: Lot of Books
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2 comments:
Lovely to see some happy books reach some good homes. Thankee, friends.
Don't worry, other books. All hope is not lost for you yet.
Getting there!
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