Ningin gives out nearly one prize a day. I think we’ll be on pace for more than that this year. The number of prizes we ship out is so much, we hired a shipping company to take care of the fulfillment. If you won a prize, you really want to make it easy on everyone by making sure you follow our simple set of instructions. Still, for some reason, about 20% of you decide not to and then wonder where your prize is. Here’s a list of common mistakes you need to avoid if you want your prize in a timely manner:

1. Claim your prize within 5 days. We say this in every one of our winners’ post. Unless you don’t want your prize of course in which case, just do nothing and we’ll give it to someone else.

2. Include all the information we ask for: username, real name, address, photo, phone number.

3. Don’t send us blank emails. I’m not sure what you expect us to do with those.

4. Remember to attach your photo ID. I think this is probably the most common mistake.

5. Don’t shrink the photo ID so small that we can’t read what is actually on it. Also a common mistake.

6. Don’t blur out information on the ID such as name, address, photo so that we can’t read it at all. You do realize that defeats the purpose of claiming your prize when you do that?

7. Sending the photo in some weird non-image format. We’re not going to open .exe files or anything that can unleash a virus.

8. A report card isn’t a government ID. A government ID is well, something issued by your country’s state or federal government be it a passport, driver’s license, non-driver’s ID, etc. Understand that anything that isn’t a government ID is subject to our discretion as to whether or not we accept it.

9. The correct email to send all this to is prizes ‘@’ mixrmedia.com. Any other variation won’t work. We have an automatic script that handles your info. Since a non-human is reading this, don’t expect a reply from that email either. That’s what the Support system is for.

10. Sending the ID of another person that already claimed a prize with a different username. That tells us that you’ve made multiple accounts here in order to increase your chances of winning a prize. It doesn’t matter if the other person is your sister or whatever. There’s no easy way for us to verify that so you just forfeited your prize.

If you wrote in recently wondering where your prize is then you might want to refer to this list while checking the email you sent us. Whenever you commit one of the above mistakes, sometimes we do send you a notice via pm/email telling you what you did wrong. However, that’s a function of how busy we are. We already have plain and simple instructions for claiming your prize and our Support system for you to ask questions. Judging by your questions, emails, and rants, it seems obvious that some of you didn’t bother to read the instructions. We can’t help you if you’re not even willing to read the instructions.