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Michelle N.

Contributor Level

Total Points
98

1 Review by Michelle

  • Online-Sweepstakes.Com

6/13/13

I had been a member, both premium and not, for many years. What was once a promising website and an active, positive sweeping forum has declined, suffered and become a hotbed of negativity, neglect, outdated sweeping tools, and taken over by seemingly power hungry moderators, who impose on the fly made up rules as they go.
The website owner has long since disappeared and left the website to sit in ruin, only keeping it barely functioning enough to collect member's hard earned money and even that is hit and miss. His girlfriend rarely makes an appearance as well, and is who the moderators send you to when there is a problem with your account not being credited, but due to her own lack of attentiveness it can take days to receive any form of response, if at all.
The ability to save sweeps is not guaranteed when you pay for premium, and there is zero tech support when it doesn't. You will not be refunded if when this happens. Any public complaint is immediately locked and/or deleted. Members are left to try and help each other find solutions to fix what they are paying for, the moderators are zero help.
The sweeps submitted are provided by members, with no incentive to submit them. At one time the owner would offer premium memberships for doing so, but has long since stopped, and never credited some members what he promised them. Books and blogs now take up 80% of what sweeps they offer, including "premium sweeps". Worse yet, what is now listed on the website can be easily found for free elsewhere online along with better quality sweeps. That leaves you paying $30 a year for saving and entering sweeps but since that function is not guaranteed, not to mention the website crashes frequently blocking you access to them, it is not worth the fee (See other reviews about this on going frequent problem)
The moderators themselves are worthless. They are of no assistance when a problem arises, they can never answer any serious questions, they do such a poor job of editing and verifying sweeps that a good portion of members miss out on a large percentage of them. If you question a moderators response, you are warned, accused of being overly aggressive and threatened with banning.
Then there is the problem with the forums themselves. Full of increasing negativity and crackpots. Racist jokes are allowed, anti-gay, bigoted comments are allowed, and if reported for being offensive, the person reporting them are told they are aggressively attacking the racist and that they will be banned. Over the last 18 months, it has only become worse, reminding this member of websites like Stormfront. Any member who publicly challenges those members, is immediately banned, as are their spouses. It does not matter if you are a paying member. Any attempt to contact the owner about this development has gone unanswered.
In some instances there is no rhyme nor reason to the moderators rules. They make them up as they go, citing rules that do not exist or editing the ones that do, in order to justify a warning or ban, they will enforce them against some members but not others, and even violate themselves without reproach.
Trolling is encouraged, and even protected by the moderators, as long as it is done by members whose views they agree with. Even when the person trolling publicly admits they are doing so and openly baits other members in hopes to stir up responses and getting the other member banned. If you are not white, Christian, and heterosexual, you are not welcomed and you will be quickly driven away or banned. And again, any attempt to contact the owner or his girlfriend about this on going problem is ignored.
The website has been going downhill for years, but what had kept it strong was its active members. The community used to be very open, welcoming and helpful. If you are not white, Christian, and heterosexual, you are not welcome. While disagreements between members happened, they were allowed to be resolved between them. However due to neglect, outdated tools, out of control moderators, decline in quality of sweeps listed, and the protection by the moderators towards particular members, I would not recommend this website or forum to anyone. The members that used to make this a great website are long gone, either banned, driven off, or gone on to better websites with better management and sweep offerings both for free and for the same cost as OLS. There is nothing left but a bitter, neglected, racist, bigoted shell, offering low quality sweepstakes and a broken website.

Michelle Has Earned 18 Votes

Michelle N.'s review of Online-Sweepstakes.Com earned 18 Very Helpful votes

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