Posted on June 28, 2009 - by J Lane

WestJet Twitter free flight contest

I’m a big fan of Westjet, but their terms and conditions on their Twitter follower contest were at worst recycled from a past promotion, and at best written by a lawyer who has no idea what Twitter is.

WestJet is running a contest where if you follow them on Twitter, you’ll be entered to win a free round-trip flight to anywhere in Canada, from anywhere in Canada.

I’m a bit of a geek, and I’ve recently taken an interest in actually reading through the terms and conditions for various things.  I’m a geek, but I’m not a lawyer so legally everything I write here might actually be wrong.  There were, however, some things that I thought were interesting in the terms and conditions of this promotion:

Last line under #3 reads:

If you’re already following @WestJet then you’re already automatically entered into each of the daily draws. Maximum one entry per person/follower.

Okay, cool so they’re not going to penalize their current followers.  Good on them.  The only part I thought was weird was is you combine this with #7:

By entering this contest, twitter followers (“Entrants”) agree to be bound by these Contest rules (the “Rules”), which are subject to change without notice, and all decisions of the Sponsor which are final. By entering, Entrants grant the Sponsor and their affiliates the right, but not the obligation, to use their photograph, filmed or recorded image, name and city of residence in all publicity campaigns related to the Contest without further notice or compensation.

What if I happened to follow @Westjet because of my undying love for them, and was completely unaware of the contest they’re running.  I’d be entered into the contest automatically and in turn automatically agree to be bound by contest rules?  This seems a bit slimy to me — essentially automatically being entered into a contract by using a 3rd party service?  I’m going to go put on my Facebook profile that by friending me, you automatically agree to pay me $100.

Okay, so I’m totally playing devil’s advocate on this.  Personally, I’m a huge fan of Westjet — I think that if all airlines operated like them, the world would be a better place.  That said, this seems like a case of them re-using terms and conditions of a past contest with only slightly changing the wording, and not thinking through what they’re saying.  Why do people have to agree to contest rules upon entry, and not upon winning?

Here’s another great clause:

All entries become the property of the Sponsor and will not be returned. Sponsor assumes no responsibility for lost, stolen, or damaged entries. Entries are subject to verification and will be declared invalid if they are illegible, mechanically reproduced, mutilated, forged, falsified, altered or tampered with in any way.  The Sponsor is not responsible for typographical or other errors in the offer or administration of this Contest, including but not limited to, errors in advertising, the Rules, the selection and announcement of winner, or the distribution of any Prize.

Isn’t an entry my following them on Twitter?  That becomes their property?  How?  Do I need to get their permission to unfollow them?  Geez, I hope my twitter account isn’t mechanically reproduced, mutilated or rendered illegible.  In the digital world, that seems a bit contradictory though — it should be mechanically reproduced (backed up) so that it doesn’t become mutilated (suffer a hardware or software failure).  Good to know that I can’t hold Westjet accountable if my Twitter account gets hacked or hijacked though.

Oh, and lastly, under #9:

No correspondence will be entered into except with the selected Entrants.

I guess that Westjet won’t be tweeting much.  Because, of course, that would be communicating with all of the entrants (their followers).  At least they’ll have a nice, high follower count.  Westjet, do you need a little intro to what Twitter does?