Motorola has caused major waves over the last couple of months since the first public outing at Google’s I/O event of their upcoming Android Wear smartwatch, the Moto 360. Since I/O, the 360 has quickly evolved into a must have device and with its impending release scheduled for September 4th Motorola decided yesterday to launch what seemed to be a special and straight forward giveaway. The prize was simple. Twenty Moto 360’s up for grabs. The rules seemed just as simple with users only having to download the relatively useless YO app and send a YO to Motorola. Once the competition was over, Motorola would YO back the chosen few with a link to claim their 360. The completion was open for 24 hours and closed a short while ago.
However, since its closure it seems Motorola have announced too many winners with a number of entrants complaining on social networks they had received a winning message, but after clicking on the attached link were told there were no more 360’s left. This has stirred up a lot of anger among the supposed winners with a number of disappointed messages being left on Motorola’s Google+ and Twitter pages. In fairness to Motorola and according to the contest rules as posted on Facebook Motorola did clearly state they will Yo back a link and the 360’s will be given to the first twenty entrants to successfully complete an entry form. So it is assumed it was always Motorola’s plan to message more winners than they actually had prizes for as the real competition was who could respond to the winning message first. This part of the competition seems to have been lost somewhat in translation. As a result what was expected to be a very simple competition has ended with entrants feeling tricked and left unsatisfied.
Motorola has yet to officially respond to the angry and frustrated comments. However as the rules do indicate users had to fill out the form to actually win the device it seems it was the use of “you have won” messages that is causing the issue. If you were one of the actual winners who received the YO and managed to fill out the form in time then congratulations. For everyone else, we will have to wait until September 4th to find out when exactly we can get our hands on the alluring Moto 360.