Vicki, a Sweetie Reader, had the question about the 24-hour instant win game rule.
There have been several times where I go to enter a sweepstakes and it says “sorry, you’ve already entered today” when I haven’t & know I haven’t because I work from my lists. I’ve noticed that on some contests they say that a *day* constitutes a period of 24 hours, so I know if I enter it at 8 a.m. one day, then I can’t enter it at 6 a.m. the next morning, I will have to wait until 8 a.m. again. But most contests don’t tell you what a *day* is so I assume the day ends at 11:59 p.m. and that I can enter for the next day after midnight.But today, yet again I tried to enter a contest around 3 p.m. that I entered last night at 10 p.m. and it said I had already entered ‘today’. I got soooo mad when I got up at 3 a.m. one morning to enter instant wins (following your advice for the time of day) and most of them told me I had already entered for that day! Interrupted my sleep for nothing. Am I missing some key wording when I read through the official rules?
Many games don’t require that 24 hour rule so as long as you enter sometime during the day you should be fine. The ones that do require the 24-hour wait period will usually tell you that you have entered already and as you mentioned you will have to wait until 24 hours have passed.
If the instant win game says you entered and you know you haven’t then most likely it is a problem with the game itself and you should contact the people in charge of the game to let them know. There is usually a way to contact them by looking in the official rules near the bottom.
Another thing you can try is to delete the cookie for that site. A cookie is a small file placed on your computer that records information about your visit to that site. If the information in the file is stuck for some reason and isn’t updating when you go back then that could be the problem. Learn how to delete cookies for just a specific site.
I have seen this before and I have found if I leave my internet browser open over night it will cause this problem.
After I got the you have already entered message I closed my browser and then reopened it and I was able to enter the sweeps just fine.
You need to consider which time zone the official clock is in. If you're on the west coast and the clock is on the east, an entry from you at 10 pm may officially be recorded for the next day. Of course, this isn't an issue with 24 hour clocks, but it is for calendar day clocks.