Most giveaway disputes are not about the randomness. They are about whether the list changed, whether bonus entries were counted, or whether the draw happened at all. Those are the parts worth getting right.
1. Close the list before you draw
Export your entries and stop collecting. If someone enters while you are drawing, you now have two lists and no way to say which one you used.
2. Decide what a duplicate means
If your rules said each extra action is an extra entry, duplicates are the point — keep them. If your rules said one entry per person, remove them before the draw, not after you see who won.
3. Draw once
Spinning again because you did not like the result is the one thing that actually makes a draw unfair. Decide the number of winners first, including any backups, and draw them in one session.
4. Keep something that shows what happened
A screenshot of a name proves nothing. What helps is a record of the draw itself: the entrant count, the spin, the winner, when it happened, and something that identifies the list you used.
Spinnza gives every list an Entry List ID — a SHA-256 fingerprint of the exact entries and weights. Post the ID when you announce the draw and anyone holding the same list can check it matches. It changes if the list changes, which is the whole point.
Write the rules down before you open entries
Almost every argument after a draw traces back to something that was never written down. Decide these in advance and put them where entrants can see them:
- Who can enter, and who cannot — staff, family, people outside the countries you can ship to.
- When entries close, with a time zone. “Friday” is not a closing time.
- How many winners there are, and whether you are drawing backups.
- Whether extra actions earn extra entries, and how many each is worth.
- How the winner will be contacted, and how long they have to reply before the prize moves on.
The last one is the one people forget, and it is the one that causes the most trouble. Without a stated deadline you are choosing between waiting forever for somebody who is not coming back and redrawing a prize you already announced.
The three disputes that actually happen
In practice, complaints after a giveaway come in three shapes, and each has a cheap fix you can only apply beforehand.
- “I entered and I am not on the list.” Usually true, and usually because the export ran before their entry landed. Export after the deadline, not on it, and say which export you used.
- “The winner is your friend.” Unanswerable after the fact and trivial to pre-empt: a recording of the draw with the entrant count on screen shows the name came off a list of that size.
- “You redrew until you liked the answer.” The only defence is drawing every winner and backup in one session, which is also the only version that is actually true.
Announcing it
Post the winner, the number of entries, the date and the Entry List ID together. It takes one extra line and it converts “trust me” into something a sceptical person can check against the list you published. If you recorded the draw, post the video in the same place rather than sending it to people who ask — the ones who doubt you are rarely the ones who ask.
A recording is a record, not certification. It does not make your promotion compliant with platform rules or local sweepstakes law — that part is still yours.