SOMETHING PHISHY

This doesn’t rise to the level of travel fraud, but Gourmet Magazine’s full-page come-hither ad, on page 179 of its April issue, for a Montréal getaway, is annoying bordering on duplicitous. The ad beckons readers to enter what it calls “The Great Gourmet Montréal Getaway Sweepstakes," then describes the prize (roundtrip airfare, deluxe hotel accommodations, dinner for two, admission to the world’s most spectacular botanical gardens, whatever that is), then invites reader to go to the magazine’s website for more details.

"No Purchase Necessary" appears at the bottom of the page in fine but readable print.

Well, at the website, it’s all about subscribing and getting the chance to win the sweepstakes that way. Give me a break! The print ad should have made its intentions clear. Now, there is an option to enter the sweeps without subscribing to the magazine, (which, ironically, I was going to do), but it’s in tiny green type and it is not self-evident and then after I finally get there, I had serious trouble entering this no subscription way.

If you are so inclined, check it out.

Annoyingly, when you leave the site, there’s an “exit popup” for a Caribbean sweeps if you subscribe to Bon Appétit. Ah! It's inescapable.

If I think of it, I will try to enter both between now and the time they close.

Am I not shameless?

Separately, I’ve been seeing sweeps mirages lately.

When I was going to a listserv on Yahoo! last week, I swear I saw a sweeps to the World Cup. This was very exciting to me, because it was before I chanced upon the T-Mobile sweeps I’m entering daily. Strangely, I've never seen this sweeps again. I know I spend far too much time online, but I can't recall ever seeing a mirage of this sort before. Thank goodness the T-Mobile sweeps is satisfying my World Cup sweepslust.

Then, over the weekend, I went to the NBA website and saw a sweeps to the finals (like the World Cup sweeps, this is more for the boy than for me). It was a standard online entry that I planned to submit when I got back to the ranch. Only once back I found that it had morphed into an ad for a sweeps that requires dropping by a T-Mobile store to enter. Sure, if I’m in the neighborhood.