Small business sweepstakes? Possible Amazon Scam? *UPDATE* It’s real!

[Minty_Magic]

Hey everyone!

I’m in a weird situation where I may or may not have fallen for a scam and wanted to see if anyone here had any insight on this.

On July 11th I got a confirmation email saying that I had successfully entered a sweepstakes for supporting small business on Amazon. This part is not alarming. I DID sign up for this sweepstakes, in fact I’m fairly certain I actually signed up directly on Amazon when I was browsing the small business products. Or at least I think air did….I can’t 100% remember but I generally never click on banners for sweepstakes unless I am sure it is tied to the website it is promoting.

Fast forward to today - I got an email in the morning saying I had won a $500 gift card. Even though I know I had in fact entered a sweepstakes I was still wary about clicking anything in the email. I cross referenced the email it was sent from an it DID match the email the registration confirmation came from. The email also contained my full name - I know from past phishing schemes Amazon emails should always use your name and not “valued guest” or anything similar, so this also gave me confidence it was legit. I decided to go ahead and click the link just to see where it brought me. The website was secure (it had the little lock icon by the URL) and when prompted to log into my Amazon account my device recognized it and pre filled all my info. The website didn’t ask for much info to claim my prize - just my email, address, phone number, and name. I figured heck….I give that info out on different websites all the time so I decided to take a gamble and submit it. I figured worst case scenario someone hacks my Amazon account and I just have to shut down the card tied to it.

Well, a couple hours later I got another email saying I had won a $100 gift card. Weird, because my luck is never THAT good, but not immediately alarming. It was possible to win multiple prizes in this sweepstakes. It came from the same email and went to the same website and everything, so I went ahead and entered my info again. This time though it asked me to fill out a W-9 form. They said since my collective prize was over $600 it was needed for taxes. After research it does seem like prizes over $600 need to be claimed for taxes, so this might be for real.

At this point I decided to look up this thing on Google to see if it was a scam. I have not found any conclusive results though. There was a thread on Reddit where someone had a similar situation to mine. Apparently they tried to reach out to Amazon to see if it was legit and the person they spoke to had no idea any such sweepstakes was occurring and thought it might be a scam. Some other commentators said they got a similar response from Amazon.

I’m not sure if this link is allowed - but this came from a savings website that promoted the promotion. You can see in the comments people are wary of their prizes as well and that no one seems to be getting a clear answer. I also find it suspicious that multiple people are apparently winning multiple prizes that always put them over the $600 mark….but then again maybe the people who won prizes below that aren’t worried and thus aren’t saying anything.
https://hip2save.com/deals/amazon-prime-day-sweepstakes/
There is also a Businesswire article discussing it here, which makes me think it COULD be legit
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220714005486/en/Prime-Day-2022-was-the-Biggest-Prime-Day-Event-Ever

At this point since it seems Amazon doesn’t seem to know anything I reached out directly to the company who was (allegedly) running the sweepstakes. Their website also seemed legit, so I sent them an email. I hope they will respond, but I don’t know. I will probably still contact Amazon tomorrow to be safe.

With all that being said, did any of you participate in this? If so, did you win any “prizes”? I’m so torn on if this is a scam or not. If it was the people running it were extremely convincing. I feel like I’m pretty good at spotting fishy emails but everything about this seemed normal to me until the tax form. Thank you for any opinions or ideas you can provide!

[Pokeyonekenobie]

Can you check the raw email message and see where the email actually came from?

Here's how to check from various email providers:

https://support.cordial.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002678852-How-do-I-view-and-forward-the-original-message-HTML-in-an-email-Inbox-#:~:text=Open%20the%20message%2C%20click%20the%20More%20menu%2C%20which%20is%20represented,and%20choose%20View%20Raw%20Message.

Then you can scroll down and there is a "From" listing that will tell you where the actual email came from.  I've had spam emails say they came from a bank but ended up actually being from something stupid like "[email protected]" so you know it isn't from the bank they claim to be from. 

There were comments on the Hip2Save site that said they got their prizes and over 114k people got prizes.  So I guess if you feel like the email is legit but you don't want to fill out the W-9, maybe only claim the 500 (since it seems you already did) and just let the 100 go away.

ETA:
https://www.primedaysweepstakes.com/faqs
There is a question about taxes and needing to fill out a W-9 for anything 600 and up.

You can win multiple times.

Can you find the Winner's Portal through your account?  Apparently that's a thing according to this:
Provisional winners will be contacted by the Administrator via the email address linked to their Amazon.com account provided on entry within 5 working days of winner selection and will be asked to visit the Winner Claim Portal to claim their Prize, to provide their details (name, country of residence and email address). Provisional winners of Star Prizes and Tier 1 and 2 Prizes will be asked to provide evidence of identity and eligibility in order to claim their Prize. Reasonable efforts will be made to contact the winners.

In the event that a selected entrant does not respond to the initial contact within 14 days, Amazon reserves the right to disqualify that selected entrant. If a selected entrant is disqualified, Amazon reserves the right to award the prize to a reserve winner selected in the same manner, time permitting or enter the prize into the Wrap Up Sweepstakes.

[Minty_Magic]

Thank you Pokeyonekenobie!!

Finding the original sender of the email is exactly the type of info I was looking for!

The winners portal and all the sweepstakes info was hosted separate from my actual Amazon account somehow, so that was part of what made me somewhat nervous. Like I could always access it from my email or the sweepstakes website, but there was nothing related to it in my Amazon account proper.

It turns out I should have just waited to see what happened so the $500 claim. It was actually deposited into my Amazon account, so the whole thing was legit! I went ahead and filled out the W-9 to claim my extra $100 too. I’m so happy it’s real, I usually never wi anything like this!

[Carrehz]

Wow, congrats!

[stjarne]

dang, finally something with a happy ending. i hear too many scam or "too good to be true" stories lol congratulations!!

[lovesbabysquirmy]

exciting!  congrats