FREE Giveaway - a difficult task

As part of holiday festivities - Takeout Online was giving away some nice prizes.  There were several mp3 players and $25 Gift Card to one of the local restaurants.  The selection of recipients was based on how many orders someone made - the more orders - the better chance of winning one of these prizes.  

So, we picked 4 winners and sent congratulatory e-mails to all of them.  And the results were dismal to say the least.  Even though the prizes are nice and anyone could use them in one way or another - we couldn't believe that giving away FREE prizes would be this difficult.

Here are the results of the initial e-mails... and of course these e-mails came from an organization that these people frequented a number of times, and got e-mails with news in the past and still... the grand prize, a nice Samsung MP3 player with retractable speaker - the winner didn't bother to reply at all to arrange to get it to them.  2 ipods had somewhat better luck, one person replied as requested and made arrangements, the 2nd person didn't for a few days.  Then finally she did reply asking to confirm that it wasn't some typical bogus offer, which I can certainly understand and appreciate - there are plenty of those around.  So, she got her confirmation reply immediately, including the invitation to call the phone number to verify, the phone being the same as listed on Takeout-Online.com.  She then was silent for a few more days (so much for getting it pre-Christmas).  Then I sent an e-mail indicating that if she doesn't reply - we'll have to give it to someone else.  She did reply, indicating she wanted to meet at certain time in town today at Starbucks.  I went there, right on time requested, waited for 45 minutes and nobody showed up.  There was no e-mail or any communication as to why.  The last person - also didn't bother to respond to get their $25 Gift Card.

It's amazing to me why it's so difficult to give stuff away for FREE.. ???  If this was some strange offer, or one with a catch of some sort - I could understand.  But this is completely open offer, with no strings of any kind attached and still people don't bother to receive it.

Oh well, out of thousands of people that ordered from Takeout Online in the past - shouldn't be that difficult to find someone who'll appreciate being appreciated... or maybe not, I guess we'll see in the next few days.