It all began with one casual inquiry of one user regarding one of his goodies that he won a long time back but did not receive. And then a few more similar emails. And then a discussion on another forum. While looking for the missing ones, we dug into our records and found that several goodies have not reached our winners. Also, there are instances where we have not even shipped the winnings. This was serious, almost a crisis, and needed to be addressed soonest. And, before we do that, let us apologise to everyone who has not received the goodie that s/he has won, even if it is just one in number.
We are sorry. We really are.
We tried to identify various reasons of what has caused this, and broadly arrived at a conclusion that our present process is in some mess and needs cleaning. Some of the reasons that we identified for the non delivery of the goodies are:
- Many a times, our emails for verifying address do not reach the inbox of our winners but go to the spam folder. So the winners do not know that we have contacted them for seeking their address details.
- Sometimes the addresses that we send emails to, are invalid. We cannot contact our winners.
- Sometimes the emails that are sent by the winners confirming their details do not reach us. Either they go to spam or are lost somewhere.
- Sometimes, we realise very late that our inventory is exhausted and hence we hold on to sending emails until we procure more goodies. This is a lengthy process and we end up losing track of these “to be” sent winners.
- Many a times, even after dispatching the goodies, the recipient does not get the goodies. Either the goody gets stuck at the customs (in case of an international shipment) or simply our courier service is doing a shoddy job. Only, sometimes the goody comes back to us and many a times it is lost midway.
- We believe that your missing goodie may be because of one of the these reasons. However, if you think, it is not, please let us know.
Identifying the above, we realised that we were doing some things wrong and some things inefficiently. And so, we are going to bring in some changes, and we believe that should solve most of the current crisis. Please read them carefully.
- We have decided that we will ship all the winnings only once every month.
- Yes, you read that right. Whether it be the Long Challenge, the Cook-Off or the LunchTime or even the Top Contributors of the month, we will dispatch the goodies all together. This will help us streamline our process. Since we are a small team, dispatching it more frequently puts us through a lot of burden and we end up making more mistakes. This may cause a bit of a delay in you getting your winnings but this will ensure that you get it.
- After every contest we will send an email to the winners verifying the address that we have of them.
- We will try and remove the words like “won” and “congratulations” from the email so that it does not go into your spam.
- You will need to update your email and address in your CodeChef profile with the latest email and address that you want us to contact to and send your goodies to. This will make it easier for us to manage your contact data.
- If you have not received an email within 4 days of the end of the contest, you can contact us at [email protected] with your contact details and your username mentioning your winning.
- The winners will have to respond to the congratulatory mail within 7 days of receiving the email.
- If you fail to confirm your contact details or the emails get lost in between (or if any communication has not happened between us on this, within that time period), we request you to contact us on other communication channels like our phone, Facebook or Twitter account, whichever is convenient to you. It has to be done within a week’s time!
- If you fail to do so, or we do not have your contact details by this time for the missed email, your goody will be kept on hold and will be shipped in the next month, provided that we get your shipping details.
- We will ship the goodies on the 10th of every month.
- We will try changing our Courier service for those countries where the shipments get lost in transit.
- The main work starts from here for us and we will need your help. We need to track each and every goodie that we send and we want to help you also track your winning.
- Once we ship your goody, we get a tracking id from our courier service. We will send you an acknowledgement email of your winning along with the details having this tracking id.
- Once you have received the goodie, we need you to acknowledge the the receipt by replying on the same email. This is an extremely crucial step for us to close each case of shipment. If we do not get a confirmation from you after 10 days of sending the goodie, we will try and contact you on email, phone, Facebook wherever we can. If we are unable to reach you for any reason, we will have to consider that the goody has reached you and close the case.
- You can still reach out to us in case you have not received it and we will be happy to send you another one.
- The above process will come into effect starting now, that is September. Which means that the next shipment will happen on the 10th of October.
- We will fix our inventory management issue as well.
Now, let’s talk about all the winnings that have been received by the winners in the past. It includes everyone who has not received any goodie from CodeChef. So, we want you to pay attention.
- For winners outside India, due to certain custom rules your goodie might be hanging with concerned department. So, we want you to take a dive into your inbox/spam to search for our congratulatory mail for which you have not received the goodie. Once you have the details, contact us at: [email protected] and we shall get back to you with the status of your goodie, so that you may collect it from the customs department of your country. If your goodie has not been shipped, we will get it shipped to you, and if it’s stuck somewhere we will figure out the way how you can get it.
- For winners from India, if you have not received your winnings, you just need to get in touch with us. If we have your tracking id, we track your goodie.
- In both the cases, if your goodies have not been shipped, we will ship them to you in the coming cycle, for sure.
It will take a bit of effort from all of us. So, we request you to extend your cooperation in helping you find your missing goodie, as we want you to have it at the earliest and brag about it. We really do.
It has been over five years since CodeChef’s inception. We have hosted plethora of contests, have seen numerous names appearing on the rank tables from all over the globe. We have cherished every single contest and every participant that came along with the same joy and fervour. We took pride in having their names on our rank tables, and many times bragged about it as well. And we do our little bit to acknowledge and encourage the performance by ensuring that their winnings reach them safely & timely. Knowing that the winners will be as happy to receive them as much as we are when sending them. And we do believe in that.
So, whoever you are, wherever you are, if you have ever won a goodie on CodeChef and not received it, we will get it delivered to you. Pretty soon.
If you have any queries or questions, feel free to write to us at: [email protected]
You can also give us a call at: (022) – 30797709, or
Contact us on:
Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/CodeChef
Tweet to us at: @CodeChef
Email: [email protected]
Regards,
Rudreshwar
