Sweepstakes winnings are infamous for taking longer to arrive than the notice you receive or the drawing date that the sweepstakes indicates. Two to four weeks is typical for larger wins and grand prize wins, but the smaller prizes are notorious for taking much longer—anywhere from four to six months is possible, depending on how large the promotion was and how many prizes are being distributed.

It’s very important to keep copies of your win notices, so if an unreasonable amount of time has passed, you can back up any inquiries you might want to make. This is true for both mail-in and online sweepstakes.

Mail-in sweepstakes: Sponsors will send you a win notice and/or an affidavit for you to sign and return to them to claim larger prize wins. Sometimes they do this for smaller prizes, too. When you sign and return your affidavit, we always suggest calling the administrators to let them know you have signed the affidavit, put it into the mail, and that it’s on its way. At this point, you should keep a record of when you sent the affidavit and when you called them. If you don’t receive your prize within two to four weeks, you can call them and let them know.

Online sweepstakes: Win notices will typically arrive via e-mail, and you should save a copy of that message in either hardcopy format or as a file on a disk. (A computer crash is unfortunately an ideal way of losing your e-mail win notices.) Again, two to four weeks is reasonable before contacting the administrators about not receiving your winnings. If you happen to see your name on the win list posted on a Web site but you have not received any notification , you should send an e-mail message to the contact person (or Webmaster if none is posted) immediately and politely ask them about when you might receive your winnings.