Yes people win. I enter sweepstakes as often as I can both travel and non travel.

Last year was one of my best years and is cool to be a winner, especially when they are family type prizes. My winnings last year included:

100,000 AA miles from local supermarket, which lead me to FT

Daughter (Age 5) won trip for four to Universal in Orlando at the Portifino Hotel. We extended on our own and also stayed at the Hard Rock. (We're a family of four).

Son (Age 8) won trip for four to Santa Monica, CA for the Kids Choice Awards sponsored by Nick TV, where he was one of the kids to help in presenting awards to Destiny Child and Amanda Bynes and all his friends saw him on TV. Stayed at the Loew's on the beach in Santa Monica where I got upgraded for presenting my Loew's card and got miles for all four of us on AA. Sponsored by Burger King. And we passed on getting bumped on the LA flight to Boston. Geez hey I am learning and still learning.

And the wife won a KIA Sportage vehicle from a local supermarket.

Just last month got a call that I won a Nomar
Garciaparra autograpehed bat and ended up meeting him with my son at Dunkin Donuts for pictures and autographs session.

1099s I would only contest the most obvious overstated valuations. I did that for a Pro Bowl trip to Hawaii several years ago, as it was so high as to be a completely unreassoable valuation.

AA sponsored a contest about two years ago and the prize was to go anywhere where they went directly. It was the ultimate father and son trip (Son Age 7 at the time) as we went to Tokyo, Japan. Love to get back there.

Anyway they keys to winning seem to be try and find contests that are local in nature like in supermarkets, etc. In shopping malls, etc any form that asks for your income drop, tear up, walk away ASAP as they will follow up with a telephone call for you to buy/see something.

Internets seems to have a lot of people enter. Again the key is to find ones that may be sponsored by local/regional sponsors such as local TV and radio stations. Most of the time they will ask you whether you want to receive further mailings and you can say no. If they do sent you something you can always click on the unsubscirbe button.

Happy contesting!

And I didn;t win those Delta trips to NYC. But I did try and that is the name of the game to try.

Michael