Win one of 20 trips on Concorde to London
 

npei

Posts: 36
From: CA, USA
Registered: Apr 2001 posted 03-06-2002 12:38 PM
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Yahoo Travel Sweepstakes -

Win one of 20 trips for 2 to London on British Airways. Good luck !

http://sweepstakes.yahoo.com/british.../ud/enter.html

mauld

Posts: 1570
From: New York, NY
Registered: May 99 posted 03-06-2002 01:02 PM
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Thanks Now, I just have to keep my fingers crossed that I'm one of the lucky 20!!

geo1004

Posts: 3144
From: Alexandria, Virginia, USA, - US Gold, DL Never
Registered: Jan 99 posted 03-06-2002 01:03 PM
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Don't waste your time!

I'm certain I've already won!

Thanks for the link.
And saving 125k miles will be great.

I've entered each of the last three days, but only for today's entry, did I receive a confirmation email. Your experiences???

Same here...

Thanks for the heads up.

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Gaucho100K

Do you have to enter from different emails or can you enter yourself daily with the same registered address?

You're allowed to enter once a day for the duration of the contest. The contest day starts and ends at midnight PST.

I mentioned this in the BA forum, but I'll summarize here: winning this might or might not be such a great deal.

You get 2 coach tickets from the BA gateway nearest to your home to New York, 2 nights stay in an (unnamed) NYC hotel, 2 seats on Concorde from JFK-LHR, 3 nights in a nice London hotel (I forget which, but it sounds nice), and business class tickets on a non-Concorde BA flight back to the gateway. Yahoo/BA puts the value from $13,800-$18,000 (depending on the gateway you use), and it would be difficult to dispute that value. So, if you're in a 31% tax bracket, you'll pay roughly $4300-5500 for the trip. And, you won't get any FF miles.

Now, if someone really wanted to take a nice long weekend in New York and London, traveling on Concorde in one direction and business the other, $5000 (give or take a few hundred) would be an extremely good price. However, some people, if they were to spend $5k on a vacation, might choose to spend the money differently.

Thanks for the link.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by wideman:
[B]I mentioned this in the BA forum, but I'll summarize here: winning this might or might not be such a great deal.


Wideman- true, if you want to look at it like that. Surely, I can think of a lot of vacations for $5,000 that would be longer and more exotic than 3 nights in London. However, I think many (most?) Flyertalkers would love a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to fly the Concorde, which one could never do for $2,500/per person (not to mention 3 nights in a luxury hotel and the NY package).
However, you're probably right in pointing this out, as lots of people (although not the educated Flyertalk community) never think about the tax consequences of winning something.

I've entered this one every day, and gotten an email confirmation each day as well.

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I'm a bit of a contest nut...not a CPA...but having won travel and other prizes in the past, I do know the following:

* sponsors will generally issue a 1099 for any prize valued at over $600.

* if the imputed value of the prize is greater than you believe a reasonable person could obtain in the open market, then you are free to declare a lesser value in your income tax filing.

The key, according to my CPA, is to print some backup info supporting your claim. I'm still waiting for a 1099 from Warner Bros. for a two-week China tour I won last year, but I've saved price lists and airfare quotes for the same itinerary that my prize included.

It can be more problematic when the prize is a unique item or service (like the Webblyer 12 days prize that includes some NYC Freddy-related festivities) where a "market value" is harder to support. If you win, say, Superman's original cape, and the sponsor gives you a 1099 indicating some outlandish value, then you can sell it through eBay or Christie's, and the sales price realized through a legitimate arms-length transaction would seem like a reasonable proof. But the (happy...if you are the winner!) problem in supporting a lesser than stated value for this Concorde prize...as a result of it not accruing FF miles or other "less than retail" issues, may speak to an area you don't wanna go if you're audited. I mean, who wants to start attributing a value on FF miles during an audit?

I guess it's only a problem *if* you get audited...along with any other stuff that an audit may drag up.