If you couldn't login, it's possible you were on the wrong page. I did that too and thought I might have been blocked.

You can't use your contest login credentials on their homepage. The contest is separate from their hired writer logins, and it's on a subdomain — contest.sitename.com I believe.

Just a quick update — someone from the site did contact me. They removed the target list of bloggers from their site, and they're even planning to update some of their own poor copy after asking for examples (since I criticized that in my post).

It's not a full cancellation of the contest. I still consider it spammy. But at least they aren't actively pursuing specific bloggers anymore. And they were reasonably generous in their response (always good when a company can handle criticism). I'll take what I can get.

Cathy, that's actually funny! Yes, they did block me. Scruples? Color me surprised!

Paula, I think you've figured them out. I'd bet that's exactly the conversation!

I picture an office of shady marketers plotting out the elaborate scam: "First, we'll promise a cash prize but make it impossible to win. Then we'll require them to provide all of their contact info early on so we can generate and re-sell a mailing list for some on-going ancillary revenue. To make it easier on us, we'll make them track down blogs to post on, then require them to include links back to our site to generate page hits and up our ad rates. There's no downside!" For them.

Bottom line: If someone offers you something for nothing, you'll get just that: Nothing.