Donation or Not

[dostin]

What is the name of your state? I live in Georgia.

A lot of webpages now offer "donation packages" in exchange for donating to their service. For example, they say if you donate to them x dollars they will give you a free shirt. Other times it's a website that says if you donate to them x dollars to help pay for server costs then you get special priviledges on their site, like a special avatar, etc.

My question is, because they call it a donation, are they legally bound to provide what they say they will provide? If it's technically a donation, are they allowed to not give you what they say they will?

Thank you.

 

[ohthenoes]

Excluding physical goods, my question is what reason would they have NOT to give you the special avatar or the extra features for their website?

It does not cost them anything to do this and would only hurt them not to give them to you (IE less people would donate once they found out). Word spreads quick if you're a scam. I've been on several projects where the website accepted donations and gave extra website features as a gift. You'll constantly see people who make fake posts claiming they donated to the site and "never got anything." They are usually just people who hate the site for whatever reason (usually they were banned for abusing the TOS)

I cannot really speak for the psychical goods as I have never been involved with giving that type of gift for donations but once again, there is very little reason for them to not give it to you as it is the sort of thing most people won't go quietly about and it would only hurt their chances of getting money.
But then again I wouldn't put it past some people in this world.

As for legal obligation, does it state on their site "IF YOU DONATE YOU WILL RECEIVE X GIFT?" and have you checked for any fine print that say anything that would give them a way out of giving it to you? (IE gift only available while quantities last.)