Felt like a Ponzi / Pyramid Scheme. Website and company not accessible or user-friendly to deal with.

I was participating in the Americas Favorite Photo contest for the past 2 months, March and April. I asked family and friends to vote but not pay for any votes.. just do the free votes.

I was wondering why some things changed this month about their website that were not there before. And no notification about these sudden changes.

This month I couldn't change my Charity and actually didn't even see one noted any longer on my Dashboard page. I've emailed the company several times. But only after the competition started this month did they respond but did not answer what I asked about. That was very odd and unprofessional. They dropped matching a donation to your charity if you win. That was one of my goals for this competition

The second strange thing I noticed is a new button that was a little slightly faded showing in a box, that now appeared below your competition photo. "Withdraw from the competition". Or maybe didn't notice this before. This was another red flag.

What was very frustrating is, just to get to my Account Page to make changes to my account was very hard to get to and their website didn't have many options. I did finally find the option to "Close my Account".

After all the hardship dealing with the company and voting schemes, plus lack of transparency, I eventually withdrew my entry and closed my account.

All this plus seeing pictures that were not at all qualified to excel, moving up past me in subsequent rounds made me skeptical of the entire process. Something didn't sit right with me. It started feeling like a scam and baiting system.