The Grandfather Burns Rubber!

Several weeks ago I sent out an e-mail announcing that I had recently won 2nd place in a Continental Tire photo contest. Now that the $260 (retail) in bike tires are safely in my hands I can tell the behind the scenes story of My Big Contest Adventure.
Continental ran a full-page ad announcing the contest in VeloNews last spring. The contest ended in June and winners were to be announced after September 18th on their web page and/or via SASE. I knew that I had entered a really fine picture and was cautiously optimistic about doing well in the contest.
On September 18th, I checked the web page and the page was blank except to say, "Winners will be announced soon". I also sent the SASE then. Every week I rechecked the web page and in mid November I sent another SASE (the first went unanswered). By late December the web page was still blank, the SASE's were going unanswered and I was getting a little hot in the headset and wanted to punish Continental for what I was sure was ( at the least) a sloppy contest or (at most) mail fraud! Don't mess with the Grandfather!
So, I went online to the Washington, D.C. phone book, got the number of the Federal Trade Commission, called the Consumer Response Division and turned their rear tires in! Feeling better, but not all THAT better, and not having much confidence that the Feds would do much, I still wanted to bark at Continental. I noticed that at the bottom of the full page ad was a phone number to call for the location of my nearest Continental dealer.
I figured I would give this a shot but not hoping for much more than some low level office type. To my surprise, I was connected to a Continental marketing person who denied any knowledge of the contest, saying that it probably was a project of their ad agency in California, but promising to investigate and get back to me the next day. Yeah, sure. Obviously, I did NOT tell him that I had turned his company into the federal government ten minutes before. The next day the guy called me back and apologized profusely. He also said the ad agency had dropped the ball, but that they had notified the winners and would have the info on the web page very soon and would send me a list of the winners. At that point I decided that I had won nothing and forgot the issue.
About a week later, I was leaving my house when I found a large envelope on my porch with a Continental return address. Inside was the picture that had entered, but no cover letter. I went to the mailbox and found a letter from Continental informing me that I was a 2nd place winner and would have my choice of four tires! All I had to do was e-mail them with my tire selections.
Naturally, I started sweating because I figured that unless I acted quickly and got those tires in my hands there was a chance that the Feds could, in the processing of investigating the "crooked" contest, drop my name - "Good-bye Continental's!"
All has ended well when the tires arrived. The Continental people have been very nice to me since I contacted them, have followed up on phone calls, kept me posted on the progress of the tires, etc. - I don't want them to come banging on my door demanding their tires back!