Terms & Conditions of Entry

The following are the terms and conditions of entry to The 2020 American Business Awards®.  By submitting entries to the competition you assent that you have read and agree to abide by these terms and conditions.

Entry Fees

Entry Fees differ per category and are listed on the ABA web site. Entry fees must be paid before entries will be submitted to judges for review.

You may withdraw one or more entries from the competition and receive a refund of entries fees paid for those entries through February 12, 2020.  After that date entries may still be withdrawn, but no refunds will be issued.  If for extraordinary circumstances after February 13 we must submit your entries for judging before entry fees are paid, your entries will be nonrevokable and entry fees will be payable.

Acceptance of Stevie Awards Correspondence

Every entrant has a designated point of contact: a single person with whom we communicate about the disposition of entries submitted.  We will send regular email correspondence to your organization’s point of contact, especially after Finalists are announced in May.  Your organization’s point of contact agrees to:

• Whitelist the email address help@stevieawards.com, from which most of our email correspondence will come
• Read all email correspondence from us promptly and respond as requested or required

Maintenance of Your Entry Account Information

Your organization’s entry-submission account on The American Business Awards website, through which your entries are submitted, will contain the contact information for your point of contact, including that person’s name, postal mailing address, email address, and telephone number.  Your organization’s point of contact agrees to maintain the information in this entry-submission account and update it if and when necessary.  The entry-submission account may be logged into at any time at https://aba.stevieawards.com/member.

Final Decision

In the event of a dispute as to the category in which an entry(s) will be judged, the decision of the Stevie Awards staff will prevail.   Judges may recommend that an entry be switched to a different category, and at their discretion Stevie Awards staff may change an entry’s category.

Any offline materials submitted as part of your entries will not be returned.

Payment of Shipping Fees

Stevie Award winners who are not represented at the June 11 awards banquets to accept their award(s) will be assessed a shipping fee for their award(s).  Only sponsors and honorary nominees will not have to pay shipping fees.  Shipping fees payable will be as follows:

•               U.S. $30 per Gold Stevie Award trophy
•               U.S. $12 per Silver or Bronze medal

If you are liable to pay shipping fees, they will be automatically charged to the credit card to which entry fees were charged, approximately 10 days after the June 12 awards banquet, unless you first provide us with an alternate means of payment.  Your organization’s point of contact with us will receive an email in advance of the charge, noting the date that the charge will be made.  If entry fees were not charged to a credit card, you will be invoiced for your shipping fees and payment is due upon receipt of your invoice.  That invoice will be emailed to your point of contact.

Non-payment of shipping fees is not an option: if you submit entries to the ABAs, you agree to pay the fees due if any awards you win are not accepted at the June 12 awards banquet.   You may not opt out of paying them by asking to not receive your awards. 

See the section above headed Maintenance of Your Entry Account Information.  We reserve the right to charge you shipping fees twice if your award shipment is returned to us because the shipping address in your entry-submission account is wrong, or you otherwise did not provide us with an alternate shipping address, and your awards are returned as undeliverable to us or to one of our award manufacturers.

Publication of Stevie-winning Entries 

The full-text of Gold Stevie Award-winning entries will be published on The American Business Awards web site approximately one month after the final results are announced.  Gold Stevie Award winners will be given the opportunity to redact any confidential or non-public information from their entries before publication.  If you should have one or more Gold Stevie Award-winning entries in The 2020 American Business Awards, you agree to respond promptly to our request for edits or redactions to those entries before publication.

Failure to comply with these Terms & Conditions will render your entries ineligible.  Entry fees will not be refunded.