Rules and Terms & Conditions of the Competition

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

• Acceptance or Rejection of Nominations
  
  The Stevie Awards staff will review all nominations submitted to evaluate their suitability for evaluation by our professional jurors. Nominations that are considered inappropriate for any reason will be rejected and returned as "saved but not submitted" to the user accounts of the participants. Rejected nominations may be changed and re-submitted for evaluation. Nominations are usually denied if they are considered frivolous or incomplete.
• Notification Regarding the Temporary Stevie Award Winner Status
  
  Stevie Award winners will be notified by email on December 18, 2020 of their temporary Gold, Silver, or Bronze Stevie Award winner status. The award winners then have only two weeks to pay the Winners Fee for each successful nomination or to provide evidence of their payment. The Prize Winner status will be temporary until the award winners have been paid. In order to be recognized as a Stevie winner, the Winners’ Fees must be paid for all successful nominations.
• Winners’ Fee
  
  Each nominee wishing to win a Gold, Silver, or Bronze Stevie Award will be charged a USD $495 Winners’ Fee, which must be paid no later than January 6, 2020. Nominations received by the first deadline (November 6, 2019) are eligible for a reduced Winners’ Fee of USD $465 per nomination. If you have multiple temporary winner nominations, you must pay the Winners’ Fee for all of them. You may not choose to pay the Winners’ Fees for some of your nominations but not others. With payment, successful nominations pass from temporary to permanent Stevie winners’ status.
  
  Upon payment of the Winners’ Fee per successful Stevie nomination, the following benefits will be released to Stevie Award winners:
   
  • The right to publicly claim the Stevie Award winner status for the nomination on or after January 8, 2020
  • The inclusion of the successful nomination in the official prize-winner lists published on January 8, 2020 on the Middle East Stevie Awards website and other Stevie Awards media
  • The right to use the award-winning signs or logos of the 2020 Middle East Stevie Awards
  • A personalized Gold, Silver, or Bronze Stevie Award trophy
  • Access to all the jury's comments regarding all your applications
  • The right to buy tickets for the award ceremony on February 8, 2020 in Ras Al Khaimah and the award ceremony on stage.

• Announcement of the Stevie Award Winners
  
  Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie winners will be announced publicly on January 8, 2020. Only successful nominations for which Winners Fees have been paid or whose payment has been documented will be announced as winners. Nominees with temporary winner status from whom we have not received payment, or notification that payment has been initiated, as of January 6, 2020, will be disqualified from the competition, receive no awards, and have no right to claim Stevie winner’s status for these nominations. No exceptions will be made.

• Withdrawal of Applications
  
  For any reason, prior to the second submission deadline of December 4, 2019, you may withdraw one or more entries from the competition. After this date, the judges will start their evaluation and as soon as this evaluation has begun, no more applications may be withdrawn.

• 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 Stevie Award winners are announced. Your organization’s point of contact agrees to:

  • Whitelist the email address help+mena@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 Middle East Stevie 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. 

• 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.

• Disposition of Submitted Materials

  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 8 February awards banquet in Ras Al Khaimah 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:

• Stevie Award Winners in the U.S.A.
  •               U.S. $30 per Stevie Award trophy

  Stevie Award Winners in Canada
  Trophies will be shipped by FedEx International Ground and fees include customs fees and taxes
  •               U.S. $50 per Stevie Award trophy

  Stevie Award Winners in All Other Nations

• Trophies will be shipped by FedEx International Economy or DHL Express and fees includes customs fees and taxes
  •               U.S. $300 per Stevie Award trophy

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 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 Middle East Stevie Awards, you agree to pay the fees due if any awards you win are not accepted at the awards event at which they are              presented.   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 Middle East Stevie Awards web site approximately one month after the awards banquet.  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 Middle East Stevie 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.