Today I received a letter re: Award Notification, along with a check. The letter is addressed to me at my correct home address, makes mention of my email address, and informs me that I am "one of the winners in a just concluded consumer reward computer ballot draw having won the prize money of ------- and 4 days vacation cruise". OK, now the check is for a partial amount of my so-called prize that I won, and that I should contact a person at the phone number with the reference number on the letter "for further information and directives on the payment of your prize money".

Now, I know I've entered contests/sweeps on the internet, but never really gave much thought or hopes of winning. :-) As I stated in my first post,
I've received many emails from so-called lottery wins, estate searches, etc. etc.. and always delete them if they are addressed to undisclosed recipients, knowing these are scams, but this is different.

I am totally curious, tho' not gullible, so I did some searching on the net to check this out. The check looks real, no conditions of any kind are present on it; The bank, FIFTH THIRD BANK in Northern Kentucky appears to be valid, and the company issuing the check (located in Pennsylvania) has their full name and address on it and it checks out with their profile listed on www.YourCompanyListing.com

I am going to call the company issuing this check (if indeed they did) and inquire if this is real. The phone number in the letter is located in Vancouver BC, Canada, so I'm not sure I want to incur the cost of the phone call. The letter was postmarked from Canada. In the meantime, any input from anyone reading this would ease my mind, BEFORE I do anything, no matter how much the "prize" is tempting
Thanks!
Anne