I’ve been lucky enough to have won two sneaker raffles from Sneakersnstuff (SNS) over the past year. My first raffle win was for the Yeezy 700 Inertia colorway, and my most recent raffle success landed me the Air Jordan 1 Retro Gym Red colorway. But as I’ve come to disappointintly learn, a SNS raffle win is not a win afterall.

Both my raffle wins have been cancelled for a variety of reasons. For the Inertias, I was given this reason after contacting customer service:

We, unfortunately, had more raffle win orders than our system could handle which resulted in a few more raffle win orders than we had pairs. The size you ordered was sold out by the time your raffle order was created.

Okay… the reasoning is somewhat plausible but on the other hand, not really. For the Gym Reds, I got this response:

There was, unfortunately, a stock malfunction regarding this raffle and therefore we have not been able to fulfil your order.

So a system error and a stock malfunction negated my raffle wins? Seems kinda shaky, especially since this is coming from a vendor that deals with volumes of shoes on a daily basis. I mean how can the company stay in business with these kinds of inventory issues?

For both times, the winning notification emails say to wait a few days for an update. After several days, I contact the SNS support and usually receive non-commital responses like we’re still going through the volume of orders, etc. The end of the line comes when you receive a response from Tatiana. She seems to be the bearer of “unfortunate” news and her emails are followed by a refund from SNS. Unbelievably disappointing.

Now, SNS opened their raffle for the Yeezy 350 Lundmark colorway. Should I even bother?