I thought it be interesting to get opinions on this.
Recently, I traded TB lists for discovery with a cacher from the UK whose TB I recently dropped in a cache. Among his TBs were a few promotional TBs – including 3 that were US only promotions like Halo Top & Treasure X, so he must have gotten them elsewhere – that have never left his hands. Worse yet, at least 2 of the promo tags were for photo-related promos, and there were no photos of them on the TB pages!
Now, you all know my Halo Top story. I was worried when they agreed to send me a new one that they thought it was so I could have one to keep, which wasn’t the case at all, no matter how cute I thought the little robot was. I was even all ready to send one back so I wouldn’t get that reputation. But at their suggestion, I gave the extra to another cacher instead. Neither went very far during the promotion, and I still hope one day to reunite with the one I sent out now that the promotion is over. It’s in MN, so there’s a chance.
I think it ruins the spirit of getting a promotional tag to keep it, since the whole purpose of them is to, well, promote whatever it is they’re promoting via a contest. While it’s possible this cacher submitted photos to the appropriate website, keeping the tag meant that no one else could participate. And the contests weren’t even open to him as a UK resident, anyway.