Congratulations! You Have Won Nothing!

Reading The Small Print For You

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always hated those emails that are so frequent, where the title of the email will be something like ‘Congratulations your a winner’, but when you click on it, it will say ‘congratulations you  are one of a select few (bet they say that to everyone) to be selected to enter this prize draw’. Oh great, I’m a possible winner of a draw I didn’t enter. That’s funny, I seem to be part of the select few every week. Or sometimes my email was ‘randomly selected’ by the companies computers, so I get a chance for this draw-but I’m randomly selected at least once a week. The chances of that, eh? We get so many of these emails, that if we do ever genuinely win something from a competition we entered, we might disregard it thinking it’s just more spam.

So these emails get your hopes up that you have won something with their subject title, then it’s disopointment time when it turns out you have not in fact won anything, but you do have the chance to be part of some misleading marketing exercise or a fully fledged scam. Many of these kinds of misleading emails,that make out you have won something are doubly annoying because they actually come from sites where you can win prizes by participating in their competitions-like Daily Quiz, they do it a lot. The scammers need cracking down on for sure, but while some of the misleading ones may not be in the same class as scams, well…..why can’t they just be honest with what their offering?

Well I’m going to be highlighting these kinds of misleading ‘competitions’ as well as the ones that are outright scams.

We start with an email which I actually did get myself to, only yesterday. In your inbox (or spam depending on your filters) did you recieve an email from an Ann Simpson that in the emails subject contents it says:'(your email) is chosen-Recieve your Tesco gift card’. Great I have won a Tesco gift card. I  kinda hate Tesco at the moment but still it’s free, so yes thank you-what do I need to do to get it? Best read the full email to find out:

Hello,

Your e-mail (my email address) has, today, secured your participation in the big Tesco-final – congratulations!
Answer three questions about Tesco and receive 10 pounds for free to use at Tesco.

All correct answers are at the same time in the competition for 500 pounds.

Click here and answer the questions

Important! Few spots left so answer right away.
————————————-

Good Luck – Best regards

Hmmm, their are some questions to answer, not made clear earlier, but you know what only three, that’s really not to bad for a tenner. Oooh and theirs the chance for £500 too. OK, I’ll click where it tells me to and bring on the questions:

Well I was taken to this page first. I see they want my detais. A company that want personal details. They said here at the top, you can have a gillite razor instead of the £10 Tesco vouchers as well. Oh look and next to where it says that is our first question. Well, I think I know the answer to this one, having seen the adverts enough. OK, I’ve selected the correct answer, now just filling in the details, tick the terms and conditions box, after reading some of the shortist t&c’s I’ve seen that say:’

Terms and conditions

Starfly Media ApS is responsible for the competition that lasts until the 1.1.2013.

The winner will be found through a random-drawing amongst the correct answers. The winner of the competition is responsible for paying the gains tax.

When you enter the competition you will automatically accept to receive newsletters from more-offers.com and tangomailUK.com.

Starfly Media reserves the right to demand a photo of you, and get a comment from the lucky winner.

If you have any questions regarding the competition, please contact us at info@starflymedia.dk‘

and have submitted that first page. So I’ve given by details and answered the first question, one down, two to go.

OK so here is the next page.

I can see some more questions, wait but it goes up to 3, I have already done one, oh well maybe the first one was for the draw to win £500. I’ll fill these in, just scroll down-5. Their are now 5 questions. Slightly misleading. But, OK, I’l fill in 5. Just noticed an image of a nice smiling women with a pink piggy bank. Next to her is a little bit of text in a sort of star shape. What does the text say? ‘At the same time you will recieve a 14-day trial for Allaboutprizes.com for just 25p’. Hang on a minute, you never said that before. So this is not free contest now. But OK, I’ll allow it, I have 25p to spare. Go on, I’ll carry on with the comp, still worth the money for the £10 Tesco voucher or razor. I’ll just scroll back down for the other questions and fill them in and, oh some more text. This could be the small print, I’l just read this.

OK, you might like to have a read of what the above t&c’s say:

‘

What is AllAboutPrizes?

At Uk.AllAboutPrizes.Com you can participate in lots of competitions for absolutely FREE. You can win thousands of dollars without even lifting a finger.

How does it work?

You simply sign up for our service through the web site, and then you are awarded with a 14 day free trial. We make sure that you are signed up for various exciting online competitions, and all you have to do is wait to be contacted when you have won your first prize.

As a member of AllAboutPrizes you get:

– 14-day trial membership for just £ 0.25
– A FREE gift
– Automatic sign up for the best online competitions
– Huge winning chances
– Running overview of the various competitions you participate in

Maybe you cannot receive our mails?

We advise that some e-mail providers can have problems receiving mails from Uk.AllAboutPrizes.Com. For more information, read ourterms and conditions.

Legal information:

Our address is Hovedvagtsgade 8, 2. sal. DK-1103 København K.
If you have any questions you are always welcome to contact our support at: support@uk.AllAboutPrizes.com

Fixation?

At Uk.AllAboutPrizes.Com there is no fixation period.
The membership can always be terminated, which you can do yourself through the user profile.

How much is it?

You receive a free 14 day trial and a gift for only £ 0.25. There is no fixation period.

You have to be aware that your trial membership automatically changes into a full membership after the trial period cf. terms and conditions, unless you terminate the membership at least 10 days before the next billing date. The membership can easily be terminated at your personal account on Uk.AllAboutPrizes.Com. The prize for a full months membership is £ 29.00 .’

Hello? Isn’t this the sort of information that should of been on the first page of the competition, or better still within in the original email, before getting my details. And £29.00? Yes if you remember to unsubscribe from the service you won’t have to pay that, but you gotta terminate the membership at least 10 days before the next billing date. Their not making that easy. So, just another marketing trick to get us to sign up to a service, disguised as a competition. It also turns out that the above were not a full lot of their t&c’s. As you can see their was another link their (notice before that part the ‘of.’ had a space not filled in). Still it has lead us to the interesting concept of Allaboutprizes.com, a competition based service that charges £29.00 for the privilege, so for the next post I’m going to look at those mention terms and conditions, and see what Allaboutprizes  offers, and look at if it could warrant such a fee.