Competition Scams - Please Post Them Here

marialionza

Much appreciate that people like you(NotanIdiot) exist to help others! Thank you on behalf of everyone!

hj2

Hi. I don't know if this the right place, supposedly had an e-mail from tesco personal finance saying I've won and I need to click through to enter my details. Please tell me its a scam as I've deleted the e-mail

sunflower_2

i have searched the site & google and cannot find anything relating to this company?

anyway today i received a call from a lovely young man from COMPETITION 500.
he was calling with some good news regarding a competition i entered "a few months ago" to win an iPad.

he asked what I would do with it - keep it for myself? give it to someone and that he would kindly take it off my hands hahahahha!!

after he confirmed my contact details (he had my full name, address and telephone number) he informed me I had merely reached the shortlist in the competition and would be contacted shortly with the "hopefully" good news.

the young lad then went on to say "whilst I have you on the line, we do have another special offer. we know you like entering competitions and know it is sometimes time consuming. basically we enter 500 competitions on your behalf every month. we only allow 100 users per postcode area and you are lucky enough to be selected due to reaching the above said shortlist.
now - there is a free 1 month trial and due to you being shortlisted for the iPad I can give you a further £60 voucher which in effect gives you 3 months free..."

At this point I said I had to go as the kids had spilled milk all over the floor...

has anyone heard of these people?

StokieBecks

Sunflower they are prize500 i think - acompany you pay to enter comps on your behalf (a lot of well run comps distegard all these entries anyway) waste of time in my opinion

createbeauty

sunflower wrote: »

i have searched the site & google and cannot find anything relating to this company?

anyway today i received a call from a lovely young man from COMPETITION 500.
he was calling with some good news regarding a competition i entered "a few months ago" to win an iPad.

he asked what I would do with it - keep it for myself? give it to someone and that he would kindly take it off my hands hahahahha!!

after he confirmed my contact details (he had my full name, address and telephone number) he informed me I had merely reached the shortlist in the competition and would be contacted shortly with the "hopefully" good news.

the young lad then went on to say "whilst I have you on the line, we do have another special offer. we know you like entering competitions and know it is sometimes time consuming. basically we enter 500 competitions on your behalf every month. we only allow 100 users per postcode area and you are lucky enough to be selected due to reaching the above said shortlist.
now - there is a free 1 month trial and due to you being shortlisted for the iPad I can give you a further £60 voucher which in effect gives you 3 months free..."

At this point I said I had to go as the kids had spilled milk all over the floor...

has anyone heard of these people?

I've had a similar call before and I pretty much told them I enter competitions because I don't want to pay for the stuff and told them to bug off.

WhiteRabbitDisco

nat21luv wrote: »

Any update on the cbeebies fan page?

I have pretty much perfect proof the cbeebies thing is a scam, I have found every single hidden item bar one and never won, but this week I thought I nailed it.

I checked the page before 8am (I know, naughty me) found it, checked the time and date of the page to verify when it was last modified (which was the night before) and pre-composed an email to them ready to send. As soon as the email from 'cbeebies' came through I posted my answer, literally a minute or 2 after it had opened. (It says nothing about checking pages before 8am btw, just that the comp opens at that time so no emails would be valid beforehand)

The winner has just been contacted and it wasn't me (even though they indeed had placed it exactly where I had said)

They have also stated that:
"We are going to take the Sunday off but we have just bought next weeks prize at Currys PC World - They kindly sold us this item even though it's not due for release yet! You'll find out what it is on Monday."

Yeah, ok, because Currys/PC World are authorised to do that. I'm sure Apple or whoever the new product is made by would be thrilled to know this.

Kipepeo

WhiteRabbitDisco wrote: »

I have pretty much perfect proof the cbeebies thing is a scam, I have found every single hidden item bar one and never won, but this week I thought I nailed it.

I checked the page before 8am (I know, naughty me) found it, checked the time and date of the page to verify when it was last modified (which was the night before) and pre-composed an email to them ready to send. As soon as the email from 'cbeebies' came through I posted my answer, literally a minute or 2 after it had opened. (It says nothing about checking pages before 8am btw, just that the comp opens at that time so no emails would be valid beforehand)

The winner has just been contacted and it wasn't me (even though they indeed had placed it exactly where I had said)

They have also stated that:
"We are going to take the Sunday off but we have just bought next weeks prize at Currys PC World - They kindly sold us this item even though it's not due for release yet! You'll find out what it is on Monday."

Yeah, ok, because Currys/PC World are authorised to do that. I'm sure Apple or whoever the new product is made by would be thrilled to know this.

They might consider finding it before 8am as 'cheating'.

However, I found last week's (the iPad Mini) and it was extremely difficult to see, in fact there was barely a difference between the edited image and the original - I had to look at them both in Photoshop to be sure.
Which is why I was surprised that the 'winner' found it using their iPad. There is absolutely no way that someone could have seen that on an iPad screen (especially an iPad 1). I only just found it on a laptop screen and couldn't see it at all on my iPad 2.

There has always been a slight doubt in the back of my mind about these competitions, even though I have stuck up for them when I believed someone was wrong about them, but last week's 'winner' was really the final nail in the coffin.

EDIT// To prove my point, here's the image. The original is on the left and the edited (one with iPad Mini) is on the right. The iPad is in the teeth of the radish:


And a zoomed in version:

marialionza

My God ...you are so good ! I really feel protected by the lot of you Guardian Angels:kisses3:

WhiteRabbitDisco

Kipepeo wrote: »

They might consider finding it before 8am as 'cheating'.

However, I found last week's (the iPad Mini) and it was extremely difficult to see, in fact there was barely a difference between the edited image and the original - I had to look at them both in Photoshop to be sure.
Which is why I was surprised that the 'winner' found it using their iPad. There is absolutely no way that someone could have seen that on an iPad screen (especially an iPad 1). I only just found it on a laptop screen and couldn't see it at all on my iPad 2.

There has always been a slight doubt in the back of my mind about these competitions, even though I have stuck up for them when I believed someone was wrong about them, but last week's 'winner' was really the final nail in the coffin.

EDIT// To prove my point, here's the image. The original is on the left and the edited (one with iPad Mini) is on the right. The iPad is in the teeth of the radish:
And a zoomed in version:

Yeah, that's the one I found. They didn't consider finding it before 8am cheating at all. This is the email responce I got from them:

"11 people found it withing the first 5 seconds. Hannah who emailed it in a whole second before you.


Below are the top 3 with times stamps:
29 October 2012 08:01 Hannah Marsh

29 October 2012 08:02 Thomas Ward

29 October 2012 08:02 James Dean



Very close James but better luck next time. We have been adding the prizes the night before but obviously you guys are finding them and emailing it in aas close to 8am as possible. We are now going to start adding the hidden prizes in the morning.


[FONT=arial, sans-serif]Best regards"[/FONT]

Kipepeo

WhiteRabbitDisco wrote: »

Yeah, that's the one I found. They didn't consider finding it before 8am cheating at all. This is the email responce I got from them:

"11 people found it withing the first 5 seconds. Hannah who emailed it in a whole second before you.


Below are the top 3 with times stamps:
29 October 2012 08:01 Hannah Marsh

29 October 2012 08:02 Thomas Ward

29 October 2012 08:02 James Dean



Very close James but better luck next time. We have been adding the prizes the night before but obviously you guys are finding them and emailing it in aas close to 8am as possible. We are now going to start adding the hidden prizes in the morning.


[FONT=arial, sans-serif]Best regards"[/FONT]

Hmm, that's weird, as they've considered that cheating before. Someone on here e-mailed about 40 seconds after 8am and they were told they had cheated.