Young Writers con

punkpink

YoungWriters wrote: »

I can confirm that Forward Press’ Directors did not take total salaries of 430k in 2008. This is another fabrication made by the newspaper.

As stated in a previous post we welcome all feedback and do try to act on most of it as much as possible, this includes changes to the letter which seems to have misled parents. It was never our intention to mislead any parent and we can only apologise once again for this.

Although we did not continue with the case against the newspaper we are lead to believe now that would have helped put some parents’ minds at rest. We believed at the time once fulfilling all orders and paying all competitions promised by Forward Press that parents and teachers would understand the information featured was untrue.

We value your feedback that you have given here and welcome any further feedback you have to offer.

Personally this post means nothing, you have repeated yourself and have avoided answering a straightforward question that you were directly asked (see above post by Valli). Also what is the point of dismissing everything in the newspapers as 'fabrication' to a forum? If you have no funds for legal proceedings then people will make their own minds up especially as you seem to be unable to use English grammer correctly or infact read it...though i suppose at least in the second post you managed to spell check correctly...:p

stickgal

lindsa wrote: »

I think it is the schools fault for not seeing that this is a money-making scam.

can i just say that schools recieve loads of letters like this.... * let your children enter this competition * etc.There is no way of knowing from that first letter that its a con, but our school wont be entering it again

Um, as a parent I send my child to be in care of the school during her education day. That does NOT include my child being open to 'scams' or for her to be misrepresented in lieu of my being there.
If my child were to misrepresent the school, both I & her school would expect an apology at the very least.
Therefore the same could be expected from the school.
Total Hogswash that a school has to pick from a multitude of competitions so cannot be expected to be a filter for scams.
I 'googled' it; all other posters have undoubtedly 'googled' and the word 'SCAM' is very plain to see.
My search took possiblly as long as reading the initial invitation as sent to the school originally.

EMOTIONAL BLACKMAIL - Yes, the company are beyond Amoral but the school are simply irresponsible.

I must go now to console my 11 year old as she has been left feeling mediocre and is compelled to confront her English Teacher when she returns from the Summer Break! ( I hope she will not be asked to apologise)

sparkyuiop

My Mrs almost fell for it too but she soon stopped jumping for joy in the kitchen when she saw I wasn't as impressed as she was. She's a plank, bless her but I love her all the same!

Well I wrote to them:

Cust No: xxx30xx - R.E Letter you Sent
Please do not publish any work written by our daughter. We were not asked for permission by our daughters school that an outside business have access to her work and nor do we agree for you to use it.
Clearly your goal is only to make money by duping the parents into feeling obliged to buying your publication because their child has achieved something of high merit. No doubt that the 'story' was only 50 words so that you may cram as many into the book as possible to maximise your profit.
I think that companies like yours are just sick and you should be stopped from trading and ripping people off!
I shall be talking to the school about this and reporting you to trading standards.

Phillip Thorne.

beavere38

My 7 year old son came home today from school with a letter from YoungWriters, same old story as above in this thread.

I am very used to scams and was instantly suspicious.

Today is Friday before half term starts and the form "must be authorised by 8th June 2012" so by the last day of the half term holiday. Call me cynical but why would you send out something on the last day of school and request it be authorised by the end of the half term break unless you wanted to avoid parents speaking to each other and collectively realising it is a scam?

I cannot raise any concerns with the school until Monday 11th June as school is now closed for the holiday and even if I could the school could not choose to alert other parents in time by talking to them in person or sending letters home with the children, they would have to phone them all.

This sounds to me like gutter marketing at its worst and I now have to praise my son for doing well but think of a reason to explain why we won't be spending £17.99 inc postage ordering the book for him when I imagine his friends who have all also "won" will be ordering (but maybe not receiving) a copy.

I will make a formal complaint to the school head when school reopens and hope that the school investigate themselves and make their own decision. If the same thing happens in 2 years time when my daughter is the same age as my son is now then I won't be impressed!

Siobhan_N

I am amazed to see that this has been going on and is indeed documented on many forums since 2007.

This is not a competition in the true sense of the word (the whole of our year 6 class got published) for the "Travel Back in Time" collection of poems. It also seems that there were multiple volumes of the same title by region as when I failed to give copyright authorisation they sent me a letter detailing the link to extended deadlines. The references were numerous. One lady on Mums net lost her reference and some how established there were 6 volumes of the title her daughters work had been carefully selected for in the West Midlands alone.

They write the letters as if it is specifically for your child, they intentionally neglect to tell you that all the schools entries are a winner.

They continue to sell by exploiting parents and children but the cost is now £15.99 a book with a 3 for 2 on pre-publication orders. Also the strategy seems to be to send out letters during school holidays when parents are less likely to talk amongst themselves. So order plenty! The wonders of social media has meant that the company has probably not done so well out of our particular volume.

I feel that our school has also been mislead. I don't believe they understood what would happen if a piece of writing is selected?

As in other cases, our school has made the mistake of getting the pupil to complete the entry form. Yes my daughter gave them her name, age and address - without my knowledge. You can imagine our surprise when we got a letter winning a competition that we had no knowledge she entered. Our school are considering submitting another batch (my son bought it home this time) I really hope they don't now that I've raised my concerns.

:mad:

sparkyuiop

My child's school printed a letter to all parents after I raised my concern stating the companies intention. To be fair the school was conned into this and they clearly showed embarrassment.

peter_the_piper

as you have resurrected an old thread, have the young writers morphed into another company?

ailuro2

I found this old thread because I googled young writers after dd got a letter saying she was to be included in a book. I was really pleased for her until she told me her best pal got into the book too, then I started wondering if it was a bit fishy.

I'll not be buying the book. I'll tell dd why as well. She uses wattpad so is a keen writer already she doesn't need extra encouragement. Nasty little scheme though:mad:

oldhand

ailuro2 wrote: »

I found this old thread because I googled young writers after dd got a letter saying she was to be included in a book. I was really pleased for her until she told me her best pal got into the book too, then I started wondering if it was a bit fishy.

I'll not be buying the book. I'll tell dd why as well. She uses wattpad so is a keen writer already she doesn't need extra encouragement. Nasty little scheme though:mad:

Very common here too (n.ireland) had my youngest daughter bring home a letter saying (her) poem had been chosen for a book and as happened with yourself all her class had the same letter,and just last may my granddaughter had a letter for her mum to say her story was to be included,again when checked her whole class received the same letter.

gildius

I've heard about this too, it happened to someone I know - very annoying