Competitions Discussion Thread Part 13

Chyna-s

Go ahead and post it here ffotogirl - people only go into GO to run a search.

ffotogirl

Ah, I thought as much Pasted below.

The Mystery of the BA Highlife Travel Photography competition!

I was just wondering if anyone here had entered the British Airways Highlife Travel Photography competition and heard anything back since it ended? The competition was advertised on their website and inflight magazine and ran in four heats over the past year. During each heat you could upload one image to an online gallery and people could log in and vote for you. There were two winners for each heat; a readers choice for whoever amassed the most votes and a judges choice. The prizes were Nikon DSLR cameras for each heat and at the end there was supposed to be an ultimate winner, by decision of the judges, who would win the opportunity to go on a travel photography assignment with a British Airways photographer in North America.

I entered a couple of the heats and emailed them once or twice to ask questions and they always got back to me promptly. I didn't win any of the heats but amassed a really strong number of votes, and was on the first page of the gallery each time. Most people on the first page had a couple of hundred votes. In the last heat things got a bit weird and loads of really really bad photos were entered into the gallery and started amassing scores into the tens of thousands! I know photography is subjective but honestly, these were all so shockingly bad and had such a fantastic number of votes in comparison to everyone else it looked like someone was trying to scam the competition.

At the end of the final heat in October the whole gallery & all the competition info disappeared from the website! No announcement of the heat winners and no mention of the grand prize. This was quite disappointing as after every other round you were at least able to view the galleries and see the pictures that had done well. Previously the winners had been announced quite quickly but there was nothing online by the 5th of November so I emailed to ask when they'd be up. I was a little bit excited to find out but also wanted to know because I'd been blogging about it (I run a photography blog on my website) and encouraging other people to submit images and vote and wanted to keep them updated. They replied on the 9th of November and said the judges were still making their decision and results would be updated on the site when it had been decided.

Well it's now 6th January and there's no sign of any update and they haven't replied to my latest email. It's all very mysterious. Anyone have any clues?

toniq

You should contact the IPM [EMAIL="complaints@theipm.org.uk"]complaints@theipm.org.uk[/EMAIL]

They can liase with the comp organiser and look into what has happened, they will also get back to you with what they find xxxx

Amilucky?

Have you tried contacting Cedar Communications who are the publicising agents for the competition there contact details are here
http://www.cedarcom.co.uk/

they should know what is happening with regards to the competition

Best of Luck

ffotogirl

Yup I've emailed Cedar and no response

I'll try the IPM - never heard of them before now but it's great they exist!

toniq

This is the IPM's site http://www.theipm.org.uk/Home.aspx

Amilucky?

ffotogirl wrote: »

Yup I've emailed Cedar and no response

I'll try the IPM - never heard of them before now but it's great they exist!

I would give them a call if you have emailed them without any response the numbers are on this link
http://www.cedarcom.co.uk/

Best of Luck

Cielo

I'm a newbie to this forum and must say I am already hooked! Don't know what I am going to do tomorrow when the forum is down all day...hehe.

Please could I ask some advice from those who have been doing this much longer than myself - do you opt in or opt out of email newsletters etc when signing up or registering with new websites to be entered into competitions? My instinct is to always opt out (though occassionally this is not possible with some websites) as I don't wish to be bombarded with spam, but I was wondering (well conspiracy theory actually) if websites/organisers discriminate against entries from those people who have 'opted out'?

So I suppose my question is have all you lucky people won stuff even when opting out?

crin

Cielo wrote: »

I'm a newbie to this forum and must say I am already hooked! Don't know what I am going to do tomorrow when the forum is down all day...hehe.

Please could I ask some advice from those who have been doing this much longer than myself - do you opt in or opt out of email newsletters etc when signing up or registering with new websites to be entered into competitions? My instinct is to always opt out (though occassionally this is not possible with some websites) as I don't wish to be bombarded with spam, but I was wondering (well conspiracy theory actually) if websites/organisers discriminate against entries from those people who have 'opted out'?

So I suppose my question is have all you lucky people won stuff even when opting out?

I opt out whenever possible and have still had some wins good luck with the comping

Cheeky_Chicken

Cielo wrote: »

I'm a newbie to this forum and must say I am already hooked! Don't know what I am going to do tomorrow when the forum is down all day...hehe.

Please could I ask some advice from those who have been doing this much longer than myself - do you opt in or opt out of email newsletters etc when signing up or registering with new websites to be entered into competitions? My instinct is to always opt out (though occassionally this is not possible with some websites) as I don't wish to be bombarded with spam, but I was wondering (well conspiracy theory actually) if websites/organisers discriminate against entries from those people who have 'opted out'?

So I suppose my question is have all you lucky people won stuff even when opting out?

Hi, welcome to the board! This question (and most others) have been asked and answered many times. A good place to start is the Comping Guide which has the answers to most of your comping questions!