Facebook and twitter winners True or in the know?

andrew71

Sorry first of all for the strange title I was struggling what to call it
Anyway is it just myself but does anybody else sometimes question if the winners of facebook and twitter competitions are genuine people and not made up or if they know one another (the page setting the comp and the winner)?
Not questioning every winner as I have one myself on a twitter competition. I'm more questioning those comps that say they will give a prize away when they reach XX amount of like/follows. Even more so when the prize is a decent prize say like an ipad?

Like I say most of them are genuine but sometimes I do question them or is it just me thinking this.

dsh2010

you can never really know for sure but I myself have won a shower off Facebook and champagne from twitter. Guess we will never know for sure but we can all hope

nelie

I think they are mostly genuine winners - unless it looks dodgy! Honest mistakes by companies (larger) can be made when picking winners

I've had a lot of luck on twitter I've given up on FB L+S after so many cheats and multiple account holders seem to win! x

jeddentad

from a PR point of view, I would imagine there's a healthy percentage of smaller companies "massaging" the winner list on twitter and FB L&S.

I wish I knew the legality of it all. Just because I think it'd make a more interesting Panorama episode than most

But that leaves the rest that are real, random winner comps. I have to hope, for the sake of PR people's reputations everywhere, that the vast majority are "real" winners

Snizza

Posted a topic on here exposing Blackberrys Twitter picking out a fake winner for one of their competitions a while back. A company that big cheating means any could. Just have to keep the faith. They gain a lot of promotion for running their competitions and having people share them so you have to believe they are willing to let some lucky person win something minor to them.

As far as Twitter goes as well. Been comping just over a year maybe and just had my first 2 Twitter wins in the past week. Came like Busses.

Zanzib

I've won a couple of bigger prizes on Facebook competitions, but have never won anything via Twitter yet.

Earlier in the year I won a gazebo from Clas Olhson, and had never heard of them before seeing the Facebook competition.

kisto

Sadly it does happen.
There have been numerous posts on here over the years that highlight fraudulent/false/dishonest competitions - particularly prevalent on social media it would seem.
There was one not so long ago regarding a jewellers....and it appeared that a member of staff/relative happened to win the prize. I also seem to recall one where a newly created facebook account happened to win, and it seemed that the FB account had just been created for that comp.

becky004

I do fairly well on Twitter quantity wise, never biggies (but I might have won one recently still waiting for confirmation!). Compers are a rather vigilant lot, majority of comps on there are legitimate, but if they're not the veterans will usually out them!
Was a major company not so long back think it was 7 random winners for a RT comp, 7 bloggers were chosen over half had not RT'd. Then there are the iPad comps with people searching for details and proving winners were either related, employees or businesses in the vicinity. I will say the fake comps are the minority, most of the comps are indeed genuine xx