Email from the funday times - Updated...I am going on holiday!

xsheepx

That's a bit poor of them if they deny you the holiday, I would be so annoyed! Hope you get it sorted with EM's help. Good luck and keep us posted. X

psilvester

euronorris wrote: »

I see your point, but it was not clearly defined, and not defined at all in the T&C's. Cos, you know, since when has the term family been used only to describe a unit of adults and kids. We don't grow up and stop being a family.

I love kids movies like Turbo and I absolutely adore the themeparks in Orlando! I'd quite happily go without children (and I have friends - who don't have kids - who go there every year).

As I said I imagine that the full terms and conditions would have been in the printed publication with abridged ones on the website.

I guess this is the reason they have sent it to "legal" - not to define a family but to see if not having the full terms on the website has led to a balls up.

dm2ooo

Hope you get your holiday! As well as Disney not being exclusively marketed to children and families, the Funday Times is part of a newspaper for adults, and the competition entry was on a website also directed at adults. If they (or whoever is funding the prize) wanted to limit entry to a specific section of their readership, they should have made it absolutely clear. If an adult (single, married, childless or living in a shoe) is accessing Times content and sees that competition, if the T&Cs do not preclude them, they can enter.

Alternatively, buy a couple of those fake baby dolls, and turn up with those.

weeowens

psilvester wrote: »

As I said I imagine that the full terms and conditions would have been in the printed publication with abridged ones on the website.

In print they were very vague & no specifics were mentioned.I may have the cutting somewhere but I have a copy on my PC.

weeowens

dm2ooo wrote: »

Hope you get your holiday! As well as Disney not being exclusively marketed to children and families, the Funday Times is part of a newspaper for adults, and the competition entry was on a website also directed at adults. If they (or whoever is funding the prize) wanted to limit entry to a specific section of their readership, they should have made it absolutely clear. If an adult (single, married, childless or living in a shoe) is accessing Times content and sees that competition, if the T&Cs do not preclude them, they can enter.

Alternatively, buy a couple of those fake baby dolls, and turn up with those.

As far as I know there was no direct link on the Website.It should have been first visited via the primary link that I posted on here: www.sundaytimes.co.uk/turboholiday

this changed to : www.offersinthetimes.com

psilvester

dm2ooo wrote: »

Hope you get your holiday! As well as Disney not being exclusively marketed to children and families, the Funday Times is part of a newspaper for adults, and the competition entry was on a website also directed at adults. If they (or whoever is funding the prize) wanted to limit entry to a specific section of their readership, they should have made it absolutely clear. If an adult (single, married, childless or living in a shoe) is accessing Times content and sees that competition, if the T&Cs do not preclude them, they can enter.

Alternatively, buy a couple of those fake baby dolls, and turn up with those.

As Weeowens says above, you "should" only know about the competition from reading the newspaper where it says it is a family holiday.

Yes it is a balls up with vague T&C's but you mentioned about the people funding the prize. I would imagine that they do want a family to have the prize as intended, or why bother? Perhaps next time there will be no holiday at all to win so there will be no need to have a debate over what constitutes a "family" and the ethics of people with no kids entering competitions hoping that they can then twist the arms of the promoters to go depriving a genuine family of a trip of a lifetime.

roar349

psilvester wrote: »

As Weeowens says above, you "should" only know about the competition from reading the newspaper where it says it is a family holiday.

Yes it is a balls up with vague T&C's but you mentioned about the people funding the prize. I would imagine that they do want a family to have the prize as intended, or why bother? Perhaps next time there will be no holiday at all to win so there will be no need to have a debate over what constitutes a "family" and the ethics of people with no kids entering competitions hoping that they can then twist the arms of the promoters to go depriving a genuine family of a trip of a lifetime.

Really?

Bottom line is the T&C's should have been more specific if that's what they wanted.

euronorris

psilvester wrote: »

As Weeowens says above, you "should" only know about the competition from reading the newspaper where it says it is a family holiday.

Yes it is a balls up with vague T&C's but you mentioned about the people funding the prize. I would imagine that they do want a family to have the prize as intended, or why bother? Perhaps next time there will be no holiday at all to win so there will be no need to have a debate over what constitutes a "family" and the ethics of people with no kids entering competitions hoping that they can then twist the arms of the promoters to go depriving a genuine family of a trip of a lifetime.

Define family, for one.

For two, as the T&C's also make no mention of the prizewinners taking part in publicity, it really shouldn't matter to the prizegivers if it's a family of two or a family of seven!

For three, don't think for a second they'll consider not giving holidays away as prizes in future. It's all marketing, and it's a very effective marketing tool. Something like this wouldn't stop them from doing it in the future. If they were a small company, maybe, but they're not.

And lastly, there are no ethics to be discussed with regards to entering this competition as there was NO mention of the word family in the online entry form or in the T&C's. Even taking into account that the word family was used in the paper, it still wasn't defined. So, would it have been only for a family of two adults and 2 children? If so, wouldn't that be unfair on larger families? And smaller ones? How about single parent families? We could argue the ethics on that too, but when the prize is clearly defined in the T&C's, there's nothing you can do about it. But, in this instance, they didn't define anything. Heck, they didn't even make anything vaguely clear!

hazyjo

Have subscribed as interested to hear the outcome. I'm also a 'family' of two. My BF is a dad. I will enter holiday comps where it doesn't specifically say 'children' have to go with you.

Good luck, OP. Keep us informed.

Jx

starrybee

:D

The lady from the Times just called back to say they are going to let me go :T :T :T

Bouncing in my seat right now, I can't quite believe it!

Thank you so much for everyone's support! :grouphug: