New at online competitions

Pickle29

Hi
I'm new to this, but wanted to know - do you give your mobile no and normal email address in all your competitions or do you have a seperate email? Also, some competitions like best or chat, want you to give your email for other competitions coming up/marketing etc and if you don't leave your mobile, you can't enter the competition you intended to!

If you give your normal mobile ( only got 1 mobile but do have several email addresses), do you get inundated with rubbish?

I have noticed some people are entering hundreds of competitions a day, I've only entered a few because I am very wary of drowning in spam!

Advice needed please x

Luckyone

Hello Pickle29 :hello:

Welcome to the forum.

Some people use their normal mobile phone number & some people buy a really cheap one & just keep it to enter competitions, if you do thsi remember to check it every so often if you don't keep in turned on.

I personally did use a mobile just for comps but found I did not get any odd calls so have gone to my normal mobile number.

I read somewhere on the huge MSE forums that Gmail is the best email at putting spam in the spam folder so I do have a Gmail account only for entering competitions & it is really good at putting spam in the trash folder, though have a look to make sure nothing else goes in there.

I don't know which Best Or Chat comps need you to leave your mobile number is it the daily ones? If so then you don't have to leave your phone number just click you are not interested.

LO xxx

nicky200991_2

Hiya, in answer to your question i would say it's completely up to you. I use my own mobile number but have an email address solely for competition because you tend to accumulate a lot of junk emails and i wouldn't want that mixed in with my personal emails. In most competitions there are tick boxes you can tick to say you want to opt out of being contacted via phone/email.
I've been entering for a couple of years now and i've only recieved a handful of marketing calls so i wouldn't say they hound you.
Good luck with the comps! x

System

It depends on the company/competition to whether or not I put my phone number. If it isn't mandatory then I leave it blank...if I need to enter my number but they don't have any 'opt out' boxes then I enter my number but miss out the last digit so it still goes through.

I also have a gmail email addy for my comps then hotmail for my main. Works out great that way. Wouldn't want to mix them together. I can get up to 100 junk/subscription emails a day!! But because I never get anything else in that account it doesn't bother me.

In the years I have been entering them I've probably only had two or three calls. x

StrayCat

I use my regular mobile number and don't generally have many marketing calls - probably only ever 5 in total (over 3 years). I do have a separate email address though, would never use my personal one for competitions as there is an awful lot of spam to sift through.

emg

on the ones like best and chat they always have a 'no thanks' option on their extra marketing questions.

Hippy110

Would agree with the above re phone calls - I use a separate number but never leave it unless required and have had very few marketing calls or texts (and 1 winning telephone call!).

E-mail use a separate address and really need to do a good trawl through to unsubscribe to lots of newsletters etc. Probably getting c1000+ per week so need to keep on top of deletions. My own fault for accepting e-mails even when not mandatory.

Travel companies worst for sending brochures in post so am especially careful re opt-outs to point of avoiding some holiday comps if can't opt out of post.

I never opt in for third party marketing because then no idea where info will end up (of course still make mistakes and spot error just after pressing submit... grrrr).

robbies_gal

i use my normal mobile-have had a few calls over the years but i dont answer most of them anyway if its important they'll leave a mesage it doesnt really bother me

mh1923

I do not have my phone number in Roboform, and if it's required, I just put a 0. Sometimes it recognizes that it isn't a proper phone number, and then I just put in the exchange number, followed by six 0s. It might disqualify me from some comps, but I'm likely to never know about that. I also don't enter comps where it specifically says they notify winners by phone. We're very private people, and our phone barely rings - we want to keep it that way!