This win look dodgy?

Marg2k8

They have replied

https://twitter.com/OxfordFitness/status/769805540125970432

Chyna-s

Very reasonable explanation. I see nothing wrong there.

glittercutcrease

Marg2k8 wrote: »

They have replied

https://twitter.com/OxfordFitness/status/769805540125970432

There's plenty to gain by running dodgy comps, like 500+ new followers https://twitter.com/OxfordFitness/status/768496610166857728 You'd just exclude family and friends to prevent instances such as these. I never entered because of the profile picture

Technoflump

On the face of it it's a reasonable response, but as has just been pointed out the extra followers in building his social media community is what he gains. We only have his word that he used Tweetdraw to select the winner and even then he had the power to vet the winner in case it was controversial before posting it to Twitter.
By allowing friends, family and your own work colleagues to win your own competitions, I feel doesn't help give confidence to anyone entering who isn't part of his own closed group, and may hurt his own ambition in building the trust he needs in the community he is trying to build.

ANGELWINGS

Maybe the best thing we can all do here is to unfollow this person, at least that way he loses some of his followers. After all who wants to be seen supporting dodgy dealings? Not me for one.

sleepyjones

His response does seem reasonable. I'd be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt in this instance ... I see a lot of talk about being "fair" but I don't know if it would be necessarily "fair" to disqualify the people that followed him from the start ... friends and family or not, It might look dodgy, the chances of one of his pals winning when there's 1000 or whatever entries is slim but it could, would and does happen.

Marg2k8

sleepyjones wrote: »

His response does seem reasonable. I'd be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt in this instance ... I see a lot of talk about being "fair" but I don't know if it would be necessarily "fair" to disqualify the people that followed him from the start ... friends and family or not, It might look dodgy, the chances of one of his pals winning when there's 1000 or whatever entries is slim but it could, would and does happen.

I tend to agree, his explanation does sound plausible. It is always possible that around a third of the entries were from friends, colleagues, gym members etc that know him, so say a one in three chance of one of them winning. It is not as if he is denying he knows them or the winning tweet announcement asked for their address or something that would imply he didn't know them.

serenity2012

Chyna-s wrote: »

Very reasonable explanation. I see nothing wrong there.

Odd reply. it is not reasonable. You cannot run a competition and allow friends or colleagues to enter. It's as simple as that. He has to redraw or he faces a backlash.

sleepyjones

serenity2012 wrote: »

Odd reply. it is not reasonable. You cannot run a competition and allow friends or colleagues to enter. It's as simple as that. He has to redraw or he faces a backlash.

When you start a business the first thing you do is get your friends and family to like / signup etc so that you can get your presence out there ... I think it's entirely reasonable that a friend could win a competition, these are the people that have supported him since the beginning, they're not just hopping onto the bandwagon on the off chance of winning something.

I think the only thing unreasonable is that compers with a selfish sense of entitlement will get up on their high horse and 'cause a major fuss about it (Not saying anyone here is this, I mean generally), potentially harming his business just because they didn't win an iPad, or whatever.

If it was a big company then it's probably fair enough but not if it's just a wee guy trying to make a living. If it had happened before then the chances are slim of another friend winning and it would look a bit more like they were "rigged" comps.

Whether or not this is a "dodgy" competition, I don't know ... I would like to think not ... Whether or not he should award the prize to someone else, I don't know ... If he feels he has done nothing wrong then I don't see why he should, to me it seems like an honest competition with an honest winner, Standard terms will state "No one affiliated with the company" which I don't think is the case here.

serenity2012

sleepyjones wrote: »

I think the only thing unreasonable is that compers with a selfish sense of entitlement will get up on their high horse and 'cause a major fuss about it (Not saying anyone here is this, I mean generally), potentially harming his business just because they didn't win an iPad, or whatever.

Any need to start being sarcastic and offensive hun? None that i can see. As said before you do not allow friends, family or colleagues to enter a comp. I don't understand why people thinking this competition is a bit unfair and odd correlates to people having a selfish sense of entitlement. Unless your psychic of course? If he didn't want his little business harmed he shouldn't run dodgy competitions. If you think the fact that a friend/colleague won out of the hundreds or thousands of entries is just coincidental, then theres not much point saying anything else. I personally think it is a blatant predetermined winner.