Anyone won from a postal entry with TV competitions? 25 May 2018 at 9:14PM in Compers chat corner 16 replies 25.6K views

1972

In 2009 I was so lucky to win a holiday to Florida with the Alan Titchmarsh show.


A couple of years after that I won a PlayStation.


Both these were with online free entries.


Since the online Free entries have stopped, I have been sending postal entries.


Has anyone won any comps by postal entries or am I wasting my time and stamps?!

ikkle87

I've heard of a few, infact there is a winner of one featured in this months issue of compers news:


''After a couple of years with very few prizes my luck has changed. Five small prizes recently and £40,000 and a £5,000 bespoke holiday from ITV!



I sent just one postcard for the competition, which of course I read about in Compers News. I still can't believe it, neither I'm sure can my bank manager''

KJ1986

Check out this post from the I Won! I won! I won! forum just today:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?p=74327970

mjm3346

1972 wrote: »

In 2009 I was so lucky to win a holiday to Florida with the Alan Titchmarsh show.


A couple of years after that I won a PlayStation.


Both these were with online free entries.


Since the online Free entries have stopped, I have been sending postal entries.


Has anyone won any comps by postal entries or am I wasting my time and stamps?!

Valid entries have the same chance of winning whatever the entry method but those chances are very slim - from another thread where someone was talking about paying to enter

My advice would be not to waste your money, ITV have over 750,000 paid entries per week for their competitions and when you take the free entries into account probably well over a million entries - if ITV were returning in prizes the same percentage of the money they take in that lotto does (which itself is very poor) they should be paying out around £600,000 week or more.

If for £2 someone offered a choice of picking one or three envelopes from 100,000 for a chance to win £10,000 why would anybody choose to pick just one envelope - but compared to other things you could do with the money paying to enter with ITV is like picking only one envelope.

1972

mjm3346 wrote: »

Valid entries have the same chance of winning whatever the entry method but those chances are very slim - from another thread where someone was talking about paying to enter

Yes I look at it like that sometimes, but then remind myself that it only takes one postcard and that could be mine!

1972

KJ1986 wrote: »

Check out this post from the I Won! I won! I won! forum just today:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?p=74327970

Oh, thank you - things like that make me carry on doing it.

mjm3346

1972 wrote: »

Yes I look at it like that sometimes, but then remind myself that it only takes one postcard and that could be mine!

It could be and at least with just a stamp it is simply a poor value gamble compared to the horrendous value of the full price paid ones.

inittogether

I worry about the likelihood of postcards winning. Are they really going to manually enter the details of each postcard into a database so it has a chance of winning?

Or will they once in a blue moon pull a winner from a pile of postcards rather than the paid entries? Hmmm.

mjm3346

inittogether wrote: »

I worry about the likelihood of postcards winning. Are they really going to manually enter the details of each postcard into a database so it has a chance of winning?

Or will they once in a blue moon pull a winner from a pile of postcards rather than the paid entries? Hmmm.

From another thread - it would take almost no time

We regularly capture data in any volumes from a variety of media including:... competition entries...

data capture is split across two locations, each providing connectivity and contingency for the other in the event of a major system failure....

We have the capability to process data via the traditional method of keyboard input; by scanning; through the use of automated data capture and data recognition systems

inittogether

Sorry MJM, where is that quote from? Does ITV etc confirm that postcard entries are electronically captured so that they have the same chance of winning as digitally paid texts etc? They must choose a winner digitally at random, I would have thought. Cheers.

mjm3346

inittogether wrote: »

Sorry MJM, where is that quote from? Does ITV etc confirm that postcard entries are electronically captured so that they have the same chance of winning as digitally paid texts etc? They must choose a winner digitally at random, I would have thought. Cheers.

That's a quote originally from the company that handled the entries (may still do) and this is a quote from ofcom

ITV operates an independently developed winner selector tool under licence from a third party.
This is known as 'Winner Selector’ and is a market leading solution used for managing many
competitions across the UK. The Winner Selector works by taking in all entries to a competition
from each entry route, and assigning a unique random number to every entry. This is done
independently of the original entry method, and assures that each entry has the same chance of
being selected, irrespective of the method of entry.

but regardless of how they chose a winner every valid entry must have the same chance and it doesn't make any difference to them what entry method the winner uses as long as they keep making the very large profits that they do on competition entries.


In their accounts from a few years ago they were quoting an actual number of 40,000,000 PAID competition entries a year, since then I haven't noticed them quote a number anymore but all the accounts since then have included something like this which is from the accounts just published

Elsewhere in Direct to Consumer our
competitions have performed well across
the schedule with continued growth, and
development of the competition portal

it is simply not worth them putting this income at risk (again) by not selecting the winners properly.