Omaze - Thoughts & my suggestion

andrew71

Has anyone used or looked at the website Omaze? What are your thoughts on them? 
I came across them seeing the TV advert to win a house in the UK (the actual house they are giving away is about 4 miles away from where I live). The website for the house prize is based in UK. But their main website is based in USA.
They offer prizes such as holidays,  entertainment bundles, meet celebrities and cars. You can enter by donating to the relevant charity for that competition in donations from $5 to $100. The more you donate obviously the more number of entries you have. Alternatively you can enter without donating. This is the way I've been entering. 
At the moment I've been entering the car competitions. The reason being is that they will ship the prize to most countries including UK. If the winner lives outside the US then the winner is eligible to pay for any taxes etc. But, if the winner doesn't wish to take the car as the prize then a cash alternative is offered. This usually works out at around 75% of the car price.  Of course you are getting less value of the car price but 75% of a car worth $50,000 is still worth entering.
If you are looking to enter the competitions I'd recommend setting up an account (no payment details are required unless you wish to make a donation) . The reason being is that you can see how many entries you have had. The site doesn't inform you that you have gone over the allocated free entries for that competition. Whereas if you set up an account you can see when you have reached your limit.
Free entries are worth 1000 entries, equal to a donation of $100. 
Allowance for each competition range from 6000 to 25,000. 

ypudding

I personally see it as a bit of a scam and certainly misleads many ticket buyers that are/could be ineligible for the prize pay out even if their ticket number comes out!!! It's all hidden in Omaze's terms and conditions that I'm pretty sure most people don't read before purchasing tickets.  Terms and conditions that are quite concerning and frankly disgusting. These terms include the word "potential winner" for several reasons.  For example you have 96 hours to respond to their winning EMAIL notification, they don't have to follow that up with a phone call!!! you then have a couple of days deadline to complete the necessary paperwork!!! Part of that paperwork is to allow Omaze to carry out a criminal background check on the "potential winner" and to do a character assassination. Should a "potential winner" not pass their checks Omaze don't have to disclose their findings and have discretion to not award the prize!!! imagine if people winning the national lottery had to face the same discretional scrutinisation with the end result they were not awarded their prize. Steer clear of this one 

Comping_Rich

I did read on Lucky Learners Facebook group that ...

From 25 August 2021, UK residents (along with those from many other countries including Australia and Italy) are no longer eligible to enter the prize draws at www.omaze.com (this covers paid AND free entries).

UK residents can enter the house giveaways at the UK specific site www.omaze.co.uk (and send 'free' postal entries for these) but sadly won't be able to do our 6,000 free entries on the worldwide site any more.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/luckylearners/posts/4261392990606182/

Basil_Bruschetta

Virtually all of the house raffles are a con and most never end up with the house being given out but some compensation instead but Omaze are the only ones to acually guarantee the house is given but only 15% of your donation goes to charity and to be honest i would like to find out if all of those winners are connected to the company or charity in some way as some have suggested over on Trustpilot and other review sites but Omaze does seem legit i have put a tenner on the last three draws myself!

One-Eye

Omaze are run by little grey aliens from the planet takamaitrek 2
They have abducted the previous occupants of the houses and put them in zoos to study them on their home planet, and the best way to get more occupants for future transport is to raffle off the houses.
Have you noticed that all the prize houses are within 25m of a 5G mast - which proves the 5G network is an alien communication system.
All the prizewinners so far have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19.

It must be true - I've seen it on twitter and tiktok.

mjm3346

Basil_Bruschetta said:

 Omaze does seem legit 

Given that they offer "free entry" to avoid the various restrictions of the gambling act they are unlikely to risk their money maker by being dodgy (in any small way) 

Coffeekup

Personally I can't stand how false the adverts come across, so have never been tempted to hand over cash for a £4 million mansion on the coast, which they throw in a free car? What do you mean "throw In a free car"?

Anyway I watched the following links a few months ago...

https://youtu.be/6n61IIDAdrM

https://youtu.be/1bX1UIC05O8

Jazmeen

I used to enter by post too but then one day I rang the company that they use for these (it's on their website)  I asked them how would a postal entry win as it doesnt generate an entry code which is what gets published on the website  for people to check if they have won. The guy explained it clearly that they receive the postal entries  and batch them up in batches of 100 (they dont open or enter them into the system). Postal entries dont get any entry code apart from the number from 1 to however they receive. He said 20,000 sometimes. He had never seen a postal entry win big and the draw which I was asking for, he saw only 2 entries win some small small vouchers but never thought there is a chance of winning the big ones with these. This was my conversation with him. He also told me tickets sold were over 25 million tickets with minimum being £10/ticket.   When I thought of this and think the house is only worth 3.5 million, just made me think 🤔 

PaulBrighton2021

Sounds just too good to be true.. though main concern re postal entries is all that personal info on a postcard, totally  unprotected.. 

mjm3346

If the regulators were that bothered it would be easy to stop - just introduce a maximum prize fund value that the "free entry" route exemption can be used for, say £500,000 (or less) which should be enough for most ITV ones etc but no good for Omaze I read that these draws avg 15% for charity, compared to the lotto about 40% the same for the various individual charity lotteries and 33% for the postcode one, so don't buy tickets for Omaze if helping charity is the main aim.

Boom_Boom

I am sceptical that these free entries are included in the draw and also that there is no audit process.  They should be forced to have 1 online entry which can be verified as been received.  

I am surprised that they want to bother with postal entries as it seems more trouble than it is worth to administer them, which they probably don't do anyway.  I guess that is the idea though to make it as difficult as possible to enter to put people off which is why they don't bother with free online entry.