ITV breached Ofcom competition rules over postal votes

eyeballpaul

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-55218398

Didn't affect me as I never do postcard competitions, but may affect a few here?

ITV breached broadcasting rules with several of its viewer competitions, media watchdog Ofcom has ruled.

Some viewers who participated in competitions using a postal entry had "no chance of being selected to win", Ofcom said.

Competitions on shows like Good Morning Britain, Lorraine, This Morning, Loose Women and Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway were all involved.

More than 41,000 entries between 2016 and 2019 were affected.

Competitions on La Vuelta and X Factor: The Band were also found to be in breach of the broadcasting code.

Azzer007

Don't forget it was ITV that got a rather large fine (£5 million or so I think!?) about 10+ years back for rigging their premium rate phonecall competition entries and giving prizes out to specific people and such, if memory serves.

I never did the postal-entry routes for ITV, and stopped entering them when they stopped doing the free-entry routes online for them all, sadly.  Shame to hear that those who had been taking the free entry route had no chance.

mjm3346

thread here from when ITV "turned themselves in"

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6179731/not-again-itv#latest

"Shame to hear that those who had been taking the free entry route had no chance"

Less then 1% of competitions were impacted

cooldude255220

Just to be clear, it wasn't every postal entry that was affected. 

ITV said it "deeply regretted" the errors and that the number of affected competitions represented fewer than 1% since 2014.

smitchy73

I know this was discussed previously too, however, I also wondered that the human error had the details on a spreadsheet, why not contact the people on the spreadsheets and recompense them, even though they didn't actually make money from the postal entries, it's still pretty awful.  I know I enter at least two postal entries for most of the ITV comps, so I'm miffed with it.

smitchy73

Perhaps, this could get reported up the food chain to Martin and he can take this up on our behalf, seen he's in there a lot of the time?!  Fight for us Martin, make ITV pay!

chazthesinger

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/dec/07/thousands-of-itv-competition-entrants-had-no-chance-of-winning
Sadly I suspect we wont get our postal costs back unless we form together and apply en-masse. Deeply disappointed with this news.

swatmough

I now know why they have not called me....Yet

chazthesinger

If you wanted to try for a refund you could email or write to. . 
carolyn.mccall@itv.com

For the attention of Ms Carolyn McCall CEO.

ITV plc

2 Waterhouse Square,

138 - 142 Holborn,

London,

EC1N 2AE

bmbm365

So just for my understanding, they should have a record of postal votes right? We give name and phone number and they count how many entries we have? Or do they have to get rid of that data for GDPR?

rlongcake

Hopefully this means they'll take care to make sure postal votes are counted properly in the future to stop this kind of bad press again?