"Ticket" Competitions

WalterWall

Having recently returned to comping, I am confused by those competitions which seem to require you to buy "tickets" to enter, although no money is required.  They seem to be a recent phenomenon.  Could someone please explain how they work?

Zinger549

It's a raffle. You get a ticket and they do a draw. If you ticket/number is picked then you win. These sites usually charge for tickets. I think the free comps are to get people on the site. They hope once you enter the free draw you might some tickets for the paid ones.

Comping_Rich

The sites that run them do carry out a live draw on Facebook or other social media platforms. They tend to use Google random number generator to find the winning number, and if the number generated does not match any of the sold or allocated ticket numbers then they generate a new number until they get a winner. This would only happen if all the tickets have not been allocated or sold, if a competition is sold out then whatever number is generated is guaranteed to be a winning number.

As Zinger549 states the offer the free draws as an incentive that you will purchase some of the paid for competitions, some also state that if you do make a purchase over a certain amount as part of the same transaction as the free competition then the prize you win if your number is picked is doubled, e.g. you would win £200 instead of £100 if it was a cash prize.

A note of warning though, the companies also have to offer a free entry method of entering their paid for competitions, the majority do this via a postal entry, however you might find some that have not processed your postal entry, if you query this with them they are likely to say that perhaps your postal entry was lost in the post or some other lame excuse. 

annat

Not for me

mjm3346

annat said:

Not for me

Correct answer, there are so many of these sites because they make so much money for the people that run them - lots of them mention great odds etc while ignoring the ticket price

pate-ci0

If the competitions are honestly run and the free ones are true promotions to encourage folk to access the site, then entering the free comps and NOT being tempted to pay for any others should cause no problems. MSE members have, I hope, a general mindset against paying for anything comp related since that is the ethos of the whole site and I for one have no hesitation in entering a competition that costs me nothing in the vague hope of receiving a WEM sometime in the distant future. Only if you cannot resist some temptation to part with your money in the equally vague hope of winning some desired prize will you have an issue. If the sites make money then good luck to them, as long as they keep on offering free entries for at least half-decent prizes (I would be very grateful for the odd £100).

WalterWall

Thank you everyone.  I think I will be giving them a miss

JamboDP

I won £100 on the 7 days performance site last week and the money was in my bank account the next day.

pate-ci0

JamboDP said:

I won £100 on the 7 days performance site last week and the money was in my bank account the next day.

Brilliant, congrats.

Ms_Dee

JamboDP said:

I won £100 on the 7 days performance site last week and the money was in my bank account the next day.

Congratulations.

I've won a few free competitions from these sites from store credit, accessories and even an Xbox Series S
The companies I won from free competitions and combined prize value averages:
Bearded Baby Entertainment (I don't think they were around long) £330
Trade Tool Giveaways (Usually a freebie or two up every day) £60
CompCity (Usually have at least one active free competition a month and lots of mini store credit giveaways) £35
Easy Living Competitions £10
Gigahertz Giveaways £520

My partner likes to enter some small paid competitions occasionally, not that it should be encouraged, but he has won from Flutterbuzz (I don't think they are around anymore) and he has won a huge values of items from Gigahertz Giveaways and CompCity.