Sun puzzles - email entry no longer available.

grumpyoldwoman

I do the Sun puzzles every Saturday and have always entered via email, won twice btw, but today when I tried to send the emails they came back saying the address didn't exist. Looking at the entry instructions it now says that you can either post the form, or you can phone or text each answer separately at £1.50 a time, so that's £4.50 a week if you enter all three. The prize amounts haven't gone up to compensate so I won't be entering again. How do others feel about it?

chocoholic123

that's a shame, I will stop entering too

Nige71

Found that out last week after spending about an hour solving all three puzzles. 
I tried to email the answers to enter, only to be notified of the failures due to the address not existing. 
I don't know if The Sun published a notice about it but I didn't see one.
Poor show by The Sun (imho) 
So I've stopped entering too, and with postage rates going up to £1.35 and 85p, no postal entries either. 

grumpyoldwoman

That's weird, I managed to email them last Saturday without them bouncing but I did do them before 10am so they must not have deleted the email address by then. I've just dug last week's Sun out of the recycling and, sure enough, it only says post, phone, or text entries. Made me laugh because above the postal form it says "Entering our prize puzzles is now easier than ever".

Joolski

Are these the Wordsearch, Crossword, and Arroword comps? 

If so, that's a shame - yet more comps we can't enter 'properly' for free  (by that, I mean that I don't class the rip-off cost of stamps qualifying as a "Free" entry).

grumpyoldwoman

Yes they're the ones. With the state of the postal service lately you probably wouldn't get your entry in on time because you only have until the following Friday for it to get there and be opened, even 1st class isn't guaranteed now.

Joolski

grumpyoldwoman said:

Yes they're the ones. With the state of the postal service lately you probably wouldn't get your entry in on time because you only have until the following Friday for it to get there and be opened, even 1st class isn't guaranteed now.

Yes, you are so right.  I try not to use Royal Mail at all now - the whole postal service is a mess.

So, we add these comps to the others that have had their 'Free' entry options removed. ☹️

tghe-retford

It's only going to get worse as the price of stamps continue to go up and the service gets worse. It won't be too long before the cost of postage is higher than paying for an entry. At which point it will make sense for everyone to have postal as the "free" entry route because it'll be cheaper to enter via all the paid and profitable routes while still remaining legal.

Joolski

tghe-retford said:

It's only going to get worse as the price of stamps continue to go up and the service gets worse. It won't be too long before the cost of postage is higher than paying for an entry. At which point it will make sense for everyone to have postal as the "free" entry route because it'll be cheaper to enter via all the paid and profitable routes while still remaining legal.

True.  And maybe I'm thick, but I still don't understand how postal entries are classed as "Free"!??   If I'm paying for a stamp, what makes that any different from paying for a phone call or text?  I would still have to spend money on entering, by all of these routes.  I just don't get it. 🤬

marcia_

 I still can't bring myself to enter the scum competitions and now they just trying to make money off them I'm glad they will lose entrants

mjm3346

Joolski said:

tghe-retford said:

It's only going to get worse as the price of stamps continue to go up and the service gets worse. It won't be too long before the cost of postage is higher than paying for an entry. At which point it will make sense for everyone to have postal as the "free" entry route because it'll be cheaper to enter via all the paid and profitable routes while still remaining legal.

True.  And maybe I'm thick, but I still don't understand how postal entries are classed as "Free"!??   If I'm paying for a stamp, what makes that any different from paying for a phone call or text?  I would still have to spend money on entering, by all of these routes.  I just don't get it. 🤬

"Free" does not and never has meant zero cost - there must be no additional charge to enter a competition on top of the normal charge for using a service be that post, local phone call etc. (in many cases for multiple entries it already works out cheaper to enter on-line rather than send several postal entries - winhappy £4 for 8 entries through to £20 for 120 entries). Don't be surprised if at some point the weekly magazines become postal with an online fee to enter (depends if a sales loss would be off set by extra income)