Question to UK/Eire PCA members

Zyph · Post by **Zyph** » Fri Sep 21, 2001 12:35 am

I found this in a T3 magazine (Imported UK version) from my local US bookstore. It says only UK/Eire Residents can participate though. It says that the holder gets a "gold star prize", but I don't know if anyone is interested since it is a pay number and I know 5 pounds for a phone call is pretty expensive (but it also says that the prize is "substantially higher than cost of call"). I enlarged the "fine print" about the rates. If anyone is interested, let me know and I can rush it out to you. You will have to get it to the "claim office" by September 30 though. Hey, if it's money, you can always share (yea, wishful thinking, but I would like SOMEONE to win instead of it going to waste.)

Front of card:

Back of Card:

Fine print of Front of card about phone call:

If you would like a closer pic of anything, please post here, ICQ me or e-mail me and I'll upload it ASAP.

Haircut · Post by **Haircut** » Fri Sep 21, 2001 5:39 am

Those things are a pile of crap.

Your prize that is worth more than the cost of a call will be a holiday to somewhere providing you book it with their official travel agents and fly at a certain time with an airline that they choose paying the cost of the flights yourself.

Basically it's a con

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Fri Sep 21, 2001 6:36 am

Congradulations Mr. & Mrs. OCCUPANT. You are receiving this special delivery letter (which, curiously, was sent via bulk postage) to notify you that you have ALMOST DEFINATELY, POSITIVELY, VERY NEARLY won the grand prize in our drawing (which, curiously, has yet to be held, so how we can promise you anything I don't know).

All you have to do to CONFIRM your GUARANTEED GRAND PRIZE (umm, assuming we actually draw your number of course) is to [FILL IN THE FOLLOWING: give us money, give us your name and address so we can give it to other marketers so they know you're a sucker too, waste your time, buy some worthless crap, call a 900 number at a cost of $20 a minute, be annoyed by one of our salesman, give us your first born male child].

They're all scams, most BARELY legal. The ones you get offered via the internet generally aren't legal (HINT: If someone tries to offer you a deal, or tells you you've won a sweepstakes in an email, and his return address is a hotmail account - be a BIT suspicious).

Kakarot · Post by **Kakarot** » Fri Sep 21, 2001 8:22 am

Be especially suspicious of anything where you have to spend money or send them money in the first place. ANY legit drawing is in the realm of no purchase necessary.

poop · Post by **poop** » Fri Sep 21, 2001 9:30 am

In America, any nation-wide sweepstakes must be available without paying anything. Else, it could be construed as inter-state gambling, which is REALLY nasty to deal with legally.

Haircut · Post by **Haircut** » Fri Sep 21, 2001 9:43 am

I'm not sure of the law here (I think gambling law is less strict than in USA), but on those things you can just send off and they will send you your prize back, the £5 phone call is just to find out what prize you have won.

Zyph · Post by **Zyph** » Sat Sep 22, 2001 1:46 am

Normally in America you don't have to pay a fee (long distance call or otherwise) to win a prize. But haircut might be right, calling the number isn't 100% necissary, but if you want to find out your prize, you gotta call. (It would drive me nuts anyway). Is 5 pounds alot? From the last conversion I remember, that is about $12 American, but this is just a guess-timate.

Erp, I just read the 'rules' and it says (referring to the "call"):

(sorry about the big size of the image, I wanted it to be readable)

So you CAN send a snail mail to get the "personal code" but it wouldn't be enough time for this sitution. It would only work if I had found this at the beginning of the month. (Next time I get this Magazine, I'll keep an eye on the date and maybe we can catch it in time.) If someone really wanted to, they could use these rules to get both a game card AND a claim code for the next contest (which seems to be monthly).