I see that the competitions section on Ozbargain has become popular. I'm always sceptical about entering as I really don't want to be stalked by the promoters of the competition. I'm too busy checking out bargains to be troubled by advertising! What is your experience competition enterers?
Competitions - Do Those of You Who Enter Get Stalked by The Promoters?
LXE3 on 17/06/2016 - 21:46
Last edited 17/06/2016 - 21:47
Last edited 17/06/2016 - 21:47
Comments
As Xoom said, emails are fine - they just get deleted. When I started entering competitions, I set up a separate email address just for competitions - I'm so glad I did because I get a huge amount of promotional emails/newsletters etc!
Regarding phone calls - There are certain competitions that I always avoid because the promoter is well-known for telemarketing (Wyndham, Cohort Digital etc), or the T&Cs state that entrant's details will be passed on to companies overseas etc. I find OzBargain is pretty good in that regard ie. if a competition looks dodgy, members usually call it out and warn others.
I also try to avoid posting those types of competitions, or if I do, I mention that the T&Cs state that entrants may be contacted by phone etc.
Out of all the competitions I've entered, I've only ever received telemarketing calls from a wine company (I forget which one), which isn't too bad as I've been entering competitions for a few years now.
EDIT:
This is an example of the T&Cs from an Australian website that runs various competitions. I avoid posting these competitions here, as I imagine once each person's data has been passed on to companies overseas, it would be very hard to be removed from the various call lists…Once you register with <site removed> you agree to have those details validated and consent to Marketing Punch, its clients, Communication Centres International and third parties being able to send you communications via email, post or telephone. The collection of data by Marketing Punch through registration on third party sites may lead to your data also being held by that third party site.
You should be aware that third parties including marketing partners and suppliers to whom your information may be disclosed might be based in countries outside Australia whose laws provide for a different standard of protection for your personal data than that provided under Australian law.
The third party clients and sponsors are located worldwide, including:
Singapore
Philippines
Israel
India
Spain
Canada
Switzerland
United States of America
France
United Kingdom
Germany
Yup this. Always read the t&cs to see if they're going to pass on your details
I just want to say a massive thank you Katie, you post so many comps and don't really get your dues. You are an oz bargain legend in the same status as TA
Thank you tassieeagle :)
Which site Katie? :/ (pm me if you prefer)
It's http://www.offerx.com.au (Lol, please don't anyone go and sign up if you're worried about marketing calls!)
There are 10 competitions on there at the moment and it's promoted as being "Australia's Leading Competition Site" and "All Deals Tested"
I recently went in an English competition and my in-box was suddenly getting hammered with spam by English companies. marking them as phishing scam quickly put an end to that.
Occasionally I get calls from telemarketers (once a fortnight) who use the abbreviated form of my name, which is used when entering competitions (less typing -yeah, I know autocomplete).
I enter a lot of comps and the only time I had a call was some super broker who just wouldn't go away, kept calling me and I had to be quite rude in the end to get rid of them
never. blackberry, nokia, microsoft
I use spamgourmet.com, each competition gets its own email address, each address will forward 10 emails then expire. It's really simple and I know who is passing addresses on.
Phone number is not so easy so I try to avoid giving it and actively discourage anyone who calls it.
Use my everyday email and personal mobile lol Gmail filters everything out anyway, plus I'm a lil picky on what I enter.
Have only been bugged once for a scholarship one, no one else bothers :)
Wow, neg voted coz I said I don't use a secondary email to enter… Some people are just sad
I do the same as you, use primary gmail and it doesa great job of filtering the crap. Here have a +1
Reviving an old thread.
I've only just started hitting the comps, have done maybe 50 in the last few days so I'm going hard. I thought I'd add my 2c.
At first I've been using my everyday email and set up an extensive filter to put it all in a "competitions" label but I've just changed my approach today.
Created a new "competitions" gmail account, all new comps use that email and are forwarded to my everyday email within the filter already set up.
So I still get the emails but now I don't have to tweak the filters each time, this controls exactly how the emails will come in, they can't bombard me and if something crazy does happen I can just disable the forwarding rule.
I've just set up Youtube, Twitter and Gleam app to be linked to that new junk competitions gmail account.
The idea is everything will be linked to that account and then just forwarded to me, much more control.
I used my real phone number, not much can be done about that but I have a good spam screening app and the ability to block future nuisances with ease so not worrying about that.
I still am fine with just having 1 email address for everything lol but I can understand wanting to filter it. I just file that under too hard basket, I like having auto-fill set to my details and just changing it if need be
Oh yeah I hear you, it's borderline too hard basket for me too. At least now I can just enter anything I like without setting up new filters. But yeah it was a bit of effort getting this all set up. Was tempted not to bother with it all.
These days gmail is just so good at filtering out the crap :) I do check my spam folder (quite often you'll find Congratulations emails end up in there), but it's nice to see your main account get a Congrats email :)
I've only been playing for 2 or 3 days. I've probably entered around 60 now but to my knowledge only 5 or so have expired so far (of which I've won nothing yet) so we'll see in the coming days. 90% of them expire in late March so hopefully I win something…
Someone wrote a post years ago about how a guy overseas entered 100 competitions and won 4 small prizes for his effort so by those odds I'll surely win at least 1 prize, maybe 2. Anything more I'll consider good luck. I'd rather a GTX 1060 graphics card over a $9.90 kids book but the odds on the good stuff are so slim.
How about yourself, any luck?
@Click_It: I've not tried of late but about ten years ago I randomly entered a 25 words New Idea competition and won a $25k holiday for 4 to Denmark. That inspired me to enter more but no luck since. Best of luck with it!
Talk about starting with a bang! I've entered lots of the holiday comps, many of which were 25 words so that'll be interesting to see how they go. To be honest I'm not expecting to win anything big but won't be surprised if I win some kids books or toys that I entered into.
FWIW, of those >60 comps I entered, most have since ended and I won 0 prizes. Lady luck nowhere to be seen.
All i get are emails which just get deleted. I use a non descript email address anyway.