Competitions from both sides of the fence
By Tracey Kifford from WowThankYou. co. uk
Can you remember where you were on Thursday 15 June 2006? I can. At approximately 12:20 I was getting ready to drive to an acupuncture appointment in mid- Wales, about a 40 minute car ride from my home on the coast in West Wales. The phone rang – I didn’ t really want to take it as I didn’ t want to be late – but I’ m SO glad that I did. It was the Daily Express calling to inform me that I’ d won a £ 30,000 convertible car … wow! I had entered the competition the previous weekend by text, having seen it while visiting my parents. I was 30 weeks pregnant with my first child at the time, and I had been an avid‘ comper’ for about two years. It was the pinnacle win of my hobby, and alas my commitment to it fell along the wayside when my daughter was born and I ran out of spare time! The hobby of competitions becomes addictive. I remember entering 200 postcard competitions in a single evening( golly, think of the cost of doing that now!) – and when I posted them all, I felt a huge wave of achievement … and the excitement and anticipation kicked in that I could be sent a winning letter with some wonderful goodies. Over the two years I won more than a car – prizes ranged from a £ 1200 Currys voucher, 2 x coffee machines, a crate of wine, a range oven, a weekend at Gleneagles in Scotland, a toaster, kettle, Kenwood food mixer, a camera, a camcorder, lots of baby goodies, hair care items( brushes, shampoo, straighteners) … I loved awaiting the postman each day! Why am I telling you all this? Well, I wanted to explain what it’ s like when you spot a competition on a website or in a magazine, when you are a comper … I’ ve lost count of the number of competitions I’ ve ripped out of magazines at the hairdressers, or items I’ ve needed to buy in order to enter a prize draw – as I said, it’ s an addictive pastime, and you want to enter everything you can find. My hobby introduced me to brands I’ d never heard of before, took me to websites I’ d never visited before, read product descriptions in order to answer a question … and I was never alone in doing this … A typical competition on the internet gets over 6,000 entries. 6,000 people who, like me, want to win the item on offer. And if we need to find an answer before we can enter, we look for it – carefully, in order to ensure it is correct. There are thousands of people in the UK scanning websites every day looking for competitions to enter – and there are online competition portals and forums that pretty much tell you where to go. OK, people may not hang around on the site for very long post-entering, as when you’ re in the‘ competition zone’ you are pretty much looking to enter as many as you can in the time available. But you do get to know these websites and you remember them and revisit them when you need to purchase something specific. I remember being introduced to the website Firebox. com this way – I
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