Voting competitions are back on the Loquax blog today and that can only mean that there’s – unsurprisingly – something gone slightly pear shaped. Direct Holidays and Poundland are the latest brands to come unstuck in the voting competition stakes – and if the activity on their walls is not enough to make brands, promoters and compers seriously consider their involvement in this mechanic then perhaps nothing will.
Poundland – Win £2500 Holiday Vouchers!
To Poundland, first, where they wanted entrants to post a photo of themselves that shows just how much you love Poundland. The winner would pick up £2,500 holiday vouchers and £500 spending money. The competition closed this morning at 9am and the contest page just says “the judging panel is currently looking at all of the fantastic entries”. However, that’s not stopped a little debate breaking out on the Poundland Wall.
One entrant has made quite an empassioned comment to Poundland, even citing links to Loquax’s blog about voting competitions. Other posters have also commented on the unfairness of voting competitions and suggested that Poundland judge the competition on creativity as opposed to number of votes. It may well be, given the competition closure comment, that this is what they’re going to do.
Out Of The Frying Pan….
However, Poundland’s voting competition is a mere storm in a teacup compared to a maelstrom that is engulfing Direct Holidays. In their competition you can win your choice of 3 all inclusive package holidays to Turkey, Majorca or Tunisia. The winner is the person who gets the most votes for their holiday antics story.
From what we can gather it seems that one entrant has been accused of cheating – using Facebook pages like Golden Rule Voting and Bring On The Votes – to boost their position. By the way we’ve named these pages not for compers to use, but for compers to see who’s doing what. Another page mentioned on Poundland is Worldwide Voting Exchange!
Importantly, if you look at the rules of the Direct Holidays competition they do say “entrants are prohibited from using third party vote collecting or vote sharing websites or applications and no automated voting systems or ‘bots’ should be used to submit votes”. This means that they are obviously aware of the problems that arise wit voting competitions and perhaps are monitoring irregularities.
Sabotage?
Anyway, Direct Holidays have listened to concerns from other entrants and disqualifed that person based on their terms. Except there are now posts on the Wall suggesting that the disqualifed entrant has been set up and/or sabotage is afoot! It’s all very confusing and ultimately a mess which ever way you look at it. It’s something we’re pretty sure Direct Holidays would be happier not to be posted all over their wall.
One thing we did spot when looking in to this was that the person who has been disqualifed does have an entry for this competition on Get Online Votes. Interestingly, the entry is made by a friend not by the entrant. Could this be the clue to the mystery? Our advice would be for Direct Holidays (or the person involved) to contact Get Online Votes and ask them for information and IP addresses of the person who made that entry – it might help them get to the bottom of the issue.
By the way, we’re not making any judgements here – we just hope the competition is being run fairly – and hopefully the information and advice above will lead to a resolution amongst those involved. It’s great that Direct Holidays are on the ball about voting exchanges but we’d hate to see someone disqualified if they’ve not done any thing wrong.
What we don’t really understand is that if Direct Holidays have gone to effort and expense to monitor voting issues then we think they may have been better off using their time putting together a way to judge the entries themselves.
All this goes to show that no matter how good you monitor, voting competitions always tend towards farce and chaos. They cause disagreements between people/potential customers/customers, and for the brand expose their wall to all sorts of behaviour which is not a good representation for them. This is especially a massive factor at weekends with many brands who operate a 9am to 5pm week day only social policy.
Our advice to brands is don’t do voting competitions – the advantages surely don’t outweigh the advantages – ever?
Almost every single voting competition I have seen since I started comping has brought nothing but cheating, accusations and plain old nastiness.
In my first months of comping I entered two. One was against the person mentioned in this contest (the Direct Holiday one) … being very new to entering competitions I noticed they’d posted their link on “Bring on the Votes” … when I realised what it was I was gutted but thought well, can’t beat them join them and put my link up too – there were only around 5 entrants and it was only me and the other person who were actually getting votes. In the end I won, but it was a hollow victory because to be honest I know my entry wasn’t the best at all.
The second one was to win a buggy! They picked 5 finalist from all the photos listed and I was chosen as one of them. I was thrilled and promptly started pestering friends and family to vote for me (I hate myself for it now, I’m so sorry!!) – I was in the lead, and then I noticed the other person catching up so I looked at their Facebook page, a conversation with her friend proved that they were setting up fake accounts to vote for herself *sigh* I emailed the company (who didn’t respond), so I continued to ask people to vote and even though she was cheating I still managed to win.
So the two times I entered – I won, but I learnt a lesson from them. They aren’t worth it! It doesn’t matter what the prize is I won’t be tempted again. The best entry rarely wins, you’re up against people who are quite possibly cheating – and in my first month of comping I found myself using a vote page because other entrants were, really I should have contacted the company rather than deciding to use the pages myself. My only excuse is I was very new and very ignorant to all the kinds of problems vote competitions create.
The sort of thing we’ve seen on Facebook this weekend is why I feel voting “comps” are a bigger issue than automated entries. People using an automated entry service pay their money to a company in the hope of winning a prize. OK, so it may reduce the odds of a genuine comper making their own entry winning a prize but the users of these “services” are not breaking any laws.
Voting competitions are turning what were ordinary compers, lke you and me, into CRIMINALS committing FRAUD. I fear the weight of the law will never descend on them but their actions are against the law with identity theft being illegal and fake accounts are against Facebook rules. There is also the rule breaking element who use vote swapping forms and/or purchase votes.
We will always have new people entering our hobby who will be utter innocents, totally unaware of what happens in so many of voting “CONpetitions.” There is, however, no doubt in my mind, no excuse for a seasoned comper to enter a promotion where they know voting is involved then to moan about the unfairness of it all when they don’t win. THE BEST ENTRY FROM THE PERSON WITH THE MOST FRIENDS IS UNLIKELY TO WIN, end of. Please post a message on the promoter’s wall politely warning them of the trouble their comp will cause. Should they take note, as several have, all well and good. If they ignore us they deserve all the problems they get.
I disagree Pam as voting competitions are still a smaller percentage of online comps. But yes voting comps cause plenty of problems that can easily be solved at source.
Auto entry complaints we make are not because of those who pay either – it’s to make promoters aware they exist – that their competitions may get spammed – and with the right knowledge can make decisions regarding their rules and mechanic.
I guess scale of importance of either issue depends on your view point, but to me automated entries effects more comps, promoters and compers than voting competitions.
Update… some posts have been deleted off Direct Holidays’ page.
the very first day Direct Holidays posted their competition i posted a comment asking them to reconsider making it a voting competition, i also said i wouldn’t enter because it was a voting competition. They basically replied saying they had ways on checking the votes and they hoped i would enter future comps. I do feel sorry for the person who’s entry has been sabotaged but to be honest you could see from the beginning that this is the way it would go. And for the very same reason i didnt enter the Poundland one. As much as i would love to win some Holiday vouchers i really wouldnt want to get drawn into these nasty situations. Facebook seems to bring out a very nasty streak in some people. All the cheating, sniping, viciousness and nastiness is getting way out of hand, but i dont have any idea of a solution because it seems some companies wont listen and facebook certainly aren’t interested in sorting out disputes.
As soon as I see a comp being decided by votes I immediately switch off. I always leave a comment stating that these sort of comps only show who has the most Facebook ‘friends’ or uses the best vote software to cheat. It never leads to a winner getting a prize through merit.