Some more details on another rather scummy one - Dancers Hill House competition run by a Mrs Melanie Walsh... they seemed to be getting some flack on social media for being less than transparent and then just pulled the plug on their website etc.. and seemingly didn't;t announce how much the eventual prize winner actually got - obvs he/she didn't end up winning the house.
Seems like the typical story of couldn't sell the house for the price they wanted - albeit with a twist - note the original house was apparently on the market for 6.25 million:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-5357789/Mansion-Elizabeth-stayed-goes-sale-6-25m.html
But in the competition T&Cs they give it a valuation of 5.25 million - did they suddenly get a reality check re: a more appropriate value for it? apparently not - what they seem to have done is cut off the back garden! Like WTF??? Imagine winning a massive house and then finding out you have no back garden?
Here it is tucked away in the T&Cs:
http://web.archive.org/web/20181201110914/https://www.windancershillhouse.com/faqs/
That does make the new valuation a bit questionable IMO - I mean cutting the back garden off makes it a bit of an odd house to sell and seemingly was already difficult for them to sell in the first place, the cottage they cut away might well be worth close to a million etc.. but I wonder if the resulting main house with no back garden has then been sabotaged in doing this - like if it went to auction would it be more like 3 or 4 million? I mean what buyer looking for a big house in a semi-rural area is going to be happy with the back garden getting cut off? Not something people entering the competition might realise when looking at the nice photos in the main website but a slight knock down for any lucky winner had they sold sufficient tickets. Sure they've still won a big prize etc.. but it still stinks a bit IMO.
Presumably they were looking to keep the cottage and a big chunk of the grounds themselves... and how many paid tickets were they looking to sell? £600,000 at 12.50 each! That's
£7.5 million oh and an admin fee of £1 per ticket too so an
extra £600k for all their admin costs too... so potentially taking in
£8.1 million before "costs" in order to
award a house they claim is worth £5.25 million but might actually be worth substantially less than that given they couldn't sell it previously and given what they've done to it.
They also managed to break their own T&Cs:
OPENING DATE 16th June 2018.
CLOSING DATE 16th December 2018 (or earlier should all of the tickets be sold).
The promoter reserves the right to extend the Competition by a maximum of 6 months.
They ended up extending the competition again to Dec 2019... seemingly breaking their own rules and prompting a complaint to the ASA according to the comment here:
https://www.loquax.co.uk/housecomps/win-dancers-hill-house.htm
[...]"I understand you objected that the promoter of this house raffle had breached the terms and conditions of their promotion by twice extending the end date for entries; also placing the competition in contravention of several of the Advertising Rules and the case precedent of the 2015 Terra Plana ASA Ruling.
I appreciate your concerns about this promotion and I would advise that we have previously received complaints about this issue, raising the same concerns about the change of this promotion’s end date. Extending the end date in the manner done in this promotion is a clear problem under the rules and so unlike with cases which require further investigation by the ASA, where additional commentary or input from a complainant can be necessary to fully understand the issues, we forwarded these complaints directly to our compliance team for them to take direct enforcement action against the advertiser.
Because the competition is still live, I understand we are not seeking Melanie Walsh to close it down now, as that would disadvantage everyone who's entered so far. Rather, our Compliance team have promised to deploy all of their available sanctions simultaneously should the promoter seek to extend the competition once more (you can find further information about the sanctions the ASA has available here).
Compliance have outlined their position and the relevant code rules to the promoter and they trust she's clear on this and where she stands.[...]
And of course when people on their social media (Facebook etc..) complained they seemed to treat the complainants as though they were haters/trolls etc.. and just being negative... when in reality they must have known full well what the financial situation was and that they extended twice in breach of their own rules seems pretty telling.
Of course the prize then gets drawn and the Facebook page, website etc.. disappears and there is no transparency over who the winner is or what amount they actually won.
It does seem that some of these competitions are run very badly and by people who seem to be rather scummy or just rather stupid... the motivation in some cases simply seems to be a delusion that their property isn't actually worth as much as they think and in others (such as the London flat) it seems to be just taking advantage of some mug punters to make a quick buck.
