Cheated in Facebook competition

Heart Break Kid

Just to point out, these competitions are explicitly against Facebook terms & conditions. Its just to hard to police as such I don't think Facebook would care that much.

njs030

Heart Break Kid wrote: »

Just to point out, these competitions are explicitly against Facebook terms & conditions. Its just to hard to police as such I don't think Facebook would care that much.

I was just about to say this.
Report what happened to Facebook and they will investigate and possibly shut down the page.

Grayditch

I'm almost 100% sure all likes are public and easy to see/gather. Comments/Shares etc are another story. I also manage a lot of pages and I've done away with any share promotions, but I highly doubt there are any hidden "likes".

notjustsweet

notjustsweet wrote: »

I was just about to say this.
Report what happened to Facebook and they will investigate and possibly shut down the page.

Afaik only competitions that require you to share or tag your friends to enter are banned. This was just 'most likes win' no other requirements. Someone else posted Facebook's T&Cs about competitions earlier in the thread.

njs030

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Afaik only competitions that require you to share or tag your friends to enter are banned. This was just 'most likes win' no other requirements. Someone else posted Facebook's T&Cs about competitions earlier in the thread.

Oh OK sorry!

lifeandtimes

http://touch.boards.ie/thread/2057690267/1/#post102188250

I started a thread months ago about pages not actually announcing winners of contests.

Seems like it's not considered fraud or anything illegal if you don't pay etc.

Doesn't mean it's not morraly wrong but not much cam be done

lifeandtimes

lifeandtimes wrote: »

http://touch.boards.ie/thread/2057690267/1/#post102188250

I started a thread months ago about pages not actually announcing winners of contests.

Seems like it's not considered fraud or anything illegal if you don't pay etc.

Doesn't mean it's not morraly wrong but not much cam be done

Legally, you might be right, but I'm hoping the company won't want to risk generating more negative PR over this by continuing to lie and refusing to engage with me. Sadly this whole controversy has already spoiled the end of what could have been a very successful promotional campaign!

Seve OB

Heya Pirate Queen

we are running a facebook competition at the moment. If you like and share our page, i can make sure you win the prize

PS, this is for real, and I won't be doing anyone out of a prize as we have a number of them to give away

Seve OB

Seve OB wrote: »

Heya Pirate Queen

we are running a facebook competition at the moment. If you like and share our page, i can make sure you win the prize

PS, this is for real, and I won't be doing anyone out of a prize as we have a number of them to give away

Haha, have you read the posts above about like and share competitions being against Facebook's rules? :P

irishmoss

Deleted User wrote: »

Legally, you might be right, but I'm hoping the company won't want to risk generating more negative PR over this by continuing to lie and refusing to engage with me. Sadly this whole controversy has already spoiled the end of what could have been a very successful promotional campaign!

Leave a review about it on the companies FB page. This can't be removed by the page owner and they would have to hide the FB review page altogether. Or post to your timeline and tag them in it. once word starts spreading they will contact you quickly enough!

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This post has been deleted.

FAILSAFE 00

Before going mad on the ole reviews make contact with the company this PR business is representing and explain the situation and send them all the relevant evidence you have and give them time to respond.

Gatling

Id be of the the opinion you learnt a life lesson ,
The problem I see is if they say the competition ended at midnight on the 31-7-17 but nobody was admin the on the page at that time and nobody checked the page till noon on the 1-8-17 that means people would have been capable of voting till the winner was announced ,
Which looks like that actually happened ,

I think your wasting your time trying to force a change

FAILSAFE 00

FAILSAFE 00 wrote: »

Before going mad on the ole reviews make contact with the company this PR business is representing and explain the situation and send them all the relevant evidence you have and give them time to respond.

I'll be keeping any kind of public campaign against them to the absolute last option. I really would prefer to settle this in a civil manner so the course of action you've suggested is what I've been following!

Gatling wrote: »

Id be of the the opinion you learnt a life lesson ,
The problem I see is if they say the competition ended at midnight on the 31-7-17 but nobody was admin the on the page at that time and nobody checked the page till noon on the 1-8-17 that means people would have been capable of voting till the winner was announced ,
Which looks like that actually happened ,

I think your wasting your time trying to force a change

Funnily enough I was also winning at midnight of the day the competition was supposed to end...they specified an exact end time the morning the competition was supposed to end so they should have had someone there to check the votes at that time.

I don't think standing up for what is right is a waste of time. If it was just me hard done by I'd probably let it go but I feel awful for my friends who really got into the competition and spent a lot of time promoting it among their friends for it to end the way it did.

Seve OB

Deleted User wrote: »

Haha, have you read the posts above about like and share competitions being against Facebook's rules? :P

nope, read a few posts then went no further
i'm not really into facebox tbh. someone else does it for us. i did try before and can tell you it was impossible to trace all the likes and shares so the only way we pick winners nowadays is to run a comp and people have to post a comment, then we pick at random

anyway, if you use taxis and fancy a family pass to GPO Witness let me know

https://www.facebook.com/nrctaxi/photos/a.148957021807120.34010.137181429651346/1401266363242840/?type=3

Gatling

[Deleted User] wrote: »

If it was just me hard done by I'd probably let it go but I feel awful for my friends who really got into the competition and spent a lot of time promoting it among their friends for it to end the way it did.

They liked a post and got a lot of others to do so
Hardly done anything and they lost out unless they were to share in the prize they didn't

Gatling

Gatling wrote: »

They liked a post and got a lot of others to do so
Hardly done anything and they lost out unless they were to share in the prize they didn't

:rolleyes: Never said they did lose out, but they are disappointed and angry on my behalf, and I think they deserve an apology as much as I do. God forbid I have enough respect for my friends to see them as more than just likes!

Received an email from the PR company with a letter attached from the company behind the competition. Didn't address anything about the private likes lie they tried to feed me, basically just said 'we're right' with no explanation.

Next step will be a complaint to the advertising standards board I guess!

L1011

Deleted User wrote: »

Next step will be a complaint to the advertising standards board I guess!

They can't do anything other. Completely powerless.

L1011

L1011 wrote: »

They can't do anything other. Completely powerless.

I'm going to try maintain a line of communication with the company also. I want an explanation and an apology.

JaMarcusHustle

Re: private likes - I was under the impression that you still saw the total number of likes, but that if you clicked into them to see who liked, it wouldn't show those who were private (but that the number of likes still includes them).

i.e. basically the exact same as comments. Will tell you how many there is, but only show you those who aren't private.

Mr.S

Mr.S wrote: »

They won't be able to do anything.

Have you double checked the T&Cs? (if any) - usually there is a line with the likes of "promoter has final say on winner"

Sucks, but you won't get anywhere.

It does say that and I'm not asking them to overturn their decision I'm asking for an explanation that isn't a provable lie, and an apology for their mistake and subsequent lies.

JaMarcusHustle

JaMarcusHustle wrote: »

Re: private likes - I was under the impression that you still saw the total number of likes, but that if you clicked into them to see who liked, it wouldn't show those who were private (but that the number of likes still includes them).

i.e. basically the exact same as comments. Will tell you how many there is, but only show you those who aren't private.

Yeah that's the only way I can envisage a private like working too, although I'm pretty sure that's not the case either, but if it was the displayed number would still be accurate.

gizmo81

Deleted User wrote: »

It does say that and I'm not asking them to overturn their decision I'm asking for an explanation that isn't a provable lie, and an apology for their mistake and subsequent lies.

Clarity and transparency in regards to the outcome is fair.

You bought ingredients, baked a cake. That's fairly time consuming, you deserve some respect imo.

lifeandtimes

How does everyone know it was a cake competition?

Is there a link I missed?

gizmo81

lifeandtimes wrote: »

How does everyone know it was a cake competition?

Is there a link I missed?

Following the OP's journey on the Baked Anything Tasty Thread

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057586405&page=17

heyjude

In my experience, questionable results are very common in Irish Facebook and Twitter competitions. The most blatant abuses surprisingly often occur in competitions which actually list terms and conditions, which are then often ignored by the promoters. Recent examples include several competitions which required you to be a Republic of Ireland resident and then awarded a prize to someone living in the UK, Northern Ireland or in one case, Australia. Competitions often limit entries to one per person, but the winner has often submitted multiple entries and their winning entry is not their first. There have been cases of the winner submitting their only entry after the closing date, of competitions that require you to answer a question and award the prize to people who either didn't answer the question, answered it incorrectly or who just send in a cute photo and thats before you even consider the number of competitions won by people submitting sad stories( why is it that if a washing machine, clothes drier, oven, hair drier etc is on offer, everyone seems to have a broken one or had one stolen, that needs replacing?). I also find that businesses in certain counties almost never award prizes to anyone living in another county no matter how many entries they receive, that a handful of counties seem to win several times more prizes than you would expect based on population and some people have had winning streaks with odds that make winning the Euromillions jackpot seem like just tossing a coin .

Promoters almost never reverse the result, no matter how dubious and I don't think many companies appreciate how their brand is being quietly damaged by pr agencies/marketeers who run promotions on their behalf and then do so in a questionable manner.

I would suggest that anyone with a clear complaint/query about the way a particular big brand Facebook/Twitter competition has been run, should contact the company directly rather than the agency running the social media page, as the company may take your complaints more seriously than the person on the social media page that might have been responsible for what you are complaining about.

heyjude

heyjude wrote: »

In my experience, questionable results are very common in Irish Facebook and Twitter competitions. The most blatant abuses surprisingly often occur in competitions which actually list terms and conditions, which are then often ignored by the promoters. Recent examples include several competitions which required you to be a Republic of Ireland resident and then awarded a prize to someone living in the UK, Northern Ireland or in one case, Australia. Competitions often limit entries to one per person, but the winner has often submitted multiple entries and their winning entry is not their first. There have been cases of the winner submitting their only entry after the closing date, of competitions that require you to answer a question and award the prize to people who either didn't answer the question, answered it incorrectly or who just send in a cute photo and thats before you even consider the number of competitions won by people submitting sad stories( why is it that if a washing machine, clothes drier, oven, hair drier etc is on offer, everyone seems to have a broken one or had one stolen, that needs replacing?). I also find that businesses in certain counties almost never award prizes to anyone living in another county no matter how many entries they receive, that a handful of counties seem to win several times more prizes than you would expect based on population and some people have had winning streaks with odds that make winning the Euromillions jackpot seem like just tossing a coin .

Promoters almost never reverse the result, no matter how dubious and I don't think many companies appreciate how their brand is being quietly damaged by pr agencies/marketeers who run promotions on their behalf and then do so in a questionable manner.

I would suggest that anyone with a clear complaint/query about the way a particular big brand Facebook/Twitter competition has been run, should contact the company directly rather than the agency running the social media page, as the company may take your complaints more seriously than the person on the social media page that might have been responsible for what you are complaining about.

Yeah it honestly feels like typical Irish corruption and a typical Irish reaction of 'don't cause a fuss', which wouldn't be acceptable in other countries.

I intend to fight this for as long as I can. I had hoped the company themselves would have been more co-operative but the correspondence from them that their PR company forwarded to me this evening seems to suggest otherwise. I am honestly surprised that they are so willing to defend how their PR company handled the competition, but as I haven't had a chance to write to them directly yet I'm not sure what exactly the PR company told them about the situation!

I'm hoping to contact them directly tomorrow and lay out my argument with all my evidence as clear as possible, in the hope they will wise up and stop insulting my intelligence by repeating their PR company's lies.

JaMarcusHustle

Deleted User wrote: »

Yeah it honestly feels like typical Irish corruption and a typical Irish reaction of 'don't cause a fuss', which wouldn't be acceptable in other countries.

I intend to fight this for as long as I can. I had hoped the company themselves would have been more co-operative but the correspondence from them that their PR company forwarded to me this evening seems to suggest otherwise. I am honestly surprised that they are so willing to defend how their PR company handled the competition, but as I haven't had a chance to write to them directly yet I'm not sure what exactly the PR company told them about the situation!

I'm hoping to contact them directly tomorrow and lay out my argument with all my evidence as clear as possible, in the hope they will wise up and stop insulting my intelligence by repeating their PR company's lies.

Word of advice - your best chance is to create as big a fuss on social media as possible.

Some daily news websites love this type of stuff - it gets lots of comments (and be warned, a fair few of them will be telling you to jog on or that you're sad for pursuing it) but all those sites want are comments, and these types of stories bring them. I'm thinking the likes of DublinLive, the Daily Edge etc. Sites I personally don't have much time for, but would help you in your quest.

I wouldn't know which subreddit to pick, but Reddit loves injustices like this. Plenty of people have had very similar issues resolved thanks to Reddit campaigns. Plenty of tools on Reddit (no different to any other website really), but majority are sound so when they see someone has gone to a lot of effort on something - like you did with your cake - people generally get behind your quest for justice. If anything, someone will at least be able to verify the pages "private likes" explanation for you. Just getting some visibility though is tough on that website.

JaMarcusHustle

JaMarcusHustle wrote: »

Word of advice - your best chance is to create as big a fuss on social media as possible.

Some daily news websites love this type of stuff - it gets lots of comments (and be warned, a fair few of them will be telling you to jog on or that you're sad for pursuing it) but all those sites want are comments, and these types of stories bring them. I'm thinking the likes of DublinLive, the Daily Edge etc. Sites I personally don't have much time for, but would help you in your quest.

I wouldn't know which subreddit to pick, but Reddit loves injustices like this. Plenty of people have had very similar issues resolved thanks to Reddit campaigns. Plenty of tools on Reddit (no different to any other website really), but majority are sound so when they see someone has gone to a lot of effort on something - like you did with your cake - people generally get behind your quest for justice. If anything, someone will at least be able to verify the pages "private likes" explanation for you. Just getting some visibility though is tough on that website.

I'll definitely warn them that if I have to escalate it that far I will! I'll give them another chance to play fair before going nuclear on them lol.

Reddit could be good but you're right it's hard to get visibility there and I don't have an account already so might be even more difficult to get noticed...