This is an email from reader "CW Exposed".
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This is not a contest I am highlighting but more of a contest website that is quite "interesting" in running its own contests - facebook.com/contest.world
Have been observing its actions since it was setup around July last year. Within 2 months of setting up (Sep 2010), it gave away generous prizes of iPad 64Gb Wi-Fi to 30 lucky fans - surprisingly, not much fanfare or publicity for such wonderful prizes:
http://contestworld2u.com/blog/2010/09/19/30-ipad-winners-from-contest-world/
Then in Nov 2010, they launched a contest sponsored by KLM with prizes of all paid expenses at Hotel Ridz for 5 nights and flying to and fro on KLM Business Class for 2 with airport transfers (which I estimate would have been worth a total of about S$25k) and it was won by Jane Low (she didnt acknowledged her winnings in any way). Furthermore, for such a huge prize, there was no publicity in newspapers, google ads but only cheerleading in this Contest World Facebook page.
Contest World further indicated that there were 1000 entries submitted in 1.5 hours (the contest mechanism is "very interesting" - no terms and conditions on what contestants have to do and when is the deadline; just suddenly one day the admin announced at about 2+pm Submit all your answers (they released clues every few days and participants are supposed to collect all the answers) + creative slogan by 4pm!) - taking into account that they have about 1000+ fans at that point in time (now have grown to 3000+) means that almost 100% managed to join in this contest!
See this post
http://www.facebook.com/Contest.World/posts/175979035746250 for the contest in question.
I have emailed KLM directly to find out about their involvement in this contest and this is their reply:
Claim No4714252001
Dear Mr. XXX,
Thank you for your message.
Firstly, on behalf of KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, please accept our most sincere apologies for our unintentional belated reply.
We can confirm that KLM is not involved in this campaign.
We would like thank you for taking the time to contact us regarding this matter.
Thank you for placing your trust in KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. We hope to see you soon on our routes and at
www.klm.com.
Yours sincerely,
Y. SAYERS
Customer Care
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so there you have it - official reply from KLM (can quote the claim number and check with them directly on klm.com if not convinced).. and Contest World has also quietly moved on to publicise their other contests, making no references to this contest anymore although I would expect them to use this KLM contest as an example of how great their prizes are.
I have posted the above reply from KLM on their wall for discussion and guess what - unsurprisingly, it was deleted!
In Dec, there was another interesting drama on one of their admin leaving and *sobs*sobs* meaning less contests coming up:
http://www.facebook.com/Contest.World/posts/127117700682908
and guess what - this same admin is back in Jan to garner votes for his contest entry (if you read about their own philosophy, they strongly discouraged voting contests) with the prize of a pair of movie tickets to one of the fans who voted for his entry in the Japan contest:
http://www.facebook.com/Contest.World/posts/182668618419907
I just dont understand why he is trying to distance himself from the site and yet there is so obvious publicity for his so-called travel blog.
The drama in Contest World just gets more interesting by the day - just yesterday (16 Jan 2010), they posted the following note to all their fans:
"We'll love to mention some rumours which we hear it hear n there : If u dont support us , its UP TO YOUR OWN DECISION .
Dont go around and spread false rumours , and thus resulting you to not be eligible to win in any of our contests . Thank you and your cooperation is appreciated ."
and one of their comments wrote: "Thanks , we've spies here n there so yeah peeps watch what u are saying cos we are disqualifying fans one by one ."
I note that Contestjunkie is one of the more objective contest sites out there and hopefully these info can be shared with other contest participants out there so that a more objective and evidence-based perspective of what Contest World is really like. This might even be picked up by one of their spies.... haha
As seen in above, all of which are fact-based (public domain info as seen in the Contest World Facebook page interactions) and evidence-supported (as seen in the KLM email), I leave it to your readers to interpret what this all means. I am not drawing any conclusions to how Contest World works.
Hope you find the above info useful for sharing with your readers.
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