A couple of weeks ago we reported that Ask Jeeves has made changes to their Unanswerables competition. Instead of the 10 iPad Winners being chosen by votes, the winners were chosen by a judging panel. Unfortunately Jeeves took a bit of flack via Twitter when the winners were announced, which is sad to see. However, people who had worked hard to get votes were put out when the rules were changed and perhaps feel they’ve missed out on winning an iPad. That said, the rule change ensured that anyone who had been cheating up to the rule change didn’t win.
Problems With Vote Rigging
Jeeves though isn’t the only one to experience voting competition problems! Toshiba were running a quarterly competition until September 2011 at Laptops We Love, but they’ve been having problems with vote rigging and now the site “is currently under temporary development”. On Facebook they told followers” :We appreciate all the comments and feedback we have received regarding the Laptops We Love competition in recent weeks. Considering these and the findings of our own investigation we have decided to bring the competition to a close with immediate effect and not continue with it any further. We apologise for the discontent it has caused among some entrants”!
Brand Awareness Or Poor PR
As we’ve already said on this blog, promoters set up voting competitions as they know people will spread the word in an attempt to gain votes. This should mean better brand awareness. The problem voting competitions turn into farce and the brand awareness is usually not of the good PR type.
With that in mind, imagine if you will that you’re a customer of Next and you wish to engage with them on Facebook. We’d advise you don’t bother – at least not until their Baby Boutique Competition closes in mid November! At the moment Next’s facebook wall is awash with people begging for votes. Their wall is simply loaded with them!
Drowned In A Sea Of Vote Requests
This means anyone trying to engage with Next for any other reason will find their question well and truly drowned out in a sea of vote requests. In fact there’s so many votes requests posted we can’t even find out (i.e. be bothered) to try and trawl through them for questions about problems with the voting.
If you’ve spotted a problem with a vote competition or have a comment to make then do feel free to post on the blog.