Tramway Path have annouced that their latest win a house competition, that was due to close on 27th October 2024, has now been extended by two weeks. For those unfamiliar with Tramway Path, they launched in 2020 and have been successful in giving away houses and cash prizes. These include three apartments in Bristol to one winner, a £400,000 house in Medway (Kent) and apartments in London. More recently they stopped offering specific properties but instead changed the main prize to £500,000 so that the winner could choose their own prize. The most recent prize draw represents the fourth to offer the £500K prize. Tickets for the draw cost a minimum of £5 (to get three entries). To make the draw more interesting this time around Tramway Path also offered two monthly prizes: £15K towards a property deposit (August) and a year of rent (September). Up to the original closing date, Tramway were updating social media and sending out emails reminding entrants of the impending end to the prize draw. This included a flash sale offering discounted tickets such as “until October 27th you can grab your end-of-competition tickets with up to 20% off”.
“We’re Not Quite There Yet”
On 28th October, Tramway Path emailed their users to explain that the closing date for the current draw has now been extended for two weeks and will now close on the 11th November 2024. In an email Tramway explained that “we’re very close to reaching our target to give away the grand prize, but to be transparent, we’re not quite there yet. To ensure that we can make someone’s dream of becoming mortgage-free a reality (it might be you), we’re extending the competition by just two weeks We know this isn’t ideal. At the same time we’re confident that with your continued support we can make this happen together”. Just for clarity, the terms and conditions state that “the Promoters reserve the right to extend the closing date by up to 2 months at their discretion”. Therefore it is feasible that Tramway could extend this promotion beyond the 11/11/24. Whilst that’s the bad news for entrants, the good news is that Tramway Path are offering a little sweetener. The email concludes with “in the interests of fairness we’re giving everyone who purchased tickets already a £5 credit voucher to reward you for getting your tickets in time”. We’re assuming that using these vouchers to purchase extra tickets for the current draw won’t effect the current status quo because Tramway will be requiring new cash buyers to help reach their target.
To Be Transparent Or Not To Be
Whilst it’s good(ish) that the platform has been transparent to entrants about their decision, is it really that transparent. Nobody knows what the ticket target actually is and how close to the target is “very close”. Also at what stage were Tramway Path aware that they weren’t going to hit their target? This is one of the issues that we’ve seen with other property platforms. For example Win A Nottingham Villa were putting out plenty of signals that tickets were selling well and a house could be won, when in reality they were miles away from any kind of target. Tramway Path don’t operate like other platforms that are currently running house competitions. Omaze guarantee a winner – regardless of ticket sales – as do the likes of Bounty, McKinney, Bear and Elite. Tramway Path, like Raffle House, need to sell enough tickets but how many tickets is enough? We’ve always thought that number of tickets sold should be clear on any site running raffles/pay to enter draws/win a house competitions. So why doesn’t it happen? It comes down to maintaining the illusion that all is well. If potential customers know that a platform is struggling to sell tickets – because they’re advertising the fact on their competition page – then it might make them stall on purchasing until they know that the headline prize is definitely going to be won. Urgency sales tactics go out the window too, making it harder to get customers to part with cash due to FOMO.
Not All Plain Sailing
The last few draws haven’t been plain sailing for the Twenefour brothers. After a series of perfect promotions they’ve come across a few issues. In isolation they’re probably easily overcome but accumulating them can potentially result in loss of consumer faith and trust. This is the second time that Tramway Path have had to extend the closing date of a prize draw. This occurred for the first time during their second £500K giveaway. That one was due to end on the 6th December but was extended until the 9th December for “technical reasons”. There was a backlash from customers about this but the general feeling was that the platform had completed on every draw so it wasn’t going to lose too much trust. On the subsequent draw however customers became concerned about the draw process which involved the owners being handed an envelope to open in what was meant to be a “live draw”. Hopefully that issue won’t be repeated when the latest winner is drawn. Now we have the two week extension. The good news for Tramway Path is that there seems to be minimal backlash on social media or Trustpilot. That may change if the competition gets a further extension or if there are issues with the live draw.
Why Didn’t They Hit Target?
Tramway Path to date have had the midas touch with property prize draws. They should complete on their current one too but why didn’t they hit the target within the original time period? Surely by now they’ve built up a good customer base so that tickets will fly out like they do with Bounty and others? There are plenty of possible reasons to consider. Firstly Tramway Path only run draws every now and then. Every time they start a new draw they’re basically having to re-engage with their customer base. Bounty, McKinney and Elite are running draws all the time. It’s also notable that those pay to enter prize draw platforms have significantly bigger social media followings than Tramway. More followers means more potential customers. Tramway also don’t utilise a subscription model like Omaze. We’re quite surprised that they’ve not headed down that route to date. Mind you, a subscription model would mean having to be continually active rather than draws every now and then. Another reason is simply there’s just more competition in this sector now. Omaze, Kilted Competitions and McKinney Competitions all closed draws on the 27th October. Elite will close another one at the end of the month. There are (at time of writing) 20 live property prize draws listed on Loquax. On top of that there are sites like That Prize Guy offering £1million prizes, GoodLife+ offering cars and cash plus countless other smaller pay to enter sites. In short people willing to spend cash on competitions have a lot more choice. Omaze dominate the house sector but Tramway Path and Raffle House were at one point the only alternatives. Now there are others and that’s only going to make it harder and harder for these platforms as we head to 2025.