It’s almost a month since our Time To Ban Automated Entry Competition Services blog. A new month means a new list of competitions that these services entered for their members, and a new list for Loquax to publish. The sites listed have been targeted during March by Automated Competition Entry services – this means that they’ve possibly received entries from people who don’t visit the site, don’t know what the prize is and because the email accounts used are monitored by the AES service – don’t even get any marketing messages. Our advice to promoters is disqualify them and we have some email accounts to look out for.
Sites Targetted By Automated Entries
So on with the list: Sense Magazine, Random House, Urban Surfer, Net Voucher Codes, lastminute.com, DK Books, TDF Fashion, Pipe Ten, Pure Movies, Hilton Racing, Female First, Three, Austin Reed, Vogue, Hot Dinners, Paddy Power, Comedy Central, Chocolate Reviews, Choice Store, Divine Chocolate, The Good Web Guide, 7Digital, Cuddle Dry, Play.com, Film4, Lovell Rugby, National Express, Fatface, The Sun, John Lewis, Pots and Pans, Stuff TV, Shoes.co.uk, Blacks, All About Soap. Hamleys, Yahoo, Hervia, The Beauty Pages, Samsung Football, Belling, Itchy City, Clovelly, Provamel. Strada, Indie London, Garmin ….
And There’s More
And this represents about 1/3 of sites who received entries from one AES during March 2011! But hold on a moment – Chocolate Review are listed and yet we know that those entries were disqualified. Let’s hope that one or two more sites have taken similar action. Moving on to another site and they’ve been just as busy: Channel 4, Woman and Home, Handbag, Company, BBC Good Food, Sheerluxe, Instyle, Morrisons, Ernest Jones, Scifind, Wine Pages, Bells, Something for the Wickend, Indie London, Tic Tac, O2, Royal Mint, Wines of SA, The It Guide, Livingetc, Westfield, The Stage, Splenda, Next, Gonedigging, Fudges, Brastop, Hamleys, Hilton Racing, Halfords, Thomas Cook, Evans, Strada, Mature Times, Mydeco, Mybag, Top Gear, Fragrance Direct.. And many more! Interesting they seem to have been targeting sites mainly with competitions closing at the end of March. Perhaps to try and disguise their volume on what is a busy day of entries?
Why Publish This Information
Firstly, we’re hoping that the promoters mentioned find this blog post and then think about taking action or reviewing their competition mechanics. We know from our logs and feedback that promoters are concerned by bulk competition entries. The information within this blog and in our webmaster’s guide should be enough for them to go back to their databases and see whether they’ve attracted automated entries. Secondly, we’re hoping that one or two will share information with us. For example IP addresses, the format of emails etc. so that we can pass that on to other promoters. Thirdly, it’s to keep pushing the message home to people who spend their time entering competitions and making the real effort to visit promoters that your efforts are being undermined. You need to speak up and ask promoters if they realise there’s an issue!
We don’t think we’ll ever see a time when there are no competitions to list on a blog like this – but we can try and encourage more promoters and sites to be vigilant over automated entries and take similar steps to Chocolate Review by just disqualifying them all.