Whilst having looking round Google yesterday we were surprised to come across a review of Loquax. Firstly because the review was on a competitor’s website and even more surprised about just how inaccurate the information given was. We’ve ummed and ahhed about how to respond to this article. We could ignore it or we could ask the company to remove it, but the inaccuracies are so bad – perhaps even designed to mislead and perhaps slur our brand name – that we felt we should make our retort publically.
A Little Bit Muddled
The article is on MyComps, a subscription based service from Oxfordshire Press, that offer subscribers who pay £50 upwards “over 170 new competitions every week”. We found the link whilst looking for our trademarked term. MyComps seem to be little muddled about what Loquax does and doesn’t do. First off Loquax isn’t an affiliate site, at least not in the way that MyOffers, Win4Now and GetMeATicket work, which is where MyComps initially seem to be pigeon-holing us. To help them out here’s what we do: we don’t run the competitions! We do list a lot of sites ranging from brands to bloggers and they’re the ones who run the competitions. Some of our links do go through affiliate partnerships (e.g Play.com) where if you buy something we may earn a commission. That’s basically it and it’s how lots of other sites operate.
Wrong! Wrong! Totally Wrong!
“The affiliate site will cash in every time someone clicks on the competition link”: Totally wrong! Almost 100% of the time, we’re not paid per click for any competition! The vast majority of links to competitions listed on Loquax will earn us nothing. “They don’t really care what the quality of the competition is – or what you’re chances of winning really are”. Really? So why do we check all competitions that are added to our main listings then? Why do we reject competitions that we feel aren’t suitable and why do we no longer list competitions from the likes of MyOffers, Win4Now, UKPrize, Surveys etc. “These affiliate competitions are carefully disguised among many genuine competitions, so it is often difficult to identify them”. Well, as we don’t list them our users should be fairly safe in the knowledge we’re not sending them to them! Even on sites like Autoexpress and Pick Me Up where there are some “marketing” style competitions, we will select the one’s we believe are good prize draws – rather than sign up to Scottish Power, E.on etc.
Too Good To Be True?
“If a company is offering you lots of ‘free’ information you’ve got to ask yourself “what’s in it for them?”. What’s in it for us? Same as it was when we started! A bit of fun to help compers and to be an independent service of a high standard. There’s a kind of business idea in it too! “Every company has to make money to survive, so if you’re not paying a subscription for all the info they’re giving you, the chances are you’re paying the price with your personal information”. The chances are you’re wrong again MyComps, oh dear! Loquax doesn’t sell personal information. The site is free, it updates with more competitions than your paid for subscription service AND we don’t sell data.
We Don’t Sell Data! Do You?
“You’ll never find a comp listed in MyComps that we haven’t checked and double checked to make sure it’s genuine. Neither will we pass on your details to anyone else”. That’s grand! But, every competition added to Loquax is looked at before it’s accepted. And as above we don’t sell data. Although, we do wonder if you perhaps do (MediaLabGroup)? We also don’t advertise automated competition entry services to our users, but you do! In January 2011 MyComps advertised a service, complete with affiliate link, which in our opinion is detrimental to compers, the people who they want to pay for their services. That might make an interesting blog piece!
Deliberately Misleading?
It’s an article about Loquax from a competitor called MyComps of Oxfordshire Press and it is full of inaccuracies! Who knows why they wrote it? Maybe it’s for search engine optimisation on our trademark? Maybe it’s to try and justify why they charge? Maybe they deliberately want to mislead their potential customers? Maybe it wasn’t meant to be public and that naughty Google has found things it shouldn’t on their sites again? If you want to know how Loquax works then just ask us! Loquax is a free competition community site and we don’t sell your data, that’s about the long and short of it.