Win a fantastic Bushcraft Home.......for £25!

[Shewie]

An update from the house owners



Thursday, October 23, 2008



Hi All,

Just a quick note as I know everyone is anxious to know what is happening at the moment.

This week has been about nationally and locally informing the general public of the situation we have been facing with the Commission.

We have read and categorised all the support emails so they are in a format that Steve our solicitor can use most productively.

We have received some very useful statistics from the website technicians that have been researched from our Analytics Pages.

Steve has almost completed our lengthy response to the Gambling Commission, which should be ready to send today or tomorrow.

We don't know how the infrastructure works at the Commission so we can't really comment on a timescale for a definitive decision at this point, but they are obviously aware that the draw was postponed.

We will only resume on the basis of a favourable decision.

Thank you to all who have responded and sent in constructive suggestions to help with the cause.

We will continue to update you any new developments.

The Wilshaw Family

 

[Shewie]

Oh well back to work tomorrow then.

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=405240383&blogID=455344208



Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Correspondence from the Gambling Commission


Hi Everyone





We are saddened to hear today that a house competition in Devon has started to issue refunds to its’ entrants after hearing from the Gambling Commission.

In their letter to entrants they state:





“It is with much regret that we have to inform you that the Gambling Commission has now made a decision that all on-line competitions such as… (deleted for their privacy) fall outside the law.”





We do not know what parallels this competition has with ours, but this seems to be a shift in the GC position, so we feel that now is an appropriate time to publicise one of the responses that we received from the Commission about our competition.





Dear Sirs,





We have considered what you say in your letter but remain of the view that the scheme involves a lottery which for lack of a licence or other exemption will be unlawful.





There is no deterrent or penalty if someone has an incorrect answer, as they can enter as many times as they like and are told if they have the incorrect answer. Furthermore, no payment is required until the correct answer is given.





Whilst we note the statistics which you have supplied, we are not convinced that these indicate that a significant proportion of persons have been prevented from participating in the arrangement.





We also consider that the answer to the question can be found very easily on the Internet.





Should the draw proceed, then the Commission will have to consider whether the circumstances are such as to merit prosecution for an offence under section 258 of the Gambling Act 2005.





It is ultimately a matter for the courts, not the Commission to decide whether an offence has been committed. For this reason, it is not for the Commission to confirm, as you request, that an arrangement is or is not compliant.





Finally whilst we acknowledge receipt of the letters/emails of support accompanying your letter, these are not relevant nor helpful as they do not go to the issue of illegality.





Yours faithfully,



Nick Tofiluk .





At the time we received the response we made the comment that some of their points were contradictory to their guidelines, and we had these guidelines in mind, which state:





3.3 It follows from this that a genuine prize competition is one that contains a requirement to exercise skill or judgement or to display knowledge and where it can reasonably be expected that that requirement will either

(a) prevent a significant proportion of people who wish to participate from doing so or

(b) prevent a significant proportion of people who participate from receiving a prize.

If either one of these barriers to entry or success can be shown, the process will not be deemed to rely wholly upon chance, and the arrangement will not be a lottery.





The statistics for our question page on the website are as follows:





Total people who viewed the question page 396,399 (of those 140,609 only visited once)





15.58% of people left the site without trying to answer the question

26.93% of people left the question page with trying to answer the question

42.67% of people entered a wrong answer

14.82% of people entered a correct answer





Therefore:



42.51% of viewers didn’t attempt the question.

42.67% of viewers attempted the question but submitted an incorrect answer, so were prevented from participating in the draw to ultimately win the prize

14.82% attempted the question and got it correct so were automatically directed to the ‘payment page’





For every 1 correct answer submitted there were 2.8 wrong answers submitted.







For the benefit of ourselves and future competition builders/promoters

HOW MANY IS A SIGNIFICANT NUMBER OF PEOPLE TO PREVENT IF THE FIGURES ABOVE ARE NOT CONSIDERED SIGNIFCANT ENOUGH BY THE GAMBLING COMMSSION?









With reference to paragraph 4 of the above letter:





3.6 …..and the Commission does not think a particular question or clue fails to qualify as involving skill or knowledge just because the answer can be discovered by basic research, whether on the internet or elsewhere.





For those of you who took the time and effort to email in ‘public support’ to us, we submitted a hard copy of a 1000 of those emails. We were particularly offended on your behalf by the comments made in the final paragraph in the GC’s letter above.





We have learnt today that during a phone call from another house competition promoter to the Gambling Commission on September 9th, it was stated by a member of the GC support team, that the fishing retreat competition (us) was a legal one. The competition promoter has requested the telephone recording of this conversation but as yet has received no response.

This is yet another confirmation from the GC to add to the list, that our competition was in fact a legal one whilst it was running and taking entries.





Thank you for your continued support.

Wendy, Louisa, and Brian

 

[British Red]

I have asked for, and received, a full refund.

Sad, but best to get your money back at this point I feel

Red

 

[Shewie]

Have you just done that tonight Hugh ?

 

[British Red]

About 10 days ago. I decided to give them to the beginning of December to sort things out.

I feel for them and I think it stinks myself - but if they can't draw the prize, then I can use the money elsewhere this time of year.

Red

 

[Shewie]

Forgot all about this

One jammy so and so from Germany took the booty. Let's hope he's a 'shrafter

http://www.winadevonpropertywithfishing.co.uk/postponement.php