April Fools Competition

The_Minister

Let's say, hypothetically, that a company puts up a really cool prize in a competition.

All you have to do is share the picture from their Facebook, advertising the competition.

The draw date is the 1st of April.

Can they turn around, after so many people have shared the photo, and say APRIL FOOLS THERE IS NO COMPETITION HA-HA!!!! etc?

EDIT: Basically, are free-to-enter competitions (as opposed to lotteries) enforceable under Irish law? Do you basically have to say that sharing the photo was conideration?

Tom Young

A Competition Law issue - Clearly

Procrastastudy

A certain resturant chain where the employees have large "assets" and a toy yoda springs to mind.

NoQuarter

That reminds me, I need to draft my fake summons' to send to my friends before sunday.

Tom Young

In fairness it's not dissimilar to Carbolic Smoke Ball Co.

affroman69

wondering if it has anything to do with a certain well known car group .. lost more "likes" than it originally had! quite amusing

Aint Eazy Being Cheezy

affroman69 wrote: »

wondering if it has anything to do with a certain well known car group .. lost more "likes" than it originally had! quite amusing

just thinking the exact same thing. I actually thought it was funny. Some people REALLY take themselves too seriously

affroman69

jar_of_coins wrote: »

just thinking the exact same thing. I actually thought it was funny. Some people REALLY take themselves too seriously

+1 but what can you do, i had to laugh but was a little bit ****ty in the way they done it, unfortunately people wont forget too quickly, can see this issue being raised with the likes of fm104 or joe duffy.. funny stuff

RandolphEsq

Which car company was it?

affroman69

not sure if im aloud to mention the company here (a car group representing more than one brand) but if you try broadsheet.ie you will find the story half way down page! cant miss it.;)

MagicSean

It's hilarious. What kind of idiot expects to get something for nothing in recession hit Ireland?

In any case op, there was a competition. It was for the car in the picture, the toy car. So your question is irrelevant to that particular competition.

It reminds me of that case from the States. I think it was Pepsi. You could exchange the tabs from cans for items. The bigges item was a fighter jet that cost 50,000,000 tabs. And them some dope went out and bought 50,000,000 cans and tried to exchange them for a fighter jet. Courts ruled it was an "advertising puff" afaik.

FreudianSlippers

It would be against Facebook's promotion guidelines but I'd say there is very little you could do other than that.

I'm almost positive free to enter competitions are valid under Irish law (but cannot point you to specific legislation off the top of my head) but I think you'd have a tough time getting anywhere on this.

Ken.

I've look and looked but cannot find anything online about it but wasn't their a case here in Ireland where a radio station ran a competition to win £1m(i think it was that long ago). Someone got through to the final and all the money was in a glass cage(like on Noel Edmonds crinkly bottom show).

The fan started blowing the money around and the person had 30 seconds to pick up as much as possible, if i remember correctly the cash was in £10 notes. Not a hope of "winning" £1m. She sued and got £100,000 iirc.

BrianD

FreudianSlippers wrote: »

It would be against Facebook's promotion guidelines but I'd say there is very little you could do other than that.

I'm almost positive free to enter competitions are valid under Irish law (but cannot point you to specific legislation off the top of my head) but I think you'd have a tough time getting anywhere on this.

Correct, even if the car company was giving away a toy car they clearly breached Facebooks terms of service. Facebook should be taking action on this.

Reesy

I think this http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-40153/8-000-Clio-winner-handed-toy.html case might be relevant. In this case it wasn't April Fool's day, and there was no prior indication that the car was a toy, and the defendent was a poor (now defunct) radio station not a rich person, but still...