Evening Herald & My Home.ie Competition

Needless to say I won’t be buying a pint in the Head Line Bar in Dublin.

Moderator Lump, most of the ordinary people who entered this particular insidious competition were desperate more than stupid, and the blurb promoting this competition played/preyed on this.

Just a couple of interesting website addresses:

Gaming and Lotteries Act 1956 - http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/ZZA2Y1956.html

and

The Advertising Standards Authority For Ireland - http://www.asai.ie/ .

Food for thought.

Roz.

Sorry, Moderator Lump John, the second part of the above post was aimed at other people reading this post who may have an interest in this topic.

Carlitos Way wrote:

PPS- for those that are disheartened by the competition and feel that there’s no way there going to win the property, well you’re probably right, BUT you can justifiably look for a refund of the cash that you put into it. If you are pursuing this let people know, put it up here. There’s always strength in numbers.

I doubt anybody here can honestly look for a refund. They were all talking about the different cheats thay could try. The pooling of tokens, joining sydicates etc...

Read this thread and there were people warning about the problems but others just kepting going on about not being negative. I get the desperation of some people but desperation is no excuse for the level of sure stupidity of risking alot of money on this. The guy who won is obviously a gambler and business man. I would safely bet that he didn't put his house/future at risk. Anybody to think these type of people would not get involved in this were very niave at best and extremely stupid at worst.

I get what you are saying MorningStar and John about people's foibles, but I would not exonerate and let the Evening Herald off the hook on this one. Apart from attempting to get refunds, Carlitos Way, and there is no harm in trying, there are other remedies and sanctions that can be pursued. Complaints about misleading advertising and promotion about the competition can be made to the Advertising Standards Authority For Ireland, and there are sanctions if such complaints are upheld, even if it is only a public slap on the wrist. Such bad publicity and bad feeling and other possible fallouts may hurt to some extent the benefits and financial gains earned by the Evening Herald from running from such a promotion/competition again in future.

In addition, the Gaming and Lotteries Act is primarily there to protect people from their inbuilt weaknesses and gambling addictions, and the remedy I would like to see is that such competitions are not held in future by the Evening Herald or other newspapers.

Hi Emily. I hear what you are saying about Hollioake homes. A friend of mine lives in the Belfry in one of the Hollioake homes in a second floor duplex apartment, and the water heater timer in the hot press is one of those Grasslin QE7 Residential Water Heater timers which are currently being recalled (this warning was advertised in the Evening Herald and Irish Independent last Friday) because of a possible defect which can cause the timer to overheat possibly resulting in fire.

People with these timers are being advised to stop using them and to turn the main switch to off. They are advised not to operate the main switch or boost function while sleeping or out of the house. If they need hot water, they are being advised to turn the main switch to on and push the boost button and to switch the main switch to off as soon as the water is heated.

Anybody who has one of these timers is being advised to ring a freephone number 1800 946 360 to register for a replacement. People should check out what make and model of water heater timers they have and take the requisite action if necessary.

he said in the paper he was as confident of winning it as if he was taking a penalty kick, that he was almost certain he'd win it.
Sounds pretty dodgy to me.

Surely to have acquired so many papers on the final days he must have ahd to break the rules. Ordering a run of 50,000 from the evening herald cannot be a legitimate strategy. Especially as the number of copies joe soap could buy from independent newspapers was limited! In fact buying from you local newsagent was limited in a lot of cases. Also as Carlito mentioned the whole announcement was surprisingly low key. I read the paper (in the shop- never buying the rag again!!) today and there was no mention. has anyone seen anything other than yesterday's times? I suggest we all make a formal complaint and if anyone is up for it "talk to Joe"?

Some of you have focused on the fact that if the same guy can organise 800,000 lotto tickets then its safe to say he could organise 50,000 Evening Heralds. Does anybody actually remember back to that particular lotto stunt? He had an ‘insider’ of sorts back then as he must have had this time around also. He had pre-arranged with a shop to run off the boxes and boxes of lotto tickets that he had prepared with all the different combinations. The shop was his ‘insider’ then; who was it this time. I don’t care about his luck with the lotto stunt that he pulled, good luck to him. There’s no limit that one person can buy of lotto tickets as far as I’m aware. But there was in this competition. I can vouch for the fact that the idea that this guy was driving around picking up 15 Evening Heralds per shop and at the end of all his hard work, had 50,000, is total horse****. Physically and logistically this would be impossible. Traffic alone makes it unthinkable. And lets not forget, almost all shops have two Evening Herald drops, afternoon (2pm) and late afternoon (4pm). The papers sell out at around 8pm. That’s a daily window off opportunity of about 6 hours. Not forgetting that were talking about sometimes as little as only three papers in a shop at that time of night, if even. Further, I personally didn’t notice all that much of a drain on the papers ‘public’ circulation (as oppose to 'private’, for those at the back). I was actually surprised how many Evening Heralds were actually available for that last week!!! Some of you have mentioned the fact that those that got involved in this competition are just stupid. Well most gambling sort of is, in a way. But one SAFE bet is that not one of that guy’s papers ever saw the inside of a newsagency or petrol station.

Here is a current link to an online version of the article in the Sunday Times last Sunday - http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,2765-1602790,00.html for those who want to read it. My gripe is not with the winner/winners and his/their tactics - had there been some syndicate out there willing to gamble €60,000, they would have been beaten, and there were probably syndicates out there who spent €20,000 to €30,000 thinking they were on to a sure thing. My gripe is with the Evening Herald for effectively running a gambling racket that Las Vegas would be proud of.

The aftermath of the National Lottery fiasco in 1992 was that the rules of the Lottery were changed so that a similar coup could not be pulled off again. It was a statistical certainty at the time (the only caveat being the existance of another jackpot winner/winners) that if you covered all combinations, you would win all prizes between match three and the jackpot, which would equal more than you spent.

Tazzle wrote:

And the poor children in Africa...

How profound!

In the name of love, one man, in the name of love... uh oh uh oh, uh oh uh oh...

Carlitos Way wrote:

The shop was his ‘insider’ then; who was it this time. I don’t care about his luck with the lotto stunt that he pulled, good luck to him.

Actually that time he had a lot more than one "insider" as you put it. No corner shop was going to enforce a 15 paper rule. I 'm not sure of the rules for the competition but there was no legal way that the 15 paper rule could be enforced. The best the paper could have threatened was not to supply the shops with papers which they wouldn't do if the store normally sold a lot or if it would have covered a whole region.
There is also the company that deals with returned papers for shops. If I was doing this I would have gone to them first. THey cut of the headers for the shops and credit the shops.