Competition Entries Excuse to SPAM You

sydneylisa on 21/08/2015 - 16:15
Last edited 21/08/2015 - 16:15

What email address do you put for Competitons entries? And how do you ever see if you've Won, for all the junk SPAM you get in your Inbox for all these competitions!????

To me, it's just an excuse to SPAM you.

If they want to notify you, they just need a Phone number! They ring you and TALK to you, to tell you've won a prize! No-one ever Emails you to tell you you've won, right????

Has anyone ever won a Major prize, like a CAR, and been notified ONLY by email?

I'm tempted to just put "[email protected]" for my email, so they can't SPAM me! But of course also leave a valid Mobile Number.

I don't mind SMS Spam, there is very little of it out there as it costs them money to send!

Has anyone else done this,and still won a prize?

General Discussion

Comments

  • spackbace on 21/08/2015 - 16:25
    +2

    How many competitions are you entering? Which email provider? I use gmail, only occasionally do I have an issue with the odd 1 or 2 spam emails hitting my inbox, everything else is something I've subscribed to.

    Just use a decent email provider with good filtering and you shouldn't have anything to worry about.

    And sure, they won't email you about a car/holiday etc, but I've been emailed about $500 prizes.

    Certainly not worth putting a fake email address on there.

    • sydneylisa on 21/08/2015 - 16:28
      +1

      Yahoo mail.

      A condition of all competitions is that they are allowed to send you SPAM.

      How do you handle when they won't Unsubscribe you?

      • sydneylisa on 21/08/2015 - 16:30

        And has one of those $500 prizes ever gone to your SPAM folder by accident and you missed the prize because of it?

        • spackbace on 21/08/2015 - 16:32

          Not that I know of, only time I missed a prize was Scoopon awarded me a prize through Facebook, and the email ended up in my Facebook 'Others' folder, which is basically only accessible by desktop. I asked 6 months later when I discovered it, but was just a dvd anyway

        • sydneylisa on 21/08/2015 - 16:33

          @Spackbace:

          Nice :)

          Thanx got the advice

      • spackbace on 21/08/2015 - 16:31
        +4

        Yahoo mail…? People still use that?! There's your first problem.

        I don't need to deal with it, it goes to a folder called spam that I only check every couple of days, see if there's a winning email thats been filtered out :)

        First step for you is rather than complaining they're sending you the spam, sign up to a better email address, like Gmail.

        Then you'll see what I mean about it being a non-issue.

        • sydneylisa on 21/08/2015 - 16:32
          +1

          Ok, good idea.

          Will sign up to gmail.

          To answer the other question, I enter ALL competitions I can! :)

  • nmat on 21/08/2015 - 16:50
    +1

    I've also noticed that most winning emails will come from a specific marketing email address, or the personal email of someone on the promotions/marketing team, rather than the generic email address that the spam will come from. So you can identify them more easily.

  • Davo1111 on 21/08/2015 - 17:43

    yahoo… lol i havent heard of them since the 90s

  • donga100 on 21/08/2015 - 18:14

    I was notified of winning a $900 pram by email. Ironically it was the second chance draw after the original winner didn't respond to their email to claim the prize.

    • sydneylisa on 22/08/2015 - 10:17

      When they told you that you had Won, what details did they want?

      Did they ring you by phone at least once, anyway??

      • donga100 on 22/08/2015 - 18:35

        No, never spoke to anyone on the phone. I still have the email:

        Congratulations on recently being drawn as an unclaimed winner in the Nestle Baby Club promotion!!

        Could you please forward the best delivery address for yourself to me so I can send out your amazing prize of the Bugaboo ‘Bee’ Stroller with a black canopy valued at $899.

        On Behalf of the Nestle Infant Nutrition Team,

        It came from a personal work email address of the account manager of a marketing firm. Subject was just "Nestle Baby Club Promotion", I can understand how someone may have mistaken it for spam.

        • sydneylisa on 25/08/2015 - 02:55

          Nice.

          Thank you.

  • Luminary on 21/08/2015 - 18:31

    I have a separate Gmail account specifically for comping, unless it's an organisation I'm happy to receive emails from. Gmail seems to be pretty good at filtering the emails of win notifications vs spam and puts these in the primary inbox tab. I sometimes check the social, promotions and updates tabs just in case.

    • spackbace on 21/08/2015 - 18:34

      I sometimes check the social, promotions and updates tabs just in case.

      You can delete the tabs so its just the 1 inbox :)

      • Luminary on 21/08/2015 - 20:32

        I'm worried a winning email might get filtered into one of those tabs haha.

        • spackbace on 21/08/2015 - 21:16

          If you delete them, everything goes into inbox. I think it says that when you untick the boxes for them too :)

        • Luminary on 21/08/2015 - 23:02

          Oh, but then I would definitely miss winning emails. It's like a 1000 spam per genuine email haha.

  • SlickMick on 22/08/2015 - 09:07
    +1

    I use Blur to create an email address for every comp. They forward the mail to me, with an option to stop forwarding if it's spam.
    I never used to enter competitions that require a phone number, but now I'll give phone number since I screen calls anyway.

  • OZB Al on 22/08/2015 - 09:51
    +1

    Check out spamgourmet.com, I've been using it for years. Every entry gets its own automatically created email address which will forward me up to 10 emails, as soon as they start spamming I expire the address. Also allows you to see who is selling on the addresses they get.

  • Ughhh on 22/08/2015 - 10:39
    +1

    If it's a minor prize, like free meal or free gift pack, I would only expect an email- which is what I got, never calls. Can't expect them to call 50+ people, they don't lose anything if you miss out because you didn't want to put your email.

    If it's a big prize like a car or paid trip overseas, then I would expect to be called and probably emailed too, since there's probably <5 winners to call.

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