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How does the Hornby Magazine online competition work?


xbr

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I've been entering for months but have never received a single entry confirmation. If there's no confirmation, how do I know my entry has been correctly received?

Actually, there's really no more info about the contests or how they work... You just have the submission fields and that's it; you've got to trust that everything went as planned. The contests just appear, then are marked as closed when the date has gone by, and a couple of months after they disappear from the webstite.Normally, in contests there's an annoucement that the contest winner was chozen, at least, even if the winner's name isn't given. I'm assuming someone's winning these contests because they keep on putting up new ones each month but it really is weird that no confirmation or any other info is available.

Plus, when you enter it tells you you won't be able to enter again from the same IP address for a minute because they're trying to cut down on entry SPAM. But what does that mean? That if I wait for a minute each time I can enter as many times as I want? There's no further info about this... I'm entering once but perhaps I'll never win because other people are entering again and again, hundreds of times, every other minute!

There really should be more info about this on the contest website. And the contest should be more "transparent" to show that it's actually working.

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Have you tired entering again. What happened?

 

On the Hornby site competitions it told you that you had already entered thus preventing multiple entries, which the comp rules said was illegal and would result in a null and void entry anyhow.

 

These comps are purely data gatherers and the bait is a prize, which someone will win. Cheap stats gathering.

 

Rob

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I just put in my details and my answer, if I win I win, if I don’t I don’t. It costs nothing so there is nothing to lose. 

 

I don't require any acknowledgement that I have entered. Now if there was an entry fee that would be different. 

 

They publish the winner, one day it might be me. I’ll probably win something I don’t really want. If I do I will give it away to somebody on this or the other forum I use. 

 

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@XBONET.........I have just entered the Hornby Mag Princess Coronation competition (thanks for the reminder).......there was a following page that thanked for my entry..........I was able to enter a second time after a couple of minutes.........the competition winners are always announced in the Hornby magazine in the next edition after each draw........HB

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@xbonet

Just want to point out for information that the "Hornby Magazine" and their competitions have got absolutely nothing to do with Hornby Hobbies (HH). HH have no editorial influence over the 'Hornby Magazine' (HM). HM just pay to use the Hornby brand name under license.

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Have you tired entering again. What happened?

 

On the Hornby site competitions it told you that you had already entered thus preventing multiple entries, which the comp rules said was illegal and would result in a null and void entry anyhow.

 

These comps are purely data gatherers and the bait is a prize, which someone will win. Cheap stats gathering.

 

Rob

Hi, Rob! Thanks for your answer. If you wait the minute it lets you enter all your info again without any problems at all.

Because i received no confirmation via Email the first time, I tried entering again (thinking my first entry hadn't gone through) and that's how I realised that if you wait the minute, you can theoretically enter the same information as many times as you wish.

In fact, there are no rules or anything like that anywhere to be found. Where did you find those rules you mention?

I too think there's not much care behind this competition. The idea is just getting your Email to send you info. Which is why I also wonder if only the first time you send your info does it actually take it into consideration for the competition. Otherwise, I do believe it's very easy for someone (or many people, actually) out there to set up a simple code that enters them infinite times every other minute...

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A search for competitions on the site says there aren’t any so there are no rules published to refer to.

 

Edit - didnt realise it was a magazine comp.

this says you are limited to one entry per minute per IP address - best of luck winning that.

 

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Rob

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If each device was on a different IP address then you could in theory enter as fast as you could type with the knowledge that by the time you got back to device 1 the one minute limit would have elapsed and you could enter again, but why bother. I have better things to do with the rest of my life.

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  • 8 months later...

Thanks to everyone for your responses! I've been away for some time, so I haven't had much time to check back on this competition. But since I asked the question, I have at least come to 3 conclusion:

 

1) That even though the website says you can enter from outside the UK, it seems that only UK residents can actually win the competitions. The winners used to be published in the actual magazine (they aren't anymore, for some reason), and if you look at all past issues you'll notice only UK residents have actually ever won the competition. Of course, mostly people from the UK enter but HM have readers all over, so statistically there should have been at least 1 international winner at some point, which to my knowledge there hasn't been.

 

2) Even though there still is an absolute lack of terms & conditions or rules behind the competition, a few months back they did include the disclaimer that any repeat entries would be deleted. So at least there's that.

 

3) That even if there is an actual winner, this is not at all a serious or transparent competition. It's basically just a data farm: the main goal of it being to gather up all your data for Key Publishing's publicity ends. Because as unclear and non-communicative as they are with how the competition works, they are the absolute opposite when it comes to bombarding you several times a day with publicity on all their publications, etc.

 

The strongest evidence for the fact that this isn't a serious competition is that a couple of months back the competition entry page just disappeared from their website midway through the competition deadline. I’m aware they were contacted about this and even though they said it wasn’t supposed to be down, and that they would put it back up immediately, they had to be contacted again 5 days after nothing had been done before they actually did something about it. So the competition was unavailable for new entries for at least 5 days and no attention had been paid to it nor was there any communication about it after the fact.

 

Clearly, this isn’t how serious competitions are held. So one can justly suppose HM pays little to no importance to their competitions.

 

Anyway, that's about as much as I can say about that. As several of you have already stated in your replies, the probability of winning such a competition (with the bonus that its process is very doubtful, to say the least) is negligible. So enter with absolutely no hopes or expectations!

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