Has anyone ever won a TV competition with a postal entry?
Posted by Willy_Wilson_@reddit | AskUK | View on Reddit | 13 comments
You know the ones, typically on ITV, pay for competition entry via phone call or text… or enter for free with a postcard to a PO Box?! I can only assume these go straight into a shredder!
Any winners here?!
Party-Replacement961@reddit
Yes, I enter loads of ITV competitions by postcard, & have been doing so for about 2 years now! But I've never won anything. I always add my email address as well as my phone number, in case they want to email me in the unlikely event I win someday... As someone else said, it's getting a bit expensive now though, as a second class stamp is now 91p in 2026! There is currently no limit to how many times you can enter by post, so I usually send off between 10-20 postcards for each comp, depending on how keen I am to win that particular prize. I'll let you guys know if I ever win any of these comps!
ShineAtom@reddit
Not on the telly but via a national newspaper where you rang in and gave the answer. To my immense surprise and delight, I won an XBox 360 just in time for Christmas. It was a great present for my son as there was no way we could have afforded it ourselves!
Willy_Wilson_@reddit (OP)
That’s awesome, did they phone you back or tell you straight away?!
ShineAtom@reddit
The phone line was one of those automated things and you left a message. I think I got a letter a week or two later and then it just turned up via FedEx one day. I can't really remember because it was twenty years ago now. I'd never won anything before (or since) and this win was just perfect for our son who was and still is really into gaming. I think that he still has the 360 although not the original as it got the red ring of death which was common with the early 360s and Microsoft had to replace them.
CreativeAdeptness477@reddit
Story time. Settle down kiddies...
A long long long long longass time ago in the dim and distant past of 1990 to 1991 there was a channel on Sky called The Children's Channel, and a show called The Dennis the Menace and Gnasher Show which little 9ish year old me, who was a huge Dennis the Menace/Beano fan at the time, sent in a fan submission for.
I can't recall exactly what it was as I've slept since then but it involved drawings and a short story and a board game I designed and some other stuff. Little me really went to town with that.
And yeah it got featured in a segment on the show so technically that counts as winning, right? Right.
Guess which episode I missed. Shouldn't take many attempts.
I only learned about it when I got a mysterious package sent to me through the post, which really weirded my parents out because who the hell in the early 90s would be sending a 9 year old boy anything, and it turned out to be a thank you congratulations for being featured on the show here's some free shit pack.
Fucking fuming! Absolutely livid.
Never did see it.
u_reddit_another_day@reddit
Not to this day? I feel there must be a reddit thread somewhere you can repost this and someone will post a link to YouTube version or something for that episode.
CreativeAdeptness477@reddit
Oh probably. I'd forgotten about it a long time ago until this thread reminded me. Back when I cared there was no option to.
Conscious-Yoghurt602@reddit
No because it isn’t the 80s
Willy_Wilson_@reddit (OP)
It’s literally still an option…
u_reddit_another_day@reddit
Back in the day used to be the cheaper way to enter, these days with postage costs I think it's cheaper to phone!
Also I think the small print often limits you to 1 postal entry but they are happy for you to phone in many times, this limiting the chances of postal entries winning.
But either way I think these things have a fair amount of regulation and oversight so I don't think they go in the shredder.
Willy_Wilson_@reddit (OP)
The shredder comment was a bit tongue in cheek! I just can’t see a company either digitising the postal entries into some sort of lottery along with the phone calls/sms or saying “screw the electronic entries, grab a postcard”
DaughterOfATiredMech@reddit
I also always assumed they wasn’t really entered
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