A new boat for a fiver

[magnetman]

Exactly. The way it is worded does not mention how many tickets are sold it just says "if the host fails to provide a prize". So there is no obligation under any circumstances to provide a prize regardless of number of tickets bought. The prize does not exist. 

[Alan de Enfield]

6 minutes ago, Tony Brooks said:

 

If that is the case, then the people who licence lotteries need to take action as well a Consumer Protection. Unless the promoters can show a realistic chance of selling sufficient tickets for someone to actually win the prize, it can be nothing but a scam.

 

It is not a lottery - a lottery must have a level of skill and choice involved. These draws are simple 'raffles' buy a ticket and hope you number comes out.

 

Over the last couple of years we have twice 'entered the draw' for a house and both times we received an email on the draw date stating that insufficient tickets have been sold and there will be no draw.

 

Twice bitten .................

[MtB]

1 minute ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

Over the last couple of years we have twice 'entered the draw' for a house and both times we received an email on the draw date stating that insufficient tickets have been sold and there will be no draw.

 

Twice bitten .................

 

Ah but did you get 75% of your money back?

 

 

[StephenA]

Just now, MtB said:

 

Ah but did you get 75% of your money back?

 

 

Only the "winner" gets 75% of what was taken- minus admin fees. And no-one ever finds out who that is .....

 

Its all a Fraud plain and simple

[matty40s]

27 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

 

The closer one looks, the scummier it gets. 

 

 

You dont have to buy one.

 

The company in question has moved into larger premises 12 months ago, taken on additional staff, has an order book to 2025, and is now moving into electric propulsion systems. 

[StephenA]

1 minute ago, matty40s said:

You dont have to buy one.

 

The company in question has moved into larger premises 12 months ago, taken on additional staff, has an order book to 2025, and is now moving into electric propulsion systems. 

 

So this boat that you can win in August won't actually be available until sometime late in 2025?

[MtB]

3 minutes ago, matty40s said:

You dont have to buy one.

 

The company in question has moved into larger premises 12 months ago, taken on additional staff, has an order book to 2025, and is now moving into electric propulsion systems. 

 

Well I'm pleased to hear they are doing well. 

 

My suspicion is the company running the raffle is the scummy one, not Oakham. \

 

[magnetman]

I find it distasteful that people may be encouraged to spend five pounds in the hope of "winning" a decent canal boat when nothing of the sort will happen. 

 

The shell fabricator might be great but the prize does not exist. Usually this would be called deception but for some reason it is allowed. 

 

If there was an advert where it said give us a fiver and you could win 50 grand (depending on number of other contributors) it would be more honest. 

 

 

 

 

This sort of scam must be taking advantage of a loophole in gambling laws. 

 

Also do these raffle scompanies get looked at properly? What is to stop them just awarding the prize to themselves if they have invested some fivers? 

 

I can't be doing with all of these things. The invention of the lottery was a sad day for this country. I thought we were above this but it seems not. 

 

 

Someone has a sense of of humour here. 

 

"Raffall" was the first letter meant to be an N? 

[David Mack]

2 hours ago, Alan de Enfield said:

Surely you have seen the '£1m House for a £5' adverts on TV ?

 

A whole host of companies have set up to 'do everything' for the charity and take a cut of the takings - my experience is that they never sell the agreed minimum number of tickets, so they deuct their costs and just pay the rest to the charity - the house is never won.

Apparently people do win the house.

https://amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/apr/04/too-good-to-be-true-what-it-is-really-like-to-win-a-3m-dream-home

[Alan de Enfield]

Good to know that occasionally there is a 'winner'.

[ditchcrawler]

1 hour ago, David Mack said:

Apparently people do win the house.

https://amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/apr/04/too-good-to-be-true-what-it-is-really-like-to-win-a-3m-dream-home

Have you ever seen how much money they donate to the charity?

[David Mack]

42 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

Have you ever seen how much money they donate to the charity?

From the article:

 

Since launching in the UK, Omaze has given more than £11m to some of the UK’s biggest charities, including the British Heart Foundation, the NSPCC, Great Ormond Street hospital, Dog’s Trust and, after Glazier and his colleagues had done their due diligence, Alzheimer’s Research UK. There is now a bidding process in which charities pitch their case.

“We got £1m from the draw for the Lake District house,” says Lucy Squance, director of supporter-led fundraising at Alzheimer’s Research UK. “For a charity of our size to get that sort of figure is completely transformational.” And it wasn’t just the money. “We were on primetime TV adverts for two or three months over Christmas. We just don’t have that kind of advertising power and as a result gained more than 1,500 direct supporters and were able to engage with the public in a way we would never be able to otherwise. It was worth so much more than the £1m.”

[Athy]

5 hours ago, MtB said:

 

Quite. 

 

They'd need to sell 41,600 raffle tickets to even fund the price of the boat prize, plus a further 4,160 to fund the administration fees. 

 

I doubt they'll sell more than a few hundred. 

 

The closer one looks, the scummier it gets. 

 

 

You're probably right.

But then, how many people buy a National Lottery ticket each week? Even I bought one once.

 

I'm not sure why, but it puts me in mind of that offer of free airline tickets to New York. Did anybody ever get one?

[matty40s]

Plenty going on...

https://raffall.com/top-performing

[Tracy D'arth]

4 minutes ago, matty40s said:

Plenty going on...

https://raffall.com/top-performing

I am going to raffle myself, is £20 a ticket too much?

[matty40s]

32 minutes ago, Tracy D'arth said:

I am going to raffle myself, is £20 a ticket too much?

I'm not sure that there will be many ticket buyers for a boobybprize.

[magnetman]

Understanding is the booby prize. This is what we were told in the EST training all those yars ago. It was a fair point.

 

 

Booby prizes are alright in my book. 

 

[MtB]

2 hours ago, magnetman said:

Understanding is the booby prize. This is what we were told in the EST training all those yars ago. It was a fair point.

 

 

Booby prizes are alright in my book. 

[Guest]

5 hours ago, David Mack said:

From the article:

 

Since launching in the UK, Omaze has given more than £11m to some of the UK’s biggest charities, including the British Heart Foundation, the NSPCC, Great Ormond Street hospital, Dog’s Trust and, after Glazier and his colleagues had done their due diligence, Alzheimer’s Research UK. There is now a bidding process in which charities pitch their case.

“We got £1m from the draw for the Lake District house,” says Lucy Squance, director of supporter-led fundraising at Alzheimer’s Research UK. “For a charity of our size to get that sort of figure is completely transformational.” And it wasn’t just the money. “We were on primetime TV adverts for two or three months over Christmas. We just don’t have that kind of advertising power and as a result gained more than 1,500 direct supporters and were able to engage with the public in a way we would never be able to otherwise. It was worth so much more than the £1m.”

 

We always enter the Omaze draws, one never knows and anyway the money goes to a good cause.

 

I think the current house is the one that overlooks the Fowey in Cornwall.

 

Stunning location and if we win well have a CWDF banter there. 🤣🤣

[Andyaero]

No offence .....

but.......

the condescending attitude shown on here by many towards modern "You Tube" and social media marketing methods probably says more about the ill informed demographic than the legality of said schemes.

To continually allege that there is something scammy/illegal about both the raffle operator and the boat builder is at best only potentially libellous, a conclusion reached merely because they are using practices outside of the "traditional".

Both are legitimate businesses.

Given their high profile on all social media forums and trade shows, I doubt OAKUMS would be entering into the PR debacle that running such a scam would become.

The canals will still be flowing and populated in a hundred years time, there'll be different folks using them, the times they are a changing.

[StephenA]

7 minutes ago, Andyaero said:

No offence .....

but.......

the condescending attitude shown on here by many towards modern "You Tube" and social media marketing methods probably says more about the ill informed demographic than the legality of said schemes.

To continually allege that there is something scammy/illegal about both the raffle operator and the boat builder is at best only potentially libellous, a conclusion reached merely because they are using practices outside of the "traditional".

Both are legitimate businesses.

Given their high profile on all social media forums and trade shows, I doubt OAKUMS would be entering into the PR debacle that running such a scam would become.

The canals will still be flowing and populated in a hundred years time, there'll be different folks using them, the times they are a changing.

 

Why would Oakums who have 2 years of work on their order books and could easily sell a boat from a contract that fell through go to something as unreliable as a raffle to sell a 20K+ boat? Even though they post the link to it on their FB page it doesn't seem to be the most sensible way of selling something that expensive.

Edited April 27, 2023 by StephenA

[Andyaero]

10 minutes ago, StephenA said:

 

Why would Oakums who have 2 years of work on their order books and could easily sell a boat from a contract that fell through go to something as unreliable as a raffle to sell a 20K+ boat? Even though they post the link to it on their FB page it doesn't seem to be the most sensible way of selling something that expensive.

Publicity, gets folk talking?

Seems to be being pushed by a couple of youtubers, who just ordered an Oakums boat........

 

Edited April 27, 2023 by Andyaero

[Alan de Enfield]

19 minutes ago, Andyaero said:

The canals will still be flowing and populated in a hundred years time,

 

If I thought I'd be here to collect my winnings I'd gladly bet you any amount of cash that you are wrong.

They may well be populated with static boats but 'flowing', boats navigating - no way !

[Guest]

28 minutes ago, Andyaero said:

No offence .....

but.......

the condescending attitude shown on here by many towards modern "You Tube" and social media marketing methods probably says more about the ill informed demographic than the legality of said schemes.

To continually allege that there is something scammy/illegal about both the raffle operator and the boat builder is at best only potentially libellous, a conclusion reached merely because they are using practices outside of the "traditional".

Both are legitimate businesses.

Given their high profile on all social media forums and trade shows, I doubt OAKUMS would be entering into the PR debacle that running such a scam would become.

The canals will still be flowing and populated in a hundred years time, there'll be different folks using them, the times they are a changing.

 

I would be interested to know if the posters on here who have suggested there is a fraud in play here understand the liability of suggesting such a thing for them personally or indeed the forum if they are wrong and if called upon to prove it.

 

Sometimes it pays to be careful when using such terminology, even on the internet.

[MtB]

28 minutes ago, StephenA said:

Why would Oakums who have 2 years of work on their order books and could easily sell a boat from a contract that fell through go to something as unreliable as a raffle to sell a 20K+ boat?

 

 

^^^ This ^^^ is the bit that troubles me.

 

It simply doesn't add up. A firm with supposedly a two year order book offers a boat in a raffle. Why? How can they build it in time with their claimed two year order book?

 

Or do we know it is a contact that fell though and the boat is already built and sitting about unsold? 

 

Andyaero seems to know a lot about it. Maybe he can fill in the blanks for us dinosaurs...