A COMPETITION run by the Hendy Group on its Facebook page in which it gave away an all-new Ford Fiesta to someone with a distant link to an employee didn’t breach rules, a watchdog has said.
The prize draw for the car, similar to the one pictured, drew four complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) from people who saw it in August. Among the terms and conditions, it said it was ‘open to residents of the UK aged 18 and over, other than Hendy employees, their families and anyone else professionally associated with the prize draw…’
The complainants, who said they believed the winner didn’t fulfil the requirements to qualify as an entrant for the competition because they were a relative of an employee, challenged whether the draw was administered in accordance with the advertising code.
Hendy supplied the ASA with a list of relatives who weren’t eligible and said it had downloaded all leads from a specially created form. The data was then entered anonymously and the winner selected via a third-party online random number generator.
The winner was announced via a branded MP4 #BIGFiestaGiveaway post on the Hendy Group Facebook account but they weren’t aware they’d won until Hendy tagged them in the post. A status comment by the winner then led to confusion as to whether or not they were the sibling-in-law of a Hendy employee.
Hendy said it took all actions to investigate whether there was a familial relationship and was happy with the outcome showing that it wasn’t true. It said the winner wasn’t an employee’s sibling-in-law by marriage but rather was married to the cousin of an employee’s de facto spouse. As such, said Hendy, under the policies of its manufacturer partners, that didn’t constitute a family relationship so the winner wouldn’t qualify to receive any family discounts or similar.
The ASA said it considered that consumers wouldn’t expect such a person to be excluded from the promotion based on the wording of the terms and conditions and, as such, no rules were breached.
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