"Not eligible for competition entry", so how are they compensated?

[5129frederick]

Like countless other people up and down the country, I buy a weekly competition magazine where somewhere around £35,000.00 is allocated in prizes.  At the back where the entry form is, is the standard exclusion clause stating the competetitions are not open to "Employees (and their families), it's printers, agents or any other companies associated with the competitions ... "  Pretty standard stuff, but collectively they must make up a veritable army of excluded persons.  How are they compensated due to the fact that, technically anyway, they are losing out on the chances of winning anything from a year's supply of toilet rolls to holidays in the sun, and even cars?  Do they have their own "in house" competitions exclusively to them where public participation is excluded.  If not, it all seems a bit unfair.

[mustard-tree]

Then there is the "not eligible to win" clause

One magazine offers a new car every week

The small print states that the car must be insured in the winners name before car is delivered.

Prize is not transferrable

So, technically, with clever filtering, they dont have to part with a new car every week, by choosing someone who is not likely to have a driving licence, or is unlikely to be able to obtain insurance for another reason.

Without this clause, such a person could win the car, then either sell it, or pass it on to a family member.

Or am I just being cynical

[5129frederick]

As a follow-up just how on earth do the pick the winners at "random?  Remember, it's not  just postal entries.  You can enter on-line, phone-in use a mobile phone et al.  You can't tell me they put 45,000 envelopes into a drum!  

The one competition I will never enter is one of these "Win a car a day!" phone-in schemes run by you "Super, Sensational, Soaraway "STUN" newspaper" who claim to have a readership of 10,000,000 a day.  If that is the case and just one person in a hundred gets sucked into it you talking of odds of 10,000:1!!!!!    ROTF!

" Don't call us, we'll call you."

[ilove2patch]

Every entry would have a number & they would use a random number generator.:)