Today in the mail I received a postcard-size “Bingo scratch & win” card. It has two bingo boards printed on the card, and a list of numbers after you rub off the waxy film, like a lottery ticket.
Not surprisingly, I won on one of the Bingo boards. I am instucted to call an 877 number if I have a winning Bingo patter. The prizes offered, are (verbatim):
[ul]
[li]Chefmaster Knife Set ($129.95 value)[/li][li]27" Color TV ($399.00 value)[/li][li]Surprise Package ($100.00 value)[/li][li]$5000 cash (instant win)[/li][li]Sony Playstation 2 (299.00 value)[/li][/ul]
Below it has fine print which explains the odds of winning each prize, and that it is sponsored by the local “Vortech Distributor”. It also says I must contact Vortech Distributor within 48 hours and claim prize within seven days of receiving the card. The last line is my favorite: “The purpose of this promotion is to obtain more business. Subject to company rules.”
My initial thought is that I will call in and they will tell me what I have “won”, but I will have to pay an inflated shipping charge to “claim” my “prize”, or perhaps pay for something to claim it, join a membership, etc. This would be consistent with their inflated prices above. If I get curious enough I may call the number to find out exactly what the catch is.
Just wondering if anyone else has gotten one of these, and what the deal was.
They want to sell you an expensive vacuum cleaner. You will be required to sit through a high pressure sales pitch in your home. At the end of the sales presentation, you will get to pick a prize envelope. If you are real lucky, you will win one of the prizes on the card. You can see what they are about here.
I’m familiar with such things in the UK, and yes they are scams. Usually the victim has to dial a phone number and pay £1 per minute for a 15-minute recorded message telling them what they’ve won. The list of prizes sounds good, bu there’s always a crap item on it, and 99.99% of winners get the crap item. If you phone, you’ll probably discover that you’ve won the $100 surprise package, which in similar UK games turns out to be a money-off coupon redeemable when you spend at least $1,500 on whatever.
I’m not American and I don’t know what an 877 number is, but I’ll take a guess it’s something similar.
Peter Morris, an 877 number is a toll-free number in North American area code 877. It has no cost to the caller. (Calls to area codes 800, 888, 877, 866, and 855 are tollfree.)
North American expensive-pay-per-call numbers are in area code 900. These can have almost any cost, both per-minute and/or a fixed cost per call.
I have heard that there is trickery with forwarded calls and such that allows scammers to somehow charge a caller calling an allegedly-tollfree number, but that may just be an urban legend.
An 877 number is toll free so calling it won’t cost you a thing. When I get those through E-mail it has a code next to my winning number and the code tells you what you won and you can look on their site before buying what they are selling and I always win some crappy item so I don’t go through with it. You may be able to do the same thing. Call them uo and ask what you won.
I received this “bingo card” in the mail with the statement “match three symbols and win the corresponding prize”. I supposedly won a TV, but in the fine print I have to qualify for and agree to a home care product demonstration, “no purchase necessary”. I do not trust it since I do not know who WNYECF is and I just would like others to know about this type of thing. I am afraid someone will fall for this and when the demonstrator comes to a home to show a “home care product” he/she is actually casing the joint to burglarize later or harm a senior citizen. I think I will check with the local police about this and have it checked out.
Prevent the scam people. Be smart, be curious and do your research.
I would expect it is much more likely that they are simply trying to set up the (very high pressure) sales pitch rather than casing the house for later burglary. It is also possible that if you set up the sales pitch, once you make it clear that you aren’t going to buy, you don’t “qualify” for the TV, or that “qualifying” means you have to pay sales tax and shipping and delivery charges for the cheapest TV you can imagine. It’s a scam, IOW, but probably not illegal.
See if one of your neighbors received the same thing, and compare your cards. I’m betting that both of your cards will be exactly the same, right down to the “individual” card number.
The scam I’ve heard about is they say that the prize is a 60 inch TV screen, or some such phrase. Not a TV, but a TV screen.
What you actually get is a bit of plastic that you attach to your small TV and it magnifies the picture to 60 inches. Cheap rubbish that you wouldn’t buy and doesn’t even work properly.
Technically, they’ve given you the prize as advertised.
And, as Shodan says, you have to attend a high-pressure sales pitch to get it.