# Publisher's Clearing House **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [December 24, 2018, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/publishers-clearing-house/826652 "2018-12-24T23:30:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2018, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/publishers-clearing-house/826652/1 "2018-12-24T23:30:59Z")
Mrs. L.A. entered a Publisher’s Clearing House sweepstakes. After decades of ignoring them, I thought ‘What they hell,’ and entered myself. Sometimes I get tired of endlessly playing Sudoku, and their ‘games’ are mildly diverting. Of course to actually enter a sweepstakes, you need to complete the ‘final step’ several times a day. (They seem to have an unusual definition of ‘final’.) This invariably involves clicking through several pages of things to buy before you can enter. (And then you need to look at more stuff before you can enter.) Today I was curious… They had a DVD (one I would never buy) for five payments of $2.99 each – call it $18 total. I went to Amazon and found the same DVD for $8.22. I also looked up a butter dish (I don’t use them). I couldn’t find the exact one, but the ones I did find were much cheaper from Amazon. Not to mention that all of the stuff they advertise is cheap crap you’d expect from Fingerhut or someplace; things that grandparents in the '70s might think were fabulous. Anyway, I’ll play with PCH a while longer, until I get tired of it. I’m not buying anything from them though, because I don’t want what they’re selling and, if I did, it’s cheaper elsewhere. And it’s mildly amusing to do the required searches by entering things like ‘recipes for human flesh’, ‘where to buy human flesh’, ‘cannibalism’, ‘roast kitten’, and ‘are pch sweepstakes a scam’. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2018, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/publishers-clearing-house/826652/2 "2018-12-25T00:28:47Z")
Back in the day, they sold magazine subscriptions, and now that people aren’t doing that as much, reverted to made-in-China crap. I do get mailings from them, and even though I’ve never won anything from them, my brother knows someone who won $5,000, and that’s why I do it. ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2018, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/publishers-clearing-house/826652/3 "2018-12-25T01:37:51Z")
I’ve never actually done the math, but I could never see how magazine subscriptions could subsidize all that money they claim to give away. ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2018, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/publishers-clearing-house/826652/4 "2018-12-25T01:56:52Z")
I know someone who won a car from them. They took the cash value. Or so they claimed. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2018, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/publishers-clearing-house/826652/5 "2018-12-25T02:07:11Z")
> [@Lucas\_Jackson](#): > > I’ve never actually done the math, but I could never see how magazine subscriptions could subsidize all that money they claim to give away. I think most of their income comes from the overpriced crap they’re hawking. Speaking of math, you’re _much_ more likely to win Powerball than their $7,000/week/life. ---
**Author:** ![Duckster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duckster/32/1244_2.png) [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2018, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/publishers-clearing-house/826652/6 "2018-12-25T03:45:56Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#): > > I think most of their income comes from the overpriced crap they’re hawking. > > Speaking of math, you’re _much_ more likely to win Powerball than their $7,000/week/life. > [@](#): > > Publishers Clearing House has said your chances of winning a top prize such as $7,000 a week for life are “in the hundreds of millions.” Other estimates place your odds at 1 in 1.7 billion. > > ``` > To put that in perspective, your odds of winning the Powerball lottery jackpot are 1 in 292 million. Compared to the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes, that's practically a sure thing. > > ``` [Ask Laz: Your long, long odds of winning the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes](https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lazarus-lottery-scams-20170315-story.html)