75ZT Community

Anyone had any update about the car raffle, and whether the tickets have all been sold yet?

Just wondering...

humour section ????

Best to ask them direct.

http://www.st1ng.com/

takestock wrote:humour section ????

I hope not

My main concern is that the terms & conditions say the competition will close "when all 1600 tickets have been sold".

Now, if someone has a competition with that clause in the terms, what's to stop them selling 1599 tickets and not putting the last ticket up for sale? the result being that the organisers make nearly £16k and don't need to hand over any prizes at all... I find it hard to believe that would happen in this case, but you never know, stranger things have happened!

calibrax wrote:My main concern is that the terms & conditions say the competition will close "when all 1600 tickets have been sold".

Now, if someone has a competition with that clause in the terms, what's to stop them selling 1599 tickets and not putting the last ticket up for sale? the result being that the organisers make nearly £16k and don't need to hand over any prizes at all... I find it hard to believe that would happen in this case, but you never know, stranger things have happened!

The people behind the promotion are known and trusted members of the MG-R community though

Nothing to do with this raffle of course, but it reminded me of a cautionary tale doing the rounds a few years back in the city;

Young Chuck moved to Texas and bought a donkey from a farmer for
$100.00. The farmer agreed to deliver the donkey.

The next day he drove up and said, 'Sorry son, but I have some bad news,
the donkey died.'

Chuck replied, 'Well, then just give me my money back.'

The farmer said, 'Can't do that. I went and spent it already.'

Chuck said, 'OK, then, just bring me the dead donkey.'

The farmer asked, 'What ya gonna do with him?

Chuck said, 'I'm going to raffle him off.'

The farmer said 'You can't raffle off a dead donkey!'

Chuck said, 'Sure I can Watch me. I just won't tell anybody he's dead.'

A month later, the farmer met up with Chuck and asked, 'What happened
with that dead donkey?'

Chuck said, 'I raffled him off. I sold 500 tickets at two dollars apiece
and made a profit of $898.00.'

The farmer said, 'Didn't anyone complain?'

Chuck said, 'Just the guy who won, So I gave him back his two dollars

Chuck now works for Goldman Sachs.

calibrax wrote:Anyone had any update about the car raffle, and whether the tickets have all been sold yet?

Just wondering...

We are trying our best to meet the commitments we made back in April.
We received an offer from the MG Car Club to sell our remaining tickets when we were at Silverstone in early June [a] to help them refurbish their museum and [b] help us to sell the remaining tickets.
Unfortunately,they have been unable to sell their allocation which has put us in a very difficult position. I'm guessing that the recession and the prize itself are putting some people off from taking part.

We are going to make a public statement at the end of July which will clarify our position and hopefully you will understand and hopefully agree with our decision. Given the restlessness that some folks are understandably exhibiting, I have decided to explain our position to you here and now. Obviously this information will be shared with everyone who has taken part but you are getting to hear it first.

So far we have sold less than 200 tickets and we have a shade under £2000 in our account. Clearly we are not going to sell all 1600 tickets and perhaps with the benefit of hindsight 1600 tickets was an overly optimistic target given the depth of recession and the current economic climate.

SMG are keen to sell the car to us or move it on as it isn't getting any younger and they are in fact close to agreeing a deal to move their entire remaining stock in one go, so we have had to make a decision, which is incredibly disappointing for us and will no doubt expose us to a lot of ridicule and bad press, but here it is -

We will be writing to everyone who has a ticket either by email or snail mail and also publishing this information on our web site shortly - We are going to offer ticket holders a choice - 1: We will refund all the ticket money we have taken, upon receipt of a valid ticket stub or electronic counterpart. or: 2: We will hold a draw for the money in the account - which we will make up to £2000. There it is - we have failed to sell our tickets and all we can do is offer you a refund or - if you want to leave you money in the pot, a draw for the remaining amount which we will guarantee will be £2000. so even if 100 people decide that they want their £10 pounds back, we will honour that £2000 figure. Obviously - if you want a refund - then you are out of the draw.

I know there are going to be a lot of critical comments about this being a ST1NG etc, but really, our accounts are available for inspection as is the ticketing system - I really hoped that we could do this and make it a great success, but hey, we tried and it failed.

I know this will damage our reputation with a lot of people, and we have worked bloody hard to build ST1NG.com: so its doubly disappointing to us to know that we have failed in this endeavour, but we are going to persevere and get past this point, it's all experience and we learn from our mistakes. No one who bought a ticket will be a loser. You either have you ticket money back or you take a 200 to 1 gamble on the pot.

Finally, there will be people who will say "only 200 tickets? but I've got number 1102" etc. We didn't sell them sequentially, and different people had different sets of ticket books to sell from. The tickets sold on line from early May had a different number format from the conventional ticket stub, but these numbers all map back to a valid conventional ticket number - it was the change to the ticketing system when we moved to the new web site that caused the change in number format, but as I said, we are covering up nothing, and all our data and systems are freely available for inspection - including the unsold tickets. We have checked with the gaming commission who regulate our competition and we are acting within the law. We hope you will agree that this is the best we could do in the circumstances.

We would like to express our thanks and appreciation to everyone who has supported us, often in the face of some unpleasant and unfounded criticism, we will be getting the formal notification out via our web site and email/Royal mail at the end of July, I just wanted to let you guys know first.

Andrew

Thank you very much for the honest update Andrew.
It is regrettable in this economic times that people don't have a lot of spare cash and as said perhaps for some the prize wasn't to their liking.

I am sure people will understand given the choices and the offer of refund or draw of a healthy amount with shorter odds than most draws.

Best of luck for the future with both your business and future events,
ands many thanks for announcing it on here. .

That's a truly sad story Andrew. Hard to believe so few thought it worth a punt.

I'm happy to leave my ticket in the draw.

Thanks for the explation I was going to offer to buy a ticket if you were only a few away but I don't think I can go to 1400 tickets I'm afraid.

I think it says a lot for them, and Andrew in particular, that they have taken the time to provide such a full and frank explanation of what has happened.

Good luck guys

Andrew,

I can't see that this misfortune will damage the reputation of st1ng. I said before that you are known (and well-respected) members of the MG-R community.

The way you've explained things and the ideas you've come up with for closure enhance rather than detract from your reputation in my view. It was a bold venture which has been doomed by an economic climate over which you have no control

Thanks for the update Andrew. I am surprised that only 200 tickets were sold, I'd have thought there would be a lot more interest than that... I guess credit crunch and all that.

I don't know what the position is legally, but is there any way you could perhaps offer a slightly lower value prize than the total amount you have taken, so the difference can cover all the costs incurred running the raffle? I'm sure nobody would begrudge that if it was an option.

Anyway, I'm happy to leave my £10 in for whatever draw takes place. Best of luck with the venture!

So what will the car fetch when sold I wonder?

had the car been a cdti i may of got a ticket , also at the mo £10 is a lot of money to chance , with all the cost the car has given me + with work issues of late we have even put off getting a loan to get a mg f/tf for bev and cut back on a few things . i am surprised only 200 tickets have gone but it is trying times i hope that it can be sorted without fuss

£10? 2 or 3 pints of beer. I really would have thought these tickets would have flown out. £10 for a ZT ! Well worth the punt, regardless of how much you might be able to sell it on for.

Andrew's response to the current situation speaks volumes for St1ng.

I hope they succeed with their venture.

Unbelievable,the price of a bottle of average liquid wax for a delivery mileage car with a life time head gasket warranty,only 200 interested .Think I'll leave my tenner in.........