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Competitions Guide has a rating of 3.81 stars from 43 reviews, indicating that most customers are generally satisfied with their purchases. Competitions Guide ranks 15th among Contests sites.
This company responds to reviews on average within 2 days
I find the way that you can sort and tag competitions to enter, makes it very worthwhile and not a painful, time-consuming chore. Only if they could send personalised notifications of any prizes I've one! Btw, I've won a night away at a lux hotel and makeup bag for my wife. So quite happy for the minimal outlay
I wasn't aware this was an auto-renewal subscription, however, under Australian consumer law the supplier is required to advise you that the renewal is due so you have the option to cease or continue. Despite several emails with Ivy, I was unsuccessful in getting a refund even though I contacted them one day after seeing the renewal go through my bank. She even challenged me to lay a complaint with the ACCC, as that is what I have done. They don't follow the law and should be avoided at all cost.
I find the way that you can sort and tag competitions to enter, makes it very worthwhile and not a painful, time-consuming chore. Only if they could send personalised notifications of any prizes I've one! Btw, I've won a night away at a lux hotel and makeup bag for my wife. So quite happy for the minimal outlay
I wasn't aware this was an auto-renewal subscription, however, under Australian consumer law the supplier is required to advise you that the renewal is due so you have the option to cease or continue. Despite several emails with Ivy, I was unsuccessful in getting a refund even though I contacted them one day after seeing the renewal go through my bank. She even challenged me to lay a complaint with the ACCC, as that is what I have done. They don't follow the law and should be avoided at all cost.
Hi Les, our terms are extremely brief and easy to read. On two occasions you have manually checked the box that says you have read and understood our auto renewal process. We require new members to do this when they join, and further do this before purchasing a Go Premium Subscription. Auto renewal takes seconds to cancel and is instant.
We have not challenged you to contact the ACCC - our exact quote to you was "Please feel free to take your complaint anywhere you see fit - we will never intentionally operate outside any law as we service tens of thousands of subscribers each year."
In terms of Australian law, we disagree with your premise, and remind you that you first directed us to the United States Federal Trade Commission. We are more than happy to discuss your case with the ACCC, if you have lodged a complaint as stated this will be the fourth time in 18 years of operation.
Joined to be able to enter more competitions so I could have easier access and save time. I am a full time carer for my ill husband and wanted to increase my changes of winning a treat or more for a surprise not Surveys and buying entry tickets. I paid for the annual premium membership.
Hi Denice,
Firstly, very sorry to hear about your husband and hope things are as best as they can possibly be under the circumstances.
Unfortunately we don't get to dictate what makes up the competitions market but we do try to maintain a mix of entry types each day. By far our biggest category is 60 second entry (we have currently 6 pages of these). The comp listed today for Canadian Club is a regular visitor that provides a lot of prizes - almost 5,000 up for grabs!
Ticketed comps make up only a tiny fraction of the total list. Survey competitions also aren't great in number but they do vary in length.
Competitions requiring a purchase of any type make up 20% or so of the total, but please don't disregard them as they can provide the best odds of winning a big prize, or often one of thousands of runner up prizes!
I have Won a Balsam Hill BH Fraser Fir Christmas Tree Prizes thanks to Competition's Guide thanks for the opportunity.
Tip for consumers:
Thankyou for our Wonderful Prize Balsam Hill and Completion's Guide.
Products used:
Balsam Hill BH Fraser Fir Christmas Tree.
Thanks Stuart, that looks like a mega tree, hopefully used for years to come. Fingers crossed for some more wins in the future :)
Joined and then went premium soon after, first prize won within a week or 2, site is awesome with a good range of competitions. I go on about once a week and do the newer ones but I dislike how I can't go down the list and open the competition in a new tab, it just reopens the same page again and the backwards and forwards is annoying.
Hi Michelle, thank you for the positive review, as you can imagine we love them. I know this is belated but if you're still having the same issue can you please drop us a line? Each page should open in a new tab, so not sure why this would be happening.
Competitions Guide for a small annual fee of about $40 lists a variety of new comps every day. All comps are vetted to ensue that your entry will not bombard you with annoying spam.
Plenty of free entry comps, some require a little creative effort, and/or sign up to receive newsletters. Some comps require shop to enter.
No annoying surveys or forums to maintain membership.
Very easy management of comps with favourites, green tick to indicate I have entered, red cross to indicate I am not interested plus a notes function where I can add helpful info (daily entry, weekly entry, 25wol..., submit recipe etc).
Products used:
I have entered lots of comps from the site.
Wow, Mel, thank you for a glowing and detailed review. Glad that you use some of the functions available as this makes comping a lot easier to manage. Very much appreciated :)
This site just sells your info to others. Never won anything just got bugged full on by other 3rd parties, constant phone calls and emails. So annoying.
Tip for consumers:
Unless you want to be annoyed endlessly by 3rd parties, don't bother.
Hi Kat,
We don't sell info to others, it's that simple. Firstly to do so without stating this in terms and conditions is illegal, and secondly we would have very little to sell anyway.
Think about it - we don't ask for your phone number or street address when you sign up. These are the most valuable commodities to an information harvester.
Yes, 3rd party contact is a fact of competitions that we don't take part in, but it does exist.
I joined a few years ago and went premium not long after. I don't visit every day but a couple of times a week I pick out 10 or so comps to enter. Haven't won a major prize yet but heaps of smaller prizes including a Gold Coast weekend away and $500 IGA voucher!
Tip for consumers:
Read the book and stick with it for a few months.
Products used:
Subscription
Hi Jennifer, thanks for your comments, very appreciated! Not sure how many prizes 'heaps' is, but it seems like quite a good run rate for as little as 10 a week (out of 70 listed). Well done!
Great website! I visit almost daily as there is always new competitions with great prizes. Awesome mix of competition types and the site is set out in an easy way to use and keep track of which comps you've entered. Love it!
Thanks Jamie, much appreciated! Glad you mentioned the 'mix' as it's the main objective we have every day - trying to balance a range of different comps to appeal to as many members as we can!
Big fan of the site and it's a massive time saver having all the current competitions pooled together in one place. They have sales on the subscription fees so if you want a steal, just wait but I've won numerous things off this site, paid full price for the yearly subscription and can confidently say I got my moneys worth 10x over in prizes.
I've always enjoyed entering competitions as a hobby, Competitions Guide has allowed me access to many competitions in one place for a very small reasonable yearly fee. I have managed to win some amazing prizes over the years with their help and has definitely paid off not only in prizes but it has also been a lot of fun.
Thanks Emily, always appreciate reviews like this. If you could add your prize list to our 'what have you won' page that would be great, would love to see it :)
I have signed up to a few competition sites, but Competitions Guide is by far the best one. It is so time saving and convenient to have all of the available competitions at the one website, without the need to hunt through the internet to find them. I also love that I can highlight my 'favourites' as well as mark them completed.
Really nice to hear from you Danielle, the favourites section is one of those tools particularly used for tracking comps that have closed in the past. Always good to hear someone making use of these features!
I wasn't aware it was an auto renewal and as soon as I was charged I contacted them to ask for a refund. Given the rise in cost of living (and the fact there is no reminder or prompt to users advising them a payment is coming up) I would say this is completely unfair and unethical.
I would discourage others from using Competitions Guide and would highly recommend OzBargain as an alternative
I guess I've been with them a while.
Competitions Guide is a good place for someone starting out in the "Entering Competitions" life. Just don't rely on it to pay the bills.
Tip for consumers:
No
Products used:
It's a service provider and NOT a product provider, the questions about delivery etc quite simply are NOT relevant.
Hi Rob, 4 stars for all of our components and 3 stars overall?... All good, you've been a member for a long time! :) Good point about not relying on competitions - we do get a lot of new members desperate for cash, very sad in these economic times. Competitions should be a hobby, with wins as a bonus.
I have been doing Competitions Guide for over two years and have never won a thing. But i'll keep going
Tip for consumers:
No
Products used:
Never won
Hi Lee, it's disappointing that an ongoing member would leave a one star review based on not winning. Remember, we do not run these competitions, we list them and provide as many tips as we possibly can to help our members win. Shooting the messenger isn't the answer. Instead, why not drop us a line and we'll take a look at your activity and see if we can suggest some ways you can improve your win ratio - we're happy to help!
Competitions Guide has always had a great variety of comps, varied with 25 words or less, shop comps, or simple entries.
I am, however, noticing a lot more 'shop to enter' comps than an easy click to enter from the comps website.
It's been many years, and now, whilst I'm not checking daily, I do at least check Competitions Guide weekly for the buzz.
Hi Sarah, thanks so much for the review. Shop to enter comps made up 95% of all our listings when we started in 2005. Now the number seems to stick at around 20% meaning 80% are free. We do try and keep the mix at around the same!
Very Responsive, always helpful. Ive been a customer for several years. If you ask for help, or for advice, they get right on it.
Hi Rich, thanks so much for the review. If my memory serves me you won a huge tool chest, and you've also been great at letting us know when there's issues with any of the competitions. Nice to hear from you!
Absolutly a waste of time, all they want is your Email address so they can send crap that is of no importance to you. There are not enough competitions for Men, its all about Ladies make up & kids stuff. If they had more stuff for Men i would not have Cancelled my membership.And this is what i mean, at the end of this they want me to sign up so they can post my review.BULL$#*!
Hi James,
A couple of things first up, the only things we send to your email address is our daily newsletter, which just lets members know new and closing comps. A lot of members choose to unsubscribe, but we average just under 7,000 daily opens so it's not a wasted activity.
Remember we don't control the competitions market, and every competition prize is fully disclosed before you sign up. Competitions are heavily skewed towards women, and 85% of our audience is female. This has always been the case.
BUT there's a positive in that Men's comps get a fraction of the entries and the odds of winning are so much better. That's why our winner's pages have a lot of men featured - you still have half a year on your Go Premium membership, so take another look through the blokey comps and give them a go, you may be surprised!
Very happy with all but disappointed on the auto re sign up Should give notice if you if you want to go around for another year and not find money taken out of your account without notice But like I said very happy with them
Hi Mark, thanks for the rating, very much appreciated. We take on board all feedback, especially in regards to payment systems. Generally members who don't want to auto renew will cancel on the first day, with most of the balance in the first 7 days. The issue with emails sent directly from our business is that less than 5% of are opened, meaning our unopen rate of approx 95% would be enough to ensure pretty much every email we send goes to spam. Large unopen rates then lead to further spam and blocking penalties from Gmail, Hotmail, Bigpond etc. Fortunately we get very few complaints relating to this, but fully understand that this can be an issue!
Why should we pay a yearly fee, when half the comps are either Facebook or instagram and they are free to anyone
Hi Toni,
All competitions listed on Competitions Guide can be found for free at any time, so nobody has to pay us to enter these competitions.
Joining us as a Go Premium works out at 11 cents a day, and for that we save our members hours of searching for competitions to enter each day. And we're pretty sure that saving money can cost you missing out on good comps that you won't find through your own searching.
There's another thing. If you're wondering how free competitions websites operate, it's not because they're great people who like to do stuff for others. A competition website is a great way to get to your valuable information, and these sites ask a lot of questions.
Because we make money from subscriptions we only ask for a few general pieces of info. We don't need to know your phone number or street address, or actual birth date...
We also don't allow businesses to post their own competitions - everything posted at Competitions Guide has been verified by our editorial! :)
I've just renewed my membership for a 3rd time, love the ease of competitions coming straight to my email every day…. Now just to turn on my lucky charm and win some big ones!
I've had a couple of wins, so far! Biggest was $200. But, it's great fun and not overly time consuming! As they say, you've got to be in it to win it...
Joined after seeing this on Channel 9, no mention of monthly joining fee, can't enter anything without paying "Premium" membership, can't even enter the Vaxxed comps, this will be quickly deleted and unsubscribed, if you can't mention there is a cost involved on the TV, don't surprise me with it after I join.
Hi Grant, the Channel 9 show you mentioned was the National News. We were asked to comment on the vaccination competition that was being run at the time. At no time do we get asked questions about our business model, that's not what the news is there for (and we would have happily answered if we were asked).
I came here to try my luck and even though I haven't won anything yet I still enjoy entering and feeling hopeful I might be lucky enough to win one day!
Thanks Emma, not sure how long you've been a member but keep an eye on the 'best odds' comps. There's one right now for Canadian Club - they run 1-2 a year and are good for easy wins! Thanks again for taking the time!
I have been with competionsguide from the very beging, when comps were only posted on a tuesday, i have been very lucky and won quite a few comps, the latest being a $10,000 outdoor kitchen, i have also had the pleasure of being on a current affairs twice and i did a documantary on comping as well, some thing i never thought would happen, all thanks to competions guide. I will say though most people think that if you enter a comp today it should be drawn within in a week, they need to remember what you enter today may not be drawn months down the track or even the following year.
I enter the outdoor kitchen early last year, so i had forgotten id entered till i got the call saying id won.
Entering comps is exciting and enjoyable, my total winnings to date is close to $250.000 thats everything from holidays to a spider vac lol.
For those reading this review, Hellen has been possibly our biggest and most consistent winners for more years than I can remember. Hellen appeared on A Current Affair displaying her wins, and most recently picked up a massive outdoor kitchen. Thanks for the review, Hellen, I was hoping we'd hear from you at some stage :)
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Thanks so much, Glenn! We'd love to be able to notify you of wins, but as you'd know we don't have any contact with the businesses running the comps. Nice couple of prizes, hoping for some more!