I thought this was illegal ?

[marine1]

Text from Vodacom:
"You could win R1 mill, R200000 or a car, sms 9 letters to ********
Yebo millionaires"

0822432082

 

[broken1]

It's not illegal if you don't get caught.

 

[LancelotSA]

Not if you ticked the little marketing box on the application form... or more usually didn't tick the one saying you did not want to partake in marketing!

 

[marine1]

What I mean is this sounds like a lottery of some sort, offering sms's or something like that, didnt post the whole message.

 

[DDV TECH]

Weren't they in trouble for doing this with some BMW's a while back also?

 

[broken1]

The thing with the BMW's was that they were making money out of it. It's illegal to host a competition to turn a profit. You are legally allowed to host a competition to promote a product or a brand, which is the case with Yebo Millionairs.

The BMW thing was declared illegal, because at R10 an sms - Vodacom were raking in millions. With Yebo Millionairs, the sms's cost R1 and they give you x number of free sms's a month to enter - hence they are promoting their network, and not doing it to turn a profit on the competition alone.

 

[DDV TECH]

The thing with the BMW's was that they were making money out of it. It's illegal to host a competition to turn a profit. You are legally allowed to host a competition to promote a product or a brand, which is the case with Yebo Millionairs.

The BMW thing was declared illegal, because at R10 an sms - Vodacom were raking in millions. With Yebo Millionairs, the sms's cost R1 and they give you x number of free sms's a month to enter - hence they are promoting their network, and not doing it to turn a profit on the competition alone.

Cool, thanks for clearing that up for me.

 

[marine1]

Thanks for the info Broken.

 

[Ghost02]

Thanks for the info, I never knew that

 

[Playing]

Yebo Millionaire:

Every time I receive SPAM from Vodacom I call 111 and lodge a complaint and get a ref number. If everyone did that, it would eventually become too much hassle for them, to send out moronic marketing messages at 23:15 at night.

Update: They called me back and I was eventually told that I was not the only one who complained and they will never send this to contract customers again.

 

[Colin62]

Have you ever tried to get them to log a service request and give you a reference number when they have decided that they don't want to? I have a one hour commute and spend the whole trip on the phone to 111 the other day. The first half was to get them to log a service request because #111* was down (they said it was due to too many people accessing it so there wasn't actually a problem!), and the rest was to get them to log one to sort out the fact that even though I pressed 2 for contract I always ended up in pre-paid, and they refused to help me. I got the first one logged, but never managed with the second...