{"id":8682,"date":"2009-07-07T12:06:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-07T10:06:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2009-07-07T12:06:00","modified_gmt":"2009-07-07T10:06:00","slug":"mtn-stops-sms-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/8682-mtn-stops-sms-competition.html","title":{"rendered":"MTN stops SMS competition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>MTN launched an SMS competition to celebrate its 15 year anniversary in late April, which the cellular operator said was skills based and hence complied with the Lottery Act.<\/p>\n<p>While the competition may have proved profitable to the company, the high cost of entering the competition &ndash; R 7.50 per SMS &ndash; and the fact that multiple entries were encouraged were <a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/Cellular\/7960.html\">slated by concerned consumers<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>There were further allegations that the <a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/Cellular\/8538.html\">MTN SMS competition may have been rigged<\/a> where &ldquo;winners who have walked away with a Toyota Fortuner knew exactly how many SMSes they needed to send to win the vehicle.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>MTN has now decided to can the competition, saying that the debate surrounding the initiative was not in line with MTN&rsquo;s values and detracted from the planned spirit of the game.<\/p>\n<p>It is surprising that MTN decided to launch this competition despite the fact that Vodacom received similar bad press for their &#8220;100 cars in 100 days&#8221; last year.&nbsp; One Vodacom employee said &ldquo;here comes MTN&rsquo;s &lsquo;100 cars in 100 days&rsquo; mess&rdquo; when she learned about the competition &ndash; something which proved to be prophetic.<\/p>\n<p>Vodacom was eventually ordered to halt their competition by the National Lotteries Board who declared it an illegal lottery.&nbsp; &#8220;The board is satisfied that it has done its duty in policing and stopping the illegal lottery,&#8221; the National Lotteries Board said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>MTN however did not appear to have learnt from their rival Vodacom&rsquo;s mistake, and one industry expert, who asked to remain anonymous, said that the lure of easy cash must have clouded the cellular giant&rsquo;s judgment.<\/p>\n<p>MTN did not disclose how much profit it made from the competition.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/vb\/showthread.php?t=180189\">MTN SMS Competition<\/a><\/strong> &#8211; give your views<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bad press and consumer backlash prompts MTN to wind up SMS competition<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cellular"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8682"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8682\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}