to feel like a fool for accepting this prize.

[lill72]

I won a photo shoot at a fair last year. I won a shoot and a framed photo. I guess the idea is that you then purchased some more. Fine - that is until we got the price list. We had to do two shoots as my DD who is one cried the first time. Each digital photo is over £200!!!!!!!!! Yes!!!! The cheapest thing we can get is a small framed photo for £180!!!!

I had a professional photographer late last year who was nothing like this.

We are under no obligation however we have to attend a viewing and decide on the spot else they delete the photos.

They did not tell us any of this before the shoot which I find a bit cheeky. I should have asked but I never thought it would be this much.

What to do if I then love the photos!??? Help!!

I think that this really does qualify as a con. The 'prize' that people are told they have 'won' isn't actually a prize at all. it is a lure which is offered to everybody, and that surely is the very essence of a con - what you think you are being offered is actually not what it seems at all. And especially if you end up paying for something you don't really want, or it is far more expensive than you feel comfortable with, then you have been conned.
And to people saying this is 'just' high pressure sales, well that doesn't make it less of a con, IMO. Consumers are protected in law from high pressure sales in your own home by a two week cooling off period, and this recognises the fact that the line between what is legitimate sales technique and what is bullying, confusing, and lying can be hard to see.

She won a prize - a free shoot and free photo. She is under no obligation to buy. She can walk away without handing over any money. Worst con ever.

That's the difference - a true 'competition', you're handed a prize with no strings attached.

This one - you have to go in and be subjected to a hard sell - for an hour and a half apparently, to get your 'prize'. A hard sell of stuff you will be tempted by (nice photos) but had no intention of buying in the first place.

Now DH and I are masters of not succumbing to the hard-sell. We will not be moved - but some people are not - and when you hear people saying "we bought such and such for £££ just to get out of there" - then that's a scam IMO.

It's similar in principle to the way timeshares have been sold, I suppose. You've 'won' a weekend at a hotel but you spend the weekend subjected to a hard sell. Some people sign up and feel fine about it, others feel conned and that it's a questionable way to fo business.

The first time someone tried this con on me was in 1996! Blimey, are some people still not wise to it?

BillSykes, I think the reason these cons, or hard selling set-ups, or whatever they are manage to keep on going is that you don't get wise to them until you get stung by them.
I reckon I am quite hard-headed and generally aware, and of course everybody in the world knows about 'double glazing' but I still managed to invite one of those monsters through my door. Only afterwards I read the company reviews on the internet, and felt like we had quite a mild experience compared to others!
I also got caught out by the 'free samples' of face creams thing, where you realise you've spent the mortgage on a not very exciting moisturiser - very obvious in hindsight that all the signs of dodginess were there, but I simply never imagined such a trick was possible, I had never heard of a CPA on a bank account for example.
And so with these photo shoots, if you've never been involved with one before you could easily take it at face value, and think 'oh, that's a bit special - prize or discount or whatever'. But once you've been had once, you won't fall for it again!

Oh my, Sara, I've just had a memory of a hoover/carpet shampooer thingy salesman getting into my home. Years ago I had a call saying that they needed "testers' for their new hoover - we would have a free carpet shampoo and would provide feedback on the product.

Foolishly, I agreed, and DH and I were then subjected to the hardest sell for this thing (which cost over £1000) for over 2 hours. He wouldn't leave. Told us we must be stupid not to buy the best hoover in the world, he went upstairs without asking because he 'needed to see what our carpets were like', gave us a sob story about his gran, told us that we must think he was a crap salesman, told us we were time-wasters and then refused to do the promised carpet clean because we wouldn't buy the thing

In the end I just went off to make toddler ds1's lunch - and left dh to escort him out. I could hear him moaning and growling about time-wasters all the way to the front door - and DH saying there is no way we were ever going to buy a £1000 hoover, and this was not what the woman on the phone told us to expect, etc.

Never again!