Has anyone ever won a magazine competition?

[Midsommar]

Out of furlough/lockdown boredom I have been indulging in my guilty pleasure of women's magazines (think Take A Break, Love It, etc) and doing the competitions.

AIBU to ask if anyone here has actually won any of these competitions? Especially the big prizes, such as the £10000 wins and luxury holidays.

Would be interesting to know if anyone has won anything

Yeah, and DPs won a £6k hol in one. magazine ones are good because less people are bothered to do them.
I have won everything from spa break, to games & toys, flights, luxury holiday, luggage, DVDs and clothes.

Many, many moons ago (1994) I won the Brit Awards CD by entering a draw in ‘Shout’ magazine. I only entered as that was the year the Pet Shop Boys did ‘Go West’ with the miners choir on stage. Guess which song wasn’t on that album...

Thousand pound of garden centre vouchers.

Also valid in Homebase - so I put £250 towards the (New Build, so rubble under rapidly dying turf) back garden and the rest on posh paint things like shelves, a bin and a shower screen.

Had I not just moved and needed to spent the rest of my money on things like covering the concrete floors, I'd have bought an Eglu and three chickens.

I've won a couple, doing on-line entries. A nice eco-kettle, and a weeks holiday to Butlins. I forgot-I also won 2 tickets to a special production of "Captain Beaky" at the Royal Albert Hall.

My friend won a holiday once (actually I think she won one twice!), I won letter of the week in Just 17 - £20 Boots voucher I think it was.. plus the kudos of course

I did an online customer comment for a supermarket because I had come across a member of staff that went above and beyond. I sent it in as I wanted the staff member to be recognised, not because I wanted anything out of it.
My letter was published as the star letter and I got shopping vouchers for it.

My friend won an all expense paid trip to Las Vegas with pringles about 10 years ago!
I've never won anything!

In around 1995 I won a 101 Dalmatian watch from a comic called Disney and Me. It had a red strap with a massive Dalmatian head on the top which you flipped over to reveal the time.

I remember being so happy with that watch!

so, how do you get into comping? Buy lots of mags every week and lot of stamps?

Spill!! I need a winning streak!

so, how do you get into comping? Buy lots of mags every week and lot of stamps?

Money saving expert has a ‘competition’ board. Start with that - it has the entry forms and things to magazine comps too.

However do be warned, I only really win something (and more often quite small competitions) when entering hundreds a week so it’s massively time consuming and unless you are incredibly lucky, the payoff can be poor.

An old friend's sister used to refer to herself as a "professional comper". She did it instead of a job. She would enter hundreds of competitions per week, mostly magazine and radio and won money, concert tickets, holidays, a car, white goods to name but a few as well as lots of smaller prizes. She used to sell whatever she could on and made a decent income. She spent the same amount of time doing these competitions as she would've done in a full time job.

I started entering lots of online competitions in my spare time knowing how well she'd done. Never won anything but got added to an awful lot of telemarketing lists though. More fool me!

No but I’m still kicking myself for not entering a competition many years ago when I was about 20 and my first name and surname were in the crossword literally connected. I took it as a sign and then forgot to post it off

I did win a holiday to Ibiza in 1999 from a radio station but had already booked another holiday with my then new boyfriend so I let my brother and his girlfriend go instead.

I won an overnight break at aqua sana (at centre parcs) including treatments and meals in March. Will have to wait until they reopen to claim though. It's the only thing i have ever won.

Over 30 years ago I won a holiday to Greece in a competition in Time Out magazine.

MIL won a bread maker and gave us
Her old one

A few months later her new one broke down, so we gave her back the old one as we hadn’t actually used it lol

I can think of 2 I've won. A years supply of designer underwear (cant remember which mag) and a hifi through house beautiful.

I think that you stand more chance of winning if there is effort involved in making the entry. I remember the first one I had to send an email (as opposed to filling out an online form) and the second time I actually posted in my name and address (really wanted prize, knew there would be fewer entries).

Very rarely do it these days, not enough hours in the day. Hmm, hang on, that's not strictly true at the mo is it.........

I used to work for smaller magazines - film, videogames etc - and there were always a relatively low level of entries for the circulation numbers. The bigger magazines obviously get a lot more but not as many as you’d expect. Always worth entering!

Where does Take a Break get all the big prizes from??

They have lots of huge prizes in every single mag. Where do they get the money from?

The sister of someone I used to work for used to do competitions all the time. She has won several hundred pounds, TV, any number of vouchers. The best was a conservatory but she was in a second floor flat!
Her phone bill was eye watering though.

I won a moped.

I won a converse T Shirt in a packet of Wine Gums. That was 25 years ago and I still remember the thrill! That T Shirt is still going strong!

I won 6 boxes of Just Brasils chocolates. Tasty.

2 childrens books that my DS had no interest in.

Never anything big. I would love to win a holiday.

cool! Will have a look this afternoon better than ironing

I had a letter published in film magazine Empire and got sent a sweatshirt. Around 1994. Back when the magazine was good! I'd just started uni and shared halls with a ton of people studying media, who all of course bought and devoured Empire. I was quite the celebrity for about a week

I won a holiday to New York

There used to be a magazine called Competitor's Companion, I think they're online now. Literally hundreds of comps in each one. My dad and I signed up for a year's worth of issues. You needed a box of jazzy postcards, C5 envelopes and stamps and that was it. We didn't win anything
But I do remember in the Today newspaper years and years ago you had to collect daily tokens and then answer a tie breaker question, we won a Sky dish and all the gubbins. This was when Sky was first launched and I was the talk of the school! Of course Mum and Dad put it away for a rainy day and it wasn't installed for 5 years. Bah!