AIBU to expect MNHQ to follow UK law on competitions, marketing and market research?

[NameChange2PostThis]

AIBU to expect a response after more than 5 months?

Many many MN competitions and sponsored threads without winners announced.
No current Winners Corner thread as per Insight terms and conditions.
Promises of responses but no action.

Please see original request below.
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/site_stuff/3829540-Competition-winners-MN-insights-who-won?msgid=97083963

@JustineMumsnet

That’s terrible if so - what’s going on @MNHQ?

@LilyMumsnet

I can't believe you've still had no response on your original thread, that's so suspicious. Well done following up OP.

I remember your original thread. I can't believe you still haven't had a response.

Thanks @gutentag1 I hate feeling like I have to nag - need to save that for the DC but it’s not great for the MN brand to look so scam-like

@JustineBMumsnet

@NameChange2PostThis

Was Justine's post enough though?

We know we have a few outstanding prize draws, and we're running all of these this week. You'll see that many of them were announced on the threads for each individual activity yesterday, but there are still a few more to go. We'll also be going through our records and ensuring we've announced some slightly more historic prize draws, but please do bear with us as we're slightly thin on the ground at the moment.

I thought this was a fair reply?

@LucyBMumsnet

[quote GinDaddyRedux]@NameChange2PostThis

Was Justine's post enough though?

We know we have a few outstanding prize draws, and we're running all of these this week. You'll see that many of them were announced on the threads for each individual activity yesterday, but there are still a few more to go. We'll also be going through our records and ensuring we've announced some slightly more historic prize draws, but please do bear with us as we're slightly thin on the ground at the moment.

I thought this was a fair reply?[/quote]
@GinDaddyRedux yes it was except... nothing happened. I saw two prizes announced and then nothing. And still no winners corner which is part of the terms and conditions. And this means that MN Insight is also holding onto personal data longer than prescribed in said terms so another breach of their own policy.

@GinDaddyRedux and that post from Justine was at the beginning of June so nearly 2 months ago...

@YanaMumsnet

[quote NameChange2PostThis]@GinDaddyRedux and that post from Justine was at the beginning of June so nearly 2 months ago...[/quote]
oh no...that makes sense then and fair play for sticking to it and trying to get an answer.

Apologies that we haven't replied on this already and for the confusion around recent insight prize draws. We've contacted prize winners individually off the boards - and you're right in noticing that there were some occasions where we hadn't posted their names on the site - this was an internal oversight at the time and we're sorting it now. In some instances where there hasn't been an announcement the winner may have asked that we don't post their username on the thread because they had discussed their win in real life and would like to preserve their anonymity. We know this isn't ideal, so any very recent prize draw winners will have received a note about this in the email they receive notifying them of their win to inform them that we will be posting on site, so we shouldn't encounter this problem again in the future.

With regards to data - we delete details of any participants who are not prize draw winners three months after the end of the activity. There are occasionally exceptions where we'd hold onto details - for example to conduct a follow up survey a few months later, but this would be with the express permission of participants. But, in the cases you're seeing - where it looks like we're running the prize draw more than three months after activity has ended - this is because the prize draw winner was contacted at the time (and we still hold details of prize draw winners), but this information was not posted on the thread at the time.

Sorry again that this has appeared slow and for the confusion. We've had to furlough a lot of staff and sadly make some redundancies at MNHQ, and so it's taken us a while to get back into the groove, but please rest assured we take user data in particular extremely seriously (as you have a right to expect).

@JustineBMumsnet thanks for finally getting back to me.

Whilst I appreciate that some winners will want to stay anonymous (although surely we already are ), it would be good practice for MNHQ to post on each thread to confirm prizes have been awarded and winners informed.

Also Insight T and C state that winners corner is where the winners are announced, perhaps you should revise these as it is clearly not the case and you are in breach of your own policy.

Of course I’m sure we all appreciate that the CV19 world of work is harder and much more competitive but that makes it even more important for MNHQ to get the basics of compliance right - this isn’t a simple error of moderation on Talk but legal requirements around advertising, competitions, and market research.

If you are short-staffed, perhaps some of the tone moderators on Feminism Chat could be usefully redeployed to manage MN Insight?

Is there a current winners corner? After searching this is the closest I have stumbled across.

I have been apart of mumsnet for probably as long as I've had children (my eldest is now 7yo) and with all of my activity have not yet won - completely understand there are a lot of people also active members as long, if not longer than me so half expect this anyway. I imagine I've been unlucky but the lack of updates on the winners does make me question this.