Ok Ok we hear you and we promise we haven't been ignoring your pleas, we've been, ahem, working out our options before coming to the negotiating table
There are several reasons why comps haven't been open in the past to non UK residents.
First off some of the prize donors can't or won't deliver outside the UK/and/or don't want non UK entrants. We've also assumed (perhaps wrongly) that most of you wouldn't make the trek from the US or Australia to go to somewhere like Alton Towers for the day, so some comps just aren't relevant.
There has also been some question mark as to whether legally we could invite non UK residents to take part in competitions - something to do with competition law being different in different countries and other dark mutterings about the dangers of running an illegal lottery and all sorts of other scary talk. However after a long chat with the ASA today, it looks as if, as long as we're clear about who can enter what, we should be OK to include you...Good news
On the less good news side, another stumbling block to entry to some prize draws is that the people who commission polls or surveys want/need to be able to say x% of UK mums think XX - so this will mean still excluding you from those competitions connected to some polls/surveys.
However - what we can do is:
Include overseas entrants for any comp which doesn't have to have "X% of UK mums think..." in it AND has a prize that can be shipped or used abroad.
We will go even further and say that if it's a comp that could potentially work for non UK residents but the prize cannot be delivered overseas and you have a friendly UK contact who you know would receive the prize on your behalf and pass it on to you, then you can still enter those comps, you just have to know that if you win you have to give a UK delivery address and the rest will be up to you to organise.
So, back to you...will that stop the industrial action, wild cat strikes and public demos across Talk (and make you love us at least a little bit, again?)
yours hoping,
MNHQ