Recently we’ve had a few of our US based Compaholics asking us about Prizechecker.com and whether the prizes were legit or if it was all a scam. The first red flag is that visiting the domain immediately redirects you to another site with a simple form to enter a PIN and Zip Code, without any further information about who you’re giving your info to or what happens after you enter your details.
The PIN itself comes from a mailer sent to your house. Recipients are told that they’ve won a prize with the potential to be something along the lines of a free iPhone or a substantial gift card from a well-known retailer or “instant cash”. The adverts are professionally made and will often feature the logos of trusted brands like Amazon or Walmart, which is what gives them their initial air of credibility.
It is clearly a site that looks to take advantage of the desire of people to find out whether they’ve won a prize online or not, but the details are very thin on the ground and based on what we’ve seen from people who have tried to claim, it’s certainly not what it seems.
The Car Dealership Connection
So what are the Prizechecker com site and mailers really about, and is everyone really a winner? The answer to this question lies in… car sales. In a strange turn of events, the whole show is actually a rather old-fashioned bit of trickery that involves car dealerships and high pressure sales. Very much in the same way that a time share sales pitch often involves a fantastic reward if you sit through a short 17 hour presentation about condos in Florida.
You will be shocked to hear that everyone who receives a scratch card or mailer in the post will be told that they’ve won a significant prize, with the card directing them to visit Prizechecker.com and enter a code to confirm your win. After doing so, the “winner” is told to visit a local car dealership to collect their prize. The idea, of course, is that the excitement of believing you’ve won something gets you through the door of the showroom, at which point the high-pressure sales tactics begin.
The ‘prize’ that awaits you there is invariably something trivial like a small gift card or, quite often, a discount on a new car purchase. The scratch cards are most likely sent out en masse, with every single recipient technically ‘winning’ something, which is how the dealerships ensure a steady stream of hopeful visitors. Even if that prize is a just some cash. Discounted from the sticker price of a new car, of course.
This is when the old adage comes in that if something appears to be too good to be true then it invariably is. If you’ve received a random scratch card in the post, you’d be much better off sticking it in the bin than you would be trying to claim what it is that it offers you. Unless, of course, you wanted to buy a new car anyway.
Is Prizechecker.com a scam? The lawyers would probably argue that everything is covered by the terms and conditions of the mailer, and we no doubt believe that it has thoroughly been vetted by some men in grey suits to be technically legitimate. But in reality it’s a sales pitch masquerading as a fake prize, which doesn’t exactly sound great to us but probably doesn’t meet the full definition of a scam.
Reminder: Red Flags to Watch Out For
As with most “prizes with a catch”, there are some pretty clear warning signs. It is worth knowing what they are so that you can spot them if you encounter something similar in the future. The most obvious one is the simple fact that legitimate companies don’t send out unsolicited mailers with large prizes to random people. So if you don’t know who sent you the prize notification and why this should raise some alarm bells.
Countdown timers telling you that your prize will expire within minutes or messages claiming that only a handful of prizes remain are both classic pressure tactics designed to stop you from thinking about whether this is a genuine site. The absence of any verifiable contact information, such as no phone number, no physical address and no customer service route that actually works, is another sign to be cautious.
Fake Subscriptions? Probably Not on Prizechecker.com
Whilst all of our own research has pointed to the classic “you’ve won a prize, now come to a sales pitch” reason, some others on the web have reported answering a short survey on the site asking about shopping preferences and brand opinions, after which they were awarded a prize and asked for a small shipping fee (see red flag above).
Others reported that by entering their payment details, they were unknowingly signing up to recurring monthly subscription charges listed under vague names like ‘Premium Digital Services’ or ‘VIP Rewards Club’. The promised prize, meanwhile, either never arrived or turned out to be something of extremely low value.
We think the reality here is that the users have confused the Prizechecker com site with another, similar looking scam, as we’ve not been able to find a direct link between the pushy car sellers and fake subscriptions. Especially since the Prizechecker mailers have a specific, and probably lucrative, purpose as a marketing tool for local dealerships.
But if you do come across a competition that charges a fee to claim a prize that you have won, walk away. If any website asks you to pay even a small amount in order to receive something that you’ve supposedly been awarded for free, that is a very clear signal that something is wrong.