Watch Out For Competitions and Scams

There are lots of companies and web sites that are running competitions during National Allotment Week One of which is Kings Seeds.

So the way these competitions usually work is you share on Facebook or you tag people that would be interested, and there are terms and conditions like so ....

I've underlined the warning by Kings seeds.

Bearing in mind it's only Monday of the National Allotment Week and the competition closes on Friday 16th August @ 9am I didn't expect to see this 2 hours after I tagged in a fellow allotment holder on the competition ... 

From first looks the https:// makes it looks like a legitimate site. it says kings-seeds but kings seeds web site is kingsseeds.com and then there is the myfreesites.net which makes ones spider senses tingle. 

Note the fear close on the bottom to make you rush and do what they want. 

When I looked using the link what I saw looked like a legitimate Kings Seeds site with the request for credit card details I posted the below straight away on the competition site.

I then telephoned Kings Seeds and they put me through to their Social Media & Website Administrator, we had a discussion and I sent links and screenshots to her so they could investigate and asked her to confirm it was bogus so I could warn my followers and readers of manvslug.uk and the Facebook allotment and gardening groups I administer and visit.  

I got an email back very fast 

Hi Alan,

Thank you so much for sending the screenshots. All of these comments have now been deleted and reported, and we have banned the account from interacting with our page.

The giveaway is real, but unfortunately, these comments are spam. We have also added another comment ourselves on the giveaway just notifying entrants to be wary of spam accounts. It’s such a shame that this seems to happen most times a giveaway happens on Facebook. We have a great following on Facebook and we enjoy doing a giveaway. It’s just a shame that there are always scammers wanting to take advantage of this.

Thank you for notifying us as soon as you did. Hopefully this will be the last of these spam accounts on our giveaway.

This closes at 9am this Friday, and as mentioned, we will never ask the winner or entrants to click a link or for payment details.

Wishing you luck, and thank you for your support. Really appreciate it.

Kind Regards etc. 

The fake account has also been removed