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competition - no results on website
I entered a short story competition in October 2011. Results were supposed to be on the website in Jan 2012. I paid the entry fee via paypal. To date, there is nothing on the website except to say they are updating it, and that judging has been delayed due to large number of entries - it's now May!!! I've sent them 2 emails to try and find out what's going on - no reply. Not sure if I'm allowed to say who's running this competition so won't name and shame them just yet.
Anyone had a similar problem?
Comments
If you're concerned and don't want to name the competition, try googling to see if any info or other comments on the delay come up.
Welcome to Talkback, Jill.
You can't just leave people in the dark, for one thing that is impolite and another, as JillMac's comment above shows, it raises suspicion.
Will you whisper the details to me JillMac then I will have a look and let you know what I think.
If they were posting regular updates, that would be a slightly different story. But still, it shouldn't take that long.
This thread reminded me so I have just emailed to ask what is happening.
I was googling for any info on averyshortstory.co.uk when I noticed someone else posted about it. I made it to the shortlist in February's competition. They announced the winner but not the runner-up. Now I cannot get connected to their site at all. Does anyone know what's happened to them?
I've been trying to find out what happened for weeks. I did receive an email from someone from the site ages ago but I deleted it thinking I would get another when the site was back up and running.
You could check out the details of the website with their WHOIS listing.
But as for resubmitting elsewhere, that's quite specific to writing competitions and probably not something covered by legislation. My feeling, though, is that if an organiser has disappeared after the closing date, not posted results within the given time frame, etc, then you can write the whole thing off as invalid and take your entry elsewhere.
It also gives the name of the relevent registrar who the web address was purchased from.
You could try complaining to them.
Also look up the address it shows on the Post Office system for finding postcodes and backwards by finding an address by postcode.
If any of the details supplied to the registrar don't match then you have a secondary complaint to add to the first.
I used whois.com.
I'll whisper you the page results for the site Crazywater mentioned.
I've still got a feeling it was a genuine competition. Hopefully it's back on soon.
Sorry for the delay in replying.
The domain is due for renewal in October, so if there are any problems, you need to contact the registrar and make them aware.
You might like to try re-phrasing that last sentence, Woll22
Carol, you seem knowledgable about domain names etc. I went on WHOIs and found the name address and no of the registrant for Fiction Garden, also the details of the registrar - but what do I do with this? Any ideas? Why does all this info have to be whispered? I really don't want fiction garden to get away with what they've done, seems like lots of people paid to enter their competition but I have a feeling this could turn into a long drawn out affair with no positive result at the end of it.
The first thing you can do with the registrants address details is ensure that the information they've given is correct.
Go on to the Post Office website and use their address and postcode finder, put the address in without the postcode and get the postcode for that address which is in the PO system. Is it the same as the one given on WHOIS?
You can then reverse the process and put only the postcode in and you'll then get a list of roads and numbers- if houses- and the map it shows will also tell you if the address is in a residential or commercial area.
The domain details will show the date it was registered, updated and when due for renewal.
If you have tried to contact them at the details they gave for Fiction Gardens and received no response repeatedly, then complain to both trading standards in that area, and to the domain registrar.
I had some problems about seven years ago with websites in an unrelated issue, and both the domain registrars took the complaints seriously and after looking into the matters put restrictions on those websites involved. (One of the sites I was complaining about had given a totally different postcode to their actual address in their registration details.)
I was just looking at Google and saw a fictiongarden.co.uk is it the same one as you submitted to?
I was always told by more experienced writer friends to avoid competitions that don't give any postal address or other way of contacting them. The one I looked at doesn't give you any other means of contacting them except by the form on the site.
I also see that Oct issue of WM has an article how to write fast and well. Will read it as soon as I can as I spend far too much time dithering over sentences, punctuation marks (I'm a firm believer that a punctuation mark can make a v big difference to a sentence). Then when I've made my decision, I change the whole story yet again!