Believe it or not, promoters sometimes aren't that bothered about getting in touch with their winners. They might announce your name in a Facebook wall post, or on a blog, or perhaps send you an email. But it's easy to miss the announcement, and sometimes the emails will be filed as junk - or you might not spot the message in your Facebook 'Other' messages folder. Sometimes, the promoter will forget all about you and not bother to try and contact you again!
It's worth regularly searching for your name on www.google.com just in case it picks up a prize that you've missed. I did this last week and found a Facebook post from October informing me that I'd won a breast pump worth £80! Luckily Medela are honouring the prize, and were apologetic about not messaging me - but many companies might not be as helpful.
To search for wins on Google, pop in your name using quotation marks (this looks for your name as a phrase - so the words MUST appear together in search results), plus the word winner:
"Di Coke" winner
If you use alternative names, add OR in capitals to your search and Google will look for the words either side of it, for example
"Di OR Diana Coke" "winner OR winners"
will pick up results such as: "The winners are Diana Coke...." or "Di Coke is the winner"
You could also search for Congratulations "Di Coke" and see what results you get!
When you have your search results, you can filter them by clicking 'More Search Tools' on the left of the page - choose to restrict your search to the last week or month, or only to UK pages. This will be useful if you have a common name, as there will be lots of search results. If you DO have a common name, have you considered adding a middle initial to your Facebook name to make it unique?
Using Google Alerts, you can save your search and receive an email every time there are new results! To do this, just go to www.google.co.uk/alerts and choose your email preferences.
Let me know if you manage to find any prizes you didn't know about!
Comments
Lol, i managed to find a
Lol, i managed to find a signed Busted cd from 2002
Googled myself
Morning Di, have just googled myself and have found a prize I didn't know about, but to be fair to the promoter it appears to be a recent win & is probably on its way to me.
I've won "Greetings Cards to Make and Treasure" from Popular crafts.
Thanks for the tip, well worth knowing.
Castleodian
I googled my name a couple of weeks ago and found 2 wins that I already knew about. This morning after your comment, I checked and nothing. I decided to check my full FB name (3 surnames) and there was a win from December with Create Digital Media. Have won a runner up prize, a £10 itunes voucher. On the site it said I had till the end of january to respond. I would not have known about it if I had not seen your comment. Thanks! Going to check both my names now every week
Im finding it so hard to do
Im finding it so hard to do as my name seems common lol and even afew sites with my name/famous ppl doh, but will still try this :)
You could always try adding
You could always try adding words like 'competition' or 'prize' just to narrow it down a bit!
Did this after I saw it on
Did this after I saw it on the old blog page and found I had won tv!
Now that's impressive - hope
Now that's impressive - hope you managed to claim it without any trouble!
Yes they were very good even
Yes they were very good even though it had been a few months since the competition!
Unfortunately this will never
Unfortunately this will never work for me as I have same name as a famous politician!
I didn't find any wins, but I
I didn't find any wins, but I did find a US Senator's wife, and a pastor that share my name, and a digital media company who share my twitter handle. Shows they're not MUCH of a digital media company that I've got the name not them, and they've never even tried to contact me to buy it off me.
i tried this on google and
i tried this on google and nothing, however when i searched for the word 'congratulations' on my comping email account i found i had won a years supply of geobars back in may 2011, i had moved house around this time and didn't have internet access for 2 months, so had missed the email. Just heard back from them today and they are going to honour the prize! Very pleased indeed!
That's great news! I have a
That's great news! I have a 'rule' set up that files any emails with 'congratulations' in the body text into my main inbox so I can check to see if they're WEMs (Winning E-Mails!) - otherwise they get lost amongst all my other messages!
I have managed to find a lost Pancake meal win , a bag , some tickets all very useful Thank you