We’re blessed with your encouragements that keep us upbeat despite the gloomy environment. We’re particularly glad to hear that this competition is giving participants some hope for this upcoming year.
High our new year resolution list is our commitment to you to work hard to bring this competition to successful completion during 2009 and give one of our participants the joy to become an owner in southern France during this new year.
]]>Where’s the catch? None for you. Our partner merchants will thank you for your custom by paying for your competition tickets.
To celebrate this launch, we’ve negotiated unique Christmas deals but hurry! they won’t last for long.
]]>This competition ended on Sunday November 30th at midnight GMT.
]]>Congratulations Jamie. Do you often participate to spot the ball competitions?
This is actually my first time. I’ve seen these before at airports but I’m not a super car fan so I never entered. I was drawn to winpropertyinfrance.com by the prize as I’ve been dreaming of relocating to France for a while now. I thought this practice competition was a cool idea to test my skills for the actual competition.
What attracts you so much to France?
I love the food, the people and the lifestyle there. Particularly in the south. I’ve been to Languedoc once and it’s the coolest region in France. Great weather, beautiful beaches. Montpellier is a vibrant and dynamic town so owning a property nearby would really be a dream coming true.
Any tips for other participants?
The practice competition is a good start but what you really want to do is to look for details in the competition pic and increase your odds by getting several tickets. In addition to the free ticket I’ve won, I bought two more and I’m now telling friends about this competition so that I can earn an extra free ticket. If they win, I’ll get permanent invitation for holidays!
This short week is also finishing in a very typical French fashion with a strike of Air France pilots stranding me in Paris Orly, hoping that the plane to bring me back to Montpellier will actually take off tonight. But to give our dear readers (and the Air France pilots using their spare time to read our blog) a better start on their weekend, here’s a game to hone your spot the ball skills and increase your chances of winning our property competition…+ we’ll give a FREE competition ticket away to the winner(s) of this game.
This competition ended on Friday November 21st midnight.
]]>While this blog enables us to reach out to you and share our passion for this property and region, we want go give you the opportunity to engage into conversations not just with us but with other participants and people following this adventure.
So join the conversation on our Facebook forum
We look forward to your contributions and suggestions.
]]>And today we have some great news which our participants already know about but which we’d like to publicize to all those of you lurkers out there not yet taking the plunge (you know who you are!). Anyone who enters the WinPropertyinFrance.com competition (no matter how many tickets purchased) is entitled to earn an additional FREE competition ticket. All you need to do is enter the competition and then spread the word about WinPropertyinFrance.com to people around you. You will be awarded your FREE ticket as soon as three people referred by you join the competition. This referral program will last throughout the duration of the competition.
The awarded tickets will obviously be counted within the 20,0000 competition tickets distributed so none of the competition terms and conditions will be changed.
Now think about the three great deeds you will actually be doing by spreading the word:
1. An additional FREE ticket means increased odds for you to win the property at no extra cost
2. Bringing people you know on board is further increasing your probability of benefiting in one way or another from the property (I’m sure you’d at least be entitled to some holiday there if one of your referred friends or relatives wins…if not then find people worthwhile referring!!!)
3. It will accelerate the time to reach the 20,000 participations and the competition closing
Note: The offer is limited to one FREE ticket per referrer.
]]>A bit of background on the genesis of the WinpropertyinFrance.com idea will help clarify this point. We came up with this idea in late spring before the first UK home lotteries/raffles were publicized and we actually got the inspiration from nearby Spain.
While the man’s situation was not enviable, we found his idea interesting although the legal issues in Spain were numerous and soon led the creative man to cancel the operation. The missing piece was a legal framework and this is where our passion for travel came handy. Having flown several times in and out of Heathrow airport, we had come across a concept which we had not seen in any other country we visited, super car competitions. Despite not being a car addict, I remember being drawn to the stand and inquiring about the competition, how it worked and how legal it was.
So we knew immediately we were holding onto something solid: if this car competition company had been successfully operating a high street business for so many years to the point of becoming a public company, then their approach had to be legal. A couple of days reviewing their model and relevant UK Gambling Commission documentation nailed down the approach. In order to do something legal we had to:
1. Establish a UK Limited Company
2. Just like the car competition company, operate a spot the ball competition which the UK Gambling Commission and case law have considered a game of skill as discussed in the company’s IPO memorandum excerpt below:
”[...]if success in a competition was not substantially dependent on skill it would be an unlawful prize competition. Therefore in order for Best of the Best’s competitions to be lawful under those statues it had to satisfy the definition of a skill competition. Case law on the subject has held that a “spot the ball” format competition was not unlawful and that participants were merely exercising skill in the hope that they would be able to predict where a panel of experts would place the ball.”
This is how the Winpropertyinfrance.com concept started in early July. Obviously, the process was tedious and complex both in terms of legal structuring and website development and we have to admit that when we learned about the UK raffle that began to draw publicity, we had a moment of doubt about whether we weren’t going to fail because we were opting for a rigorous and thus lengthy approach rather then doing a basic lottery…yet we stuck to our initial intuition to work hard and deliver this robust, time-tested yet simple (no pseudo-charity, no cheap entry prize for every participant…) competition framework to provide participants with all possible guarantees.
The recent events have proven that the easy option wasn’t really one and we really feel sorry for the honest people who tried it.
Now only you, through your participation to our competition, will be the judges of whether we were right to pursue the “harder” option.
]]>So stay tuned for more and do not hesitate to send us your suggestions and questions which we’ll address here from time to time
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