CAUTION:::Re: WIN A 1998 VIPER GT2 52/100 for £1 ($1.70)
Folks,
I would be cautious about sending any money to this organization.
Facts:
The company "managing" the lottery (Totally Epic Events) was "incorporated" in mid-February of this year. There are no phone numbers for this "company".
The url for 'winviper.com' was first created March 31 2006.
The contact details for the url "winviper.com" point to the company hosting the website instead of the true owner.
The company address listed on the winviper website is the very same as:
Chiropractic Advancement Association
8, Centre One
Lysander Way
Old Sarum Park
Salisbury, Wiltshire
SP4 6BU
Tel: 01722 415 027
(above from the link
http://www.migraine.org.uk/content.aspx?cid=15)
I tried calling just now but it's after hours and no one answered.
The website for this organization is:
http://www.chiropatients.org.uk
interesting, this organization promotes itself as a Charity...
further -- if this is the organization behind the lottery, don't you think they would promote it on their website??? (I cannot find anywhere on this website that promotes a lottery or Vipers at all)
further still -- why would a charitible organization form a new entity (Totally Epic Events) just for this lottery?
also of question is, why would an organzation that takes donations for chiropractic research send its lottery money to
www.edfringe.com - a very worthy organization on its own but entirely unrelated to chiropractic care
AND
this company:
http://www.colourview.co.uk/
has an address @ 8 Woodford Centre (not sure if this is the very same 'address' as it is not "Centre One")
also, why isn't there a link on winviper.com to edfringe.com (the official website of the festival)...after all, on winviper's home page they indicate that funds raised by the lottery will go to support this festival
There are no details about the Viper (it is wrecked? salvage? non-existent?) that is the "prize", this is quite fishy, not even a stated "prize value" (a prize worth one million dollars ..nothing is mentioned, not for the 'holiday' either...and, by the way, the word "holiday" is misspelled on the weblink that shows its 'details':
http://www.winviper.com/winviperhoiday.htm
(spelled "hoiday" rather than "holiday"...)
And, watch out for this one...there is no mention of how many people the "holiday" packet is for, it says "family" so the implication would be a prize package for 4, but, there is no mention.
They added VOI.9 tickets really quickly to this prize package...that's very fishy indeed!
Unlike other UK Lotteries I have seen they do not mention the number of tickets that must be sold in order for the lottery to be sufficiently funded. Just think about it though for a moment, money needed to cover the prizes: $100,000 for the Viper (low guess), holiday package for 4 persons --- presuming 4 and presuming flights from UK to Vegas and then Vegas to Miami, let's say its just airfare and hotel, no car rental, no food, let's say that package is worth $3000 per person, that's another $12,000, so, total prize package of $112,000, at the "stated" ticket cost of $1.70/ticket
(more like $1.79, check the current exchange rate on http://www.xe.com/ -- the exchange rate has not been $1.70 for a number of years) that is almost 63,000 tickets just to cover base expenses, they only have 4 months to the drawing and you can't even buy a ticket yet - and the ticket price (despite the title of this message thread) is not posted either...If you don't see advertisements for this soon (such as in Car, Evo, TopGear and the like) then they are going to have a very hard time selling enough tickets. Now, maybe on Apr 27 (date stated on winviper.com) they will answer some of these questions, we'll see....but, just how did 'baz' already come by tickets to "sell"?
Try googling winviper.com, nothing really pops up, so, question is, just how are they promoting this lottery? (MSN pulls up no hits and Yahoo pulls up a few hits, all on automotive forum websites, all promoted by Neil and here by Barry Adams(baz))
So far it just seems the Viper community is being 'advertised to'.
All in all, I smell a rat with this one (hope I am wrong about that...) and I would advise you to wait for some verifiable facts to be presented.
I do plan on calling the Chiropractic organization that has the same street address as this lottery to find out what they can tell me.
I also have a line into the Salisbury Council on this lottery registration to see what they know about it.
-J