13 replies to this topic

[jonlad]

Hi All

Does anyone know anything about or have anything to do with the UKMinis raffles that are advertised on facebook/instagram and the like?  I searched but couldn't find any previous discussion about it on here.  Any winners on here?

 

On the face of it they've raffled 12 minis for tickets around £7 when they have an offer or £15 the rest of the time.

 

I've seen references to live streamed raffle draws and would love to see the next one to gauge whether there's any level of "fairness" to this before i part with my hard earned...   ...but can't seem to find out how to view? I looked on youtube and facebook for their supposed 6pm live draw on xmas day (whilst dozing off my lunch) but found nothing.

 

any thoughts?

 

thanks

Jon

[hazpalmer14]

I personally think these car raffles are unfair. I'm in a skateboard collecting group that allows people to raffle things. If you have an item that is worth £50 someone will normally raffle it for 10 spots at £5 each. You can buy as little or as many as you like. Then when the raffle is drawn last one out the hat wins, the raffle is videoed so each person who entered can see they name as been pulled out and its fair. Also the person raffling the item isn't making inflated profit they can either sell their item at its value or raffle it and someone can win it for 1/10 1/20th etc of the price. These car raffles seem quite expensive to me and the person selling them appears to be making more then the car is worth and it's the first out the hat who wins

[Midas Mk1]

It’s all insta based.

[mini-mad-mark]

hazpalmer14, on 11 Jan 2021 - 5:22 PM, said:

I personally think these car raffles are unfair. I'm in a skateboard collecting group that allows people to raffle things. If you have an item that is worth £50 someone will normally raffle it for 10 spots at £5 each. You can buy as little or as many as you like. Then when the raffle is drawn last one out the hat wins, the raffle is videoed so each person who entered can see they name as been pulled out and its fair. Also the person raffling the item isn't making inflated profit they can either sell their item at its value or raffle it and someone can win it for 1/10 1/20th etc of the price. These car raffles seem quite expensive to me and the person selling them appears to be making more then the car is worth and it's the first out the hat who wins

Firstly let me just make it clear that I am not connected to this raffle or UKminis in anyway

I would say this is a "normal" raffle format i.e. first one out wins first prize, second one second prize etc until the prizes are exhausted - personally I've never seen a "reverse" raffle but could be quite exciting when you get down to the last three numbers for three prizes I suppose; not so much fun for the first "losers" out of the hat...

In terms of the price/profit - I'd say that's normal, just that raffles used to be for charity or to raise funds for clubs or societies so the profit went to the charity/club until people caught on that its a good way to make money for themselves - you've seen a number of house sales/raffles? - I assume the organiser of UKMinis raffle is taking some/most/all the profit for himself as I didn't see anywhere mentioned that any "profit" was going to anyone/thing else but to be fair to him I may have missed that.....I would have to assume he wasn't planning to make a loss!!!

I think there may be a cost in registering the competition in some way (is it the gaming commission - I haven't read a raffle ticket for a while) but yes the organiser could still be making a fairly decent profit even after that.
Of course I have no idea how much the car cost to get in the first place but I estimated £14K retail (but not sure if you could build it for that so ???) also there are another £2K of prizes, so with 2500 tickets at 7.50 each that is £18750 so around £3K+ profit - some will be full price tickets so maybe more than that. (and not sure what the tax liabilities are on income from raffles)

The last competition looked to make more money I would say with a decent Cooper and a "track day mini" and 5000 tickets at around £10-15 (depending on the discount at the time)
So say 13 quid a ticket = 65K proceeds and take away the original cars (Cooper - 25-30K? - track mini 12K?- you can do the maths) - looks like you could make a decent living with enough raffles each year and it would come from buying and selling minis (in a way) so a mini based job - what self respecting mini fanatic wouldn't like a "job" with minis at the centre?

Like all gambling, its a personal choice and one that is usually tipped some way in favour of the bookie/organiser/fruit machine/lottery or whatever form of gambling it is (maybe a few exceptions?)

All that being said, it hasn't stopped me buying one ticket and hoping to fluke it.... (In some of the other draws I noticed that there are some people buying 30-40 tickets or more!)

Edited by mini-mad-mark, 11 January 2021 - 10:21 PM.

[mini-mad-mark]

Don't know what's with the £ thing doesn't £ work

[mini-mad-mark]

Looks like some error when I edited the text converting £ to £

[T.Harper]

It's not really very different to ringing into a TV phone competition. You never know how many others there are there though.

With UKMinis there is a soft target, but it's often extended I've noticed.

Ultimately this is playing with human beings' innate inability to digest and work with probabilities properly. If the car is worth £15k and there are 2k raffle places, you should not be willing to pay any more than £7.5/ticket unless you generally like to overpay for things, or unless that car is worth more to you than £15k.

The issue is that our minds can't naturally distinguish between paying the £7.5 or the £13 (whatever the price is) that is set by the auctioneer. The numbers are relatively small so people just freely overpay.

[Tommyboy12]

The thing I like the least about these 'raffles' is the lack of governance by the gambling commission. There basically is none. You get around all the governance and gambling commission fees by it being a 'skill-based' game. Youre not actually entering a raffle per say, as they are governed. Youre asked a 'skill-based' question and then if you get it right youre entered into a prize draw. But the questions are very basic to the point that you would genuinely have to be minus a brain to not know the answer.

 

That being said the legal requirements of a 'skill-based' game is that you must offer a free postal entry option and you can actually enter all these UKMinis raffles for free. The T&C's section will tell you how.

 

I dont think he makes mega money on them but itll certainly be a few quid!

[mini-mad-mark]

Good point about the competition element and it not actually being a raffle as such - I had overlooked that - but didn't realise that made it kind of non-regulated.

 

I quite liked the look of the mini this time and thought hey I'll give it a go, but I doubt I will enter many as its not cheap. 

 

This discussion is making me regret entering 

[timmy850]

If you go to the Instagram page there is a pinned story called “win this mini” with all the previous draws. You can also go on their website and check out all the names and ticket numbers of previous draws

I’ve seen the live draw a couple of times, I guess it’s just like any other raffle with a random number generated somewhere between the first and last ticket.

I mean I do like the concept overall - it’s hard for people to get into minis when they are getting expensive and cheap ones will need a rebuild. If you could win one for £15 that’d be awesome. It’s cheaper than a couple of drinks at the pub

You won’t see many raffles that will give away prizes without breaking even. Perhaps the money is going to buying more expensive prizes each time, perhaps some is going to the organiser, either way as long as people are still interested and it’s a fair draw it doesn’t worry me. I won’t be entering as I wouldn’t have enough spare money to ship it to me!

[Spider]

They have popped up on the forum previously.

 

While there is what appears a legitimate Rafael there is a company behind it, which we don't mind however if memory serves, they have been asked to register on the Forum as a Trader and we haven't heard back since.

[jonlad]

interesting responses thanks all, I might wait until it's a mini that is "more up my street" so to speak :)   Gives me a chance to take a look at the live draws.

 

I'm not on instagram which is probably why i missed it last time 

[UKMINIS]

Hi All,

My names Samuel Davies and I own UKMINIS ltd, Ive purchased UKMINIS in Jan 2017 from the chap that started it as I am planning a Mini Museum to display my personal collection and thought it was a good way to connect with the community, the page had around 15k when I purchased.

Ukminis across Instagram and Facebook now had around 75,000 followers.

In May of last 2021 I had to close my shops due to covid so had some real time to concentrate on UKMinis rather than it being a hobby per say. Ive wanted to offer Minis in a competition format for some time because as a community they are becoming unattainable for some and as we all know finding a decently restored Mini for reasonable money is almost impossible unless you have friends.

So I had a website built and competitioned one of mine from my collection. Im not sure if any of the winners are members on here but there re now 21 winners or Minis and tonnes of others winning cash and parts. I have given away some of the best Minis in the world. Walter the the most recent Van was concours and will win shows when the winner shows him next year. Oddly the special ones seem to do less well than the modified ones. So Molly the mk1, Percy the mkII Cooper, Horace the Pick up, DAX the 1275 GT and Walter the concours Van all struggled where as Ralph the 1340 MED Road/Race Mini sold out on days after me posting a video of me having some fun (shall we say).

On the subject of money, Of course I have to make money to continue to do it, I have lost on 5 of the 21 Minis, I wont bore you with the technical elements but I now have a specialist built website thats been a rather large and increasing cost plus a the "Lottery Tax" (Even though I am not a lottery) and of course the normal corporation taxs. Now that the competition is now established I adding a charitable element to it.  A proportion on my profits will be donated to a differing charties on a monthly basis. Most likely 10%. With regards to the pricing of entries, there are various factors to consider here, the desirability and cost of the prizes. The opening price is always the best (Unless buyers are offered extra entries at discounted rates for being existing customers) then it raises. I have to build in an amount of FREE entries, the cost of the car plus my fees to brake even point, advertising costs, then my profit.

All of my draws a done live on my Facebook page on the date advertised on the competition page, if the competition is extended it will be the new date, ALL of our draws are available to re watch on our website under LIVE DRAWS and also on my social media pages Instagram/Facebook @ukminis, also all of my winners can be viewed there and most recently on my Youtube channel you can see some of the handovers (not done many in person due to covid) 

We currently have our Christmas Mega draw Live which is a show worthy winner Mini Equinox and a Brand new @Swiftune engine which the winner will get to spec in jan and go through the whole Swiftune experience and I will pick up the bill. I also currently have a Tax Free Cash that I dubbed the Mini Restoration, Modify or Buy fund as Id had a lot of people saying they havent entered as they already have a Mini but its not had anything done blah blah blah the story we've all experienced many times due to lack of funds etc.

This competition is explained fully on my Youtube channel and Website just search UKMINIS. 

I hope this helps with some of the questions and queries and I look forward to hopefully handing a Mini or Two over to some of you in the future.

I have set up a special Discount code 'TMF25' for your members that will be live for the next 48 hours, it will give you 25% discount.

Someone in the feed mentioned me signing up as a trader, I did respond the the message that was sent and would be more than happy to do so if someone could show me how.

I wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy new year.

I hope to see some of you next year at the shows as one of my very special Minis will be finished in Jan.

Thanks

Samuel

[Spider]

Hi All,

My names Samuel Davies and I own UKMINIS ltd,

 

Hi Samuel,

 

Could you kindly register as a Trader with the forum.

 

https://www.theminif...howtopic=139762

 

We have strict rules regarding Traders, which we welcome to our fold, but as mentioned, we ask that they register as such. While your post above is in fact a breach of these rules, I'll leave it in place for now, but lock this thread for the time being.