How we protect players

Every paid competition has a free postal entry route, and it is not a token gesture. A free entry goes into the same pool as a paid one, with the same chance of winning. There is no separate free draw and no smaller prize.

We also match the value of what you send. A postal entry earns the number of entries the cost of your stamp would have bought, including any discount that was running at the time, so choosing the free route does not quietly cost you chances.

How to enter free is set out on the free entry page and in clause 6 of our terms.

Once a competition opens, the draw takes place on the published date whether or not the tickets sell out. We do not cancel, postpone or extend a competition because sales were slower than we hoped.

That matters because the alternative is the industry practice people most distrust: rolling a draw forward until enough money is in. If a competition sells 40 tickets, the prize is still awarded, and the odds are simply better for the people who entered.

Winners are picked by a published, seeded algorithm, not by us choosing. The random seeds are sealed before entries close and their fingerprints published on the competition page; after each draw we reveal the seeds, publish the frozen pool of entry ranges with its own fingerprint, and show the arithmetic that turns one into the other.

Anyone can reproduce a result from the published information. Every drawn competition carries a link to its own verification page, where one click recomputes the result in your browser with a public verifier that shares no code with the program that ran the draw.

We do not publish entrants’ names. Your own ticket numbers are always visible under My Tickets, and every drawn competition publishes the frozen, anonymised entry ranges on its verification page. The full mechanism, and the steps to check a result yourself, are explained on how our draws work.

Competitions are open to people aged 18 or over who are resident in Great Britain. You confirm both when you create an account, and we record those confirmations separately so each can be checked.

There is one account per person. Before a prize is released we verify the winner’s identity, age and address.

We have built the tools that let you limit your own spending, and every one of them actually blocks entries while it is active, including free postal entries. There is no setting we quietly ignore.

• Spend limits per day, week or month, enforced in the database at the moment of payment rather than only in the interface.
• Take a break for 24 hours, a week or a month.
• Self-exclusion for six months, a year or permanently. A self-exclusion cannot be lifted early or shortened, and it survives account deletion so it cannot be bypassed by starting again.

Free, confidential support, including debt and money advice, is listed on our responsible play page.

We contact the winner using the details on their account within 14 days of the draw, and they have 30 days from that first contact to claim.

If a prize is forfeited, because a winner cannot be reached, fails verification or has deleted their account, we do not hand the prize to someone of our choosing. It is drawn again by the same mechanism, on a new published seed derived from the sealed one, from the entries that remain, and the verification page discloses that a redraw took place and why.

We publish winners’ surname and county so results can be seen to be real (results pages and live draws show first names only). You can object to that publication in your account settings or by contacting us, and a winner’s photograph is only ever used if they have specifically agreed to it.

If something has gone wrong, email support@netcompetitions.co.uk. We acknowledge every complaint within 5 working days, investigate it, and give you a considered answer, as set out in clause 16 of our terms.

Competitions are run by NetCompetitions Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales (number 07533343), whose registered office is 17 St. Peters Place, Fleetwood, Lancashire, FY7 6EB. We are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office under number ZC209656.

There is a real company, a real address and a named person behind this. Our full terms are at netcompetitions.co.uk/terms, and how we handle your data is set out in our privacy policy.