Another UK win a house competition cancelled

UK win a house competitions have struggled to take off in recent months. Despite seemingly offering homeowners an alternative way of selling their home, issues surrounding their legality and the inability to process payments have severely hampered a number of competitions. With the Gambling Commission currently in dialogue with a number of organisers; and payment providers like PayPal refusing to offer their services for house competitions, many had to be cancelled or postponed recently.

PlayWoopi.com launched a couple of months ago with a quality team and website, offering a £1 million house and £703,000 cash prize competitions. Unfortunately, according to the latest notice on its homepage, it appears the project has been abandoned and tickets are to be refunded to players. Just like many other house competitions, PlayWoopi initially used PayPal to process payments online.

As we reported previously, PayPal changed their Acceptable Use Policy a few months ago to request that any house competition organiser seek prior approval for such activities. It appears that PlayWoopi may have run into difficulties primarily due to their inability to process payments in a cost-effective manner. At the same time, there may be other issues that had an impact on the competition and there is a chance we may see a return of PlayWoopi in the near future; albeit using a different payment provider.

Let us know if you have faced similar issues and if so, if you found reliable solutions that could help other competition organisers. This situation may have been avoided with closer cooperation between competition organisers, better communication with the Gambling Commission and identifying those payment providers that are willing to offer their services for house competitions.