"Free" Trips Cause Suspicion

It's an easy way to promote your business: set up a booth at a trade show, put out a ballot box for a prize draw, and then use the names, phone numbers, and addresses from the ballots for direct marketing.

But some people who attended the CKNL Fort St John Trade Show think their ballots got into the wrong hands. They've been reporting suspicious calls from someone claiming they won a trip as a result of a ballot filled out at the trade show.  The trip includes 2 days in Orlando with a free car rental, and a cruise to the Bahamas.  To save the reservation, the caller requests a credit card number and expiry date, so they can preauthorize a charge of $299 dollars.  It certainly sounds too good to be true, and in light of these calls, organizer Arlene Thorpe of this weekend's Dawson Creek Trade Show is taking extra precautions.

"We just can't have that.  What we've decided to do is, if they [the exhibitors] are going to use the names from the draw box, fine, they can keep them.  But if they're not going to use the m, we're asking people, please, to come up to the Kiwanis Office because we will have a shredder there and we will shred them [ballots] when they bring them up.  That way there's going to be no names floating around in the garbage." 

The organizer of the Fort St. John Trade Show though, thinks the ballots being used in the suspicious calls may have been sold.  He says he's heard of ballots being sold at other trade shows across the country.  But Thorpe insists that if that happens at the trade show in Dawson Creek, it will be the end of ballot boxes.

"The bad apple spoils it for everybody as the saying goes.  And that will happen with this.  We will just not have any draw boxes.  And that would be so sad if that had to happen."

Police can not yet confirm that the phone calls are a scam.  They say it's not fraudulent until someone's account is debited without receiving what was promised (in this case the free trip).  Organizers at the Kiwanis Trade Show in Dawson Creek say, if you legitimately win something from their show, you won't need credit card information to redeem your prize.

Tammy Banfield, CJDC TV News, Dawson Creek.