Giveaway Winner Ghosted by Currys Until Viral Tweet

When a notification popped on Jordan Phillips' phone telling him he had won an online giveaway, he was thrilled to be the owner of a new coffee machine. The competition had been posted on X by the retailer Currys, offering entrants the chance to win a Philips coffee machine, worth £380, by following their page, liking the post and commenting.

On 16 February, Jordan, from Leeds, was announced as the contest winner and he provided his details for delivery of the prize within minutes. However, weeks went by with no further correspondence and the 33-year-old became stuck in an unhelpful loop with customer services when he tried to chase it up at the beginning of April. Currys has since apologised for the delay.

"It was going round and round in circles, it didn't seem like it was going anywhere," Jordan explained. "I was assured that I'd get it and I heard nothing else."

According to the competition terms and conditions set out by Currys, winners should allow "up to 60 days" for the delivery of the prize. When the deadline neared, Jordan made a last-ditch effort to get the company to honour the terms.

"My response was, if I don't hear anything, I'm just informing you now publicly that I will take this to the ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) because you've run a competition that falls under their rules," he explained.

On the 59th day when it became clear no coffee machine would be arriving, Jordan made an official complaint to the ASA and posted on X. His post racked up 48,000 likes and was seen more than five million times by social media users.

"I didn't expect it to blow up the way that it did if I'm being honest," Jordan admitted. "I thought it might get some eyeballs and maybe make them communicate with me a bit better. I got a response after it had started to snowball."

In a public X post, Currys said: "We're very sorry this has happened and for the inconvenience caused. This isn't the experience we want anyone to have when taking part in our giveaways. We're looking into what went wrong with the fulfilment of the prize so we can make sure it doesn't happen again."

The company also confirmed the coffee machine would be sent and delivered the next day, 61 days after the win announcement, along with a goodwill gesture of a voucher and coffee beans.

"Some people might say it's silly complaining about a free item that you were going to receive," Jordan added. "But if you've been told that you're going to win something and there's terms and conditions that are binding, you should be able to receive what you've been told you're going to receive. To me it was important to try and at least hold them to it. It could have gone nowhere and none of this could have happened. But equally if what I've done opens a few eyes to what you can do to chase up this kind of thing, then hopefully I've helped some people out."

A Currys spokesperson said: "We're sorry for the slight delay in Mr Phillips receiving his coffee machine. The good news is that it's now safely with him, and we've added a gesture of goodwill so he can treat himself to some accessories to go with his new machine."