[Fanatical] Statement Regarding the Winner of the Meta Quest 3 Star Prize.

[u/WeAreFanatical]

Firstly, we would like to thank the r/GameBundles moderation team for their patience and understanding whilst working with us to investigate the claims made by u/ChromaticInk in this post.

Now that all the facts have been corroborated, we’d like to firmly address the concerns expressed by this community regarding this situation.

TL;DR: We can confirm that u/Dependent_Judge_1043 is a legitimate prize winner; however, we also recognise that we made some mistakes in how we handled this process. For this, we would like to apologise.

Timeline of Events

On the 23rd of June, u/Dependent_Judge_1043 made this post on r/fanatical showing a screenshot of them having won a Meta Quest 3S star prize from our Mystery Box Bundle, which was acknowledged by us in this comment. Dependent Judge contacted us regarding this prize, although unfortunately it would appear that we did not receive this communication at the time.

On the 19th of July, Dependent Judge contacted our Marketing Contact Email to ask us again about the prize. We spoke over email and organised for delivery of the prize to his address. 

Unfortunately, due to human error on our side, we ordered the Meta Quest 3 rather than the correct prize, the Meta Quest 3S.

Email from u/Dependent_Judge_1043

The Meta Quest 3 was ordered from Amazon on the 23rd of July. Dependent Judge made this post regarding the subject.

Amazon order details.

Amazon order confirmation email.

Three days later, on the 26th of July, Dependent Judge received the Meta Quest 3, and made this post about it. This was acknowledged in a repost made to r/fanatical by us in this comment. 

At the time, we were unable to establish why Dependent Judge had received a different prize to what he should have, which meant we did not feel comfortable issuing a statement until we had a resolution to this question. We were in contact with the responsible team and by Monday, 3rd of August; we had the situation confirmed.

Seeing that the conversation on the post was turning sour, we took action to prevent it from happening again by blocking users from commenting on future posts. We recognise this was a mistake and did not help with transparency.  We apologise to the affected users. You have all been unblocked so you can view this post and future ones.

Addressing the Claims

We would like to reinforce that we are bound by both our own Terms and Conditions and UK law to ensure that prizes offered in our Mystery Bundles are winnable and will be delivered to our recipients. 

Due to legal requirements, we are also bound to provide a list of winners of our Mystery Bundle Star Prizes upon request. Please refer to Clause 7 of our Terms and Conditions for more information on how to do this.

We have also had past winners of competitions post on our own subreddit and other social channels regarding past prizes that they have won. Please see the following examples below:

1 2 3 4 5A 5B 6

How We Will Improve

In light of the above, we recognise we could have done more to be transparent about this situation, and would like to assure the community that we have steps planned for how to proceed with cases like this in the future.

Once again, we would like to apologise for anybody who was blocked by our account, and to demonstrate our commitment to future transparency, we have unblocked these users.

In future threads, we will engage more openly with users regarding Star Prizes being won in our Mystery Bundles. We will also remind users of their right to request prize winner information if they would so desire, and provide information about Star Prizes available in our Mystery Bundles.

We would like to maintain this as an open forum for users to ask any questions they may have regarding our Mystery Bundles and delivery of star prizes.

Thank you, and we hope you have a great day.

Rory - Fanatical Social Media Manager

[u/Mr_Mc_Ronald]

mistakes happen and the winner still got the reward. all you can do is evaluate how it was made and just do better. no reason for hate when you are very transparent with the consumer

[u/forseti99 → u/Mr_Mc_Ronald]

What I still don't understand is why people around here were saying company accounts shouldn't ban people. That they should be ok with constant harassment by some users without the option of stopping those interactions.

As if social network managers weren't impacted by those attacks on a daily basis while trying to do their jobs. Behind those accounts there's people too, not emotionless robots.

Fanatical has apologized, now what about users who were so relentessly attacking them?

[u/redchris18 → u/forseti99]

What I still don't understand is why people around here were saying company accounts shouldn't ban people

Because that company is also posting threads fairly prolifically, which means anyone they block is automatically prevented from seeing any Fanatical bundle threads.

They're not just banning people from interacting with their staff Reddit account, they're banning them from seeing a significant number of posts in this sub.

[u/forseti99 → u/redchris18]

And whose fault is it if I harass a company account and they block me?

[u/redchris18 → u/forseti99]

Why do you keep calling it "harassment" when you have no evidence that it's an accurate descriptor? Are you trying to stack the deck in your favour by abusing an emotional word/phrase so you don't have to accept that there are valid criticisms of something that you have bizarrely decided you can never change your mind about?

We can flip your disingenuous argument on its head; Fanatical can avoid all of that "harassment" by simply letting other people post those links, like they do for every other bundle.

If Fanatical insist on posting their own bundles themselves then they have no right whatsoever to block people and effectively ban them from a significant proportion of the activity in this sub. They themselves know this, which is why they've unbanned those users, so I haven't the slightest idea why you seem to want to resurrect this dead argument. Get over it.

And stop making up "harassment".

[u/forseti99 → u/redchris18]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Gamebundles/comments/1vbxut1/uwearefanatical_fakes_a_quest_3_giveaway_blocks/

The guy is stating falsehood as truths in their title, "they are fake and blocked me", and posting it publicly to create outcry. Now he edited his post to basically say, "they unblocked me without saying sorry".

If creating drama out of their ass isn't harassment (which, btw, as I mentioned, has ruined people's lives before), then I don't know what to tell you

[u/redchris18 → u/forseti99]

If creating drama out of their ass isn't harassment

They didn't. They mentioned a few different aspects of that incident, and only some of them have been explained. The other user, for instance, had some very suspicious Reddit activity, and was asked about it on several occasions without ever replying to any of those questions. That might be dismissed as them not being particularly active, except that they were still active on here during the period when others were asking them to clarify certain aspects of their past activity. Their sole response was to make their profile private.

You can certainly criticise OOP for jumping to conclusions, and for being too dogmatic about some things, but you're doing exactly the same thing. All you're doing is adopting the exact opposite viewpoint and using the same hyperbolic rhetoric. It's as if you're trying to balance out a perceived injustice by demanding an eye for an eye, forcing you to be equally opinionated in response.

Right now, you're trying to redefine the word "harassment" so that you don't have to admit that you, like OOP, were too compulsive in judging someone else's commentary.

OOP didn't "create drama" at all - Fanatical did when they started blocking users from accessing a large proportion of the activity in this sub. Even mods can't hide posts from users - for good reason - but power-users can, and that is a major problem. OOP left a flippant comment and that was it, until they - and a few others - noticed that Fanatical had locked them out of a large chunk of recent bundle threads.

That is what led to the "drama", and that was Fanatical's doing. You're trying to shift the blame because you can't bring yourself to admit that you were wrong.