O2 takes centre stage in EE Glasto competition upset
O2 has taken advantage of an EE blunder by offering a free pass to its Academy venues for a year to the “winner” of an EE Glastonbury tickets competition to whom EE was unable to offer a prize.
EE ran a competition last month on Twitter asking participants to recreate famous album covers using unusual materials, offering free Glastonbury tickets to 10 winners.
The competition picked up such traction on Facebook, EE decided to extend the offer to five Facebook participants and five on Twitter. However, its promotions team and agency Poke London failed to change the terms and conditions, which stated tickets would go to 10 Twitter winners. As a result EE did not have enough pairs of tickets to award to the 15 total winners.
Twitter user @Terry_Finnegan – who recreated a Calvin Harris album using Lego as his entry – was one of the five unlucky Twitter “winners” who were offered Ticketmaster vouchers equal to the value of two weekend Glastonbury tickets, instead of the actual tickets themselves.
Finnegan took his complaint to EE on Twitter using the #GiveTerryHisGlastoTickets hashtag, which has since amassed hundreds of tweets, demanding EE honour the prize.
EE rival O2 took advantage of the situation, by tweeting Finnegan: “Fancy some free O2 Academy tickets for the rest of the year, on us? Drop @O2Priority a DM. #GiveTerryHisGlastoTickets”.
An EE spokeswoman says: “This was an honest mistake but we’ve been working hard all day to find a solution and we’re delighted to say we’ve managed to source some extra tickets. Terry and all the competition winners will be going to Glastonbury.”
Today’s (13 June) incident is not the first time O2 has taken advantage of a negative situation on Twitter. The operator suffered a major network outage last year, which saw many affected customers turn to Twitter to vent their anger. O2 was praised by some Twitter users for its irreverent response to some of the more offensive complaints, which was one of the drivers behind it winning Twitter’s first #Flock Award this year, which “rewards Twitter excellence”.
