Sunday 4 November 2012

Mail on Sunday publishes second apology for front page splash

In June, the Mail on Sunday's Richard Dyson and Martin Delgado carried out an investigation into the website Yipiii. The results were splashed on the front page:


The paper claimed that their reporters had spent £162 on the website and:

only won a £19.99 fish bowl. 

And:

The reporters did not use the free plays they were offered.

A week later, they admitted that wasn't true:

In our front-page report last week we said Mail on Sunday reporters had spent £162 on Yipiii plays but won only a £20 toy goldfish bowl.

In fact, one reporter used ‘free plays’ acquired during the experiment and went on to win an iPad worth up to £400.

And in a different experiment another journalist spent £40 and won £35 of flowers and a £101 iPod Nano.

We apologise to Yipiii for not mentioning these.

Also, we said customers can top up their accounts as often as they like. In fact, top-ups are limited to £200 per day. 

Yes - the paper 'forgot' to mention the £500-worth of Apple goods it had won on the site.

Today, they have apologised again:

In a report (June 10) on the ‘winmarket’ Yipiii Ltd, which offers a roulette game to win online shopping, we said we had 162 £1 plays but won only a £20 toy.

In fact, the 162 plays included ‘free spins’ won on previous plays and after our test, but before publication, a reporter won a £400 iPad with remaining credit. Players have an 85 per cent chance of a prize or further play and non-winning stakes can be used as discounts on purchases through the site.

Users need to actively log in for the roulette wheel to appear when they are shopping. We apologise to Yipiii for not including this information in the article.

Unlike the original 'investigation', neither apology has appeared on the front page. 

3 comments:

  1. Maybe the lawyers for Yipiii should have take a leaf from Samsung's lawyers. Samsung have managed to get Apple to grovel publically for losing their case. Maybe the lawyers should push for a bit more than the standard PCC response of a buried apology and go for a grovelling front page apology in Arial 14pt.

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/02/apple_uk_samsung_apology/

    ReplyDelete
  2. We want to thank you for covering this peace.

    We have now also posted our story if people would like to read it.

    http://blog.yipiii.co.uk/?p=2772

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'm sure the issues with reporting this story are nothing to do with the Mail's owners wanting to build up the reputation of their own deal site, wowcher. Certainly it explains how many negative Groupon stories ran.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment.

Comments are moderated - generally to filter out spam and comments wishing death on people - but other messages will be approved as quickly as possible.