Champions League final 2019: Zavvi accidentally emails newsletter subscribers telling them they've won Tottenham vs Liverpool VIP tickets

'We’re extremely sorry to have got our loyal customers’ hopes up'

Andrew Griffin
Thursday 09 May 2019 07:12 EDT
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(Reuters)

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Zavvi accidentally told its customers they had all won VIP tickets to Champions' League final – before admitting it had accidentally sent the message to its entire mailing list.

The online entertainment shop was supposed to be running a competition in conjunction with Mastercard that would see customers entered into a lottery to win a wide array of prizes including tickets to the match between Liverpool and Spurs. As well as admission to the game for two people, the package included travel and hotel, as well as spending money for during the trip.

In the emails sent out to customers, and addressed with their name, they were told they had actually won that prize, and should get in touch to get hold of it. Numerous people who receive the email say they believed it to be true, and some even claim to have already started making preparations for the trip.

But it quickly became clear the message had been sent to a huge number of Zavvi's customers. Only one person will get the tickets, it has since confirmed, and so receiving the email does not mean anything at all.

"We’re extremely sorry to have got our loyal customers’ hopes up, however due to human error a mistake was made with our mail-out and unfortunately there is only one winner of the tickets," a spokesperson said.

There was nothing in the message to indicate that it had been wrongly sent, and it even appeared to include the recipient's actual name. Many said they only discovered there was something wrong when they read the details and realised they had not signed up to the competition at all.

The emails led to vast numbers of people tweeting Zavvi's official account asking for clarification – and even some sort of compensation for the trouble they had undergone. The company apologised in a post.

"Apologies, we're aware of the problem regarding the recent Mastercard Competition," it wrote. "We seem to have had some technical issues and we're currently looking into this."

That tweet seems to have been deleted and the account now makes no mention of the mix-up.

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