Glitch in Pepsi Christmas instant win results in multiple £1000 winners

Britvic look to be in hot water today after a glitch in the system resulted in dozens of people winning £1000 cash in their Pepsi Max Christmas Refreshed promotion.

The instant win promotion – at https://xmas.britvic.promo and listed on the SuperLucky Instant Wins page – has 105 prizes, and is running until 31 December 2021. There should only be five £1000 winners, plus a hundred £50 winners, with prizes awarded to the first entrant after each of the 105 winning moments.

However, on the evening of Sunday 28 November between around 9pm and 10pm, multiple entrants reported winning the £1000 top prize (at least 35 so far).

Winners were able to submit their details, and should expect an email confirming the win and asking them to supply ID in order to claim the prize.

It was only when several members of my Facebook group Lucky Learners reported wins at the same time, they realised something had gone wrong with the instant win mechanic.

This isn’t the first time there’s been a glitch in an instant win promotion, but usually if there’s a problem you don’t get to input your contact details – the only evidence you have of your win is the congratulations screenshot, and the promoter won’t usually accept this as evidence of a win. In this case the promoter will have the contact details of all the £1000 winners from last night – but none have yet been contacted.

BP & Bodyform honour winners after technical glitch with competitions

In January this year there was a similar problem with a BP promotion where receipts at petrol stations incorrectly informed hundreds of people they had won the daily prize of £2,000 of rewards points! The error was fixed on the same day, but BP did honour the prizes of those affected.

Back in 2014, a similar issue happened in a Bodyform instant win promotion. They had ten £10,000 VIP trips to New York on offer, yet over a hundred people won these at the start of the promotion! Bodyform honoured the prizes, but gave each winner a New York trip without the VIP elements!

Asda too had trouble with a recent ‘spin the wheel’ instant win promotion, where multiple people won £100. Again, they honoured the prizes.

I’m sure a big company like Britvic will have risk insurance to cover something like this happening, and I’m interested to see how Britvic, Pepsi and Ignis (the company running the instant win) will deal with the situation. I’ll update this post when I have news.

Were you one of the £1000 winners? Let me know in the comments. You can also keep up to date with the chat thread in Lucky Learners.

Good news! (update on 30 November)

On the afternoon of 30 November, all winners received emails from Pepsi to confirm their £1000 wins! Well done to Ignis and Britvic for honouring these prizes, and congratulations to all those lucky winners – what a great prize just in time for the Christmas shopping!