Meet The Compers: Jordon Cox

Welcome to a new Q&A in my popular Meet The Compers series! This time, I’m chatting to fellow blogger, Jordon Cox (you may know him as the UK’s Coupon Kid!)

I first met Jordon at a UK Money Bloggers event in London, and was struck by his enthusiasm for couponing, and his desire to help as many people as possible save money. He worked for MoneySavingExpert for several years before launching his own website at www.jordoncox.com, and has recently won the Best Money Saving Blog at the SHOMO Awards!

Jordon is currently visiting UK cities on his Secrets to Saving tour – reserve your FREE tickets for Portsmouth (13 March) at secretstosaving.co.uk, where I’ll be joining Jordon as his special guest to talk comping!

Thanks so much for joining me for a SuperLucky Q&A Jordon! How did you first discover comping?

I first stumbled into comping almost by accident when I was 17. I was bored one day scrolling through Facebook, and noticed a competition from Fab Ice Lollies where you had to write a slogan to win an Amazon Kindle. I looked at the comments and realised there were only 3 entries, and the competition ended in a few days. I spent a good 5 minutes trying to think of the best answer I could, and excitedly typed out the comment. I kept tabs on that competition for the rest of the week, because I thought if there’s only 4 entries, then my odds at winning are really good! There were 5 entries in total when the competition closed, so I kept refreshing the page and excitedly checking my phone… and to my surprise – I WON!

I got such a buzz out of it and starting telling all my friends and family. At the time, Kindles were worth about £80 – and for a 17 year old, that was a lot of money! From that point I was hooked – not long afterwards I joined the Lucky Learners Facebook group, and from that found a local competition club (which I still go to now) and made a lot of local comping friends. The rest is history!

What are your favourite competition websites, forums or resources?

When I first got started comping, I’d be on The Prize Finder every single day, as I found it quite easy to use as a newbie. Now my main port of call is Competition Database and the Lucky Learners Facebook group.

As a teenager you were diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease and spent months in hospital. You found comping a welcome distraction at the time – were you successful?

Comping really got me through some rough times in my life. I was in hospital for 4 months straight, and was unable to eat – being fed intravenously. I couldn’t really do much, and was just sat there all day – I wanted to do something productive, and turned to comping. I would enter 100+ comps a day, working from dawn till dusk – and ended up being quite successful, winning about 20 prizes in total. No major wins, but a lot of smaller prizes, which kept me happy. Unfortunately, the majority of things I won were food related – including chocolate hampers and meals for two, so my mum had to treat herself to those!

Obviously I had a lot more time on my hands then than most people, but it still showed it could be done!

You’ve recorded several game shows and pilots – tell me about your favourite experiences!

I absolutely love doing TV shows and pilots. I’m naturally quite a competitive person, so to combine that with quizzing and winning real money is great fun for me. I’ve been a part of 3 TV shows – all of them were brand new shows that lasted for 1 season, so no big names (yet). They were ‘Pick Me’ hosted by Steven Mulhurn, where I won £1,000, ‘Head Hunters’ hosted by Rob Beckett, where I won £1,450, and finally ‘Moneybags’ hosted by Craig Charles, winning a whopping £16,500. So in total I’m at nearly £20,000 of winnings, and have a 100% record of wins – which the competitive person in me is very proud of.

Some of my favourite memories involve being on these shows. When filming Head Hunters – it was 2 weeks worth of filming at BBC Glasgow, 30 shows in total with 19 other contestants. It was like a 2 week holiday, with all the hotels and expenses paid for. At the end of each day, we’d be given £15 each to get dinner… so at the end of each day of recording, I’d go for a slap up meal with my fellow contestants, and we all formed a real bond.

I still speak to a lot of people from my quiz show experiences and have formed some great friendships with people all over the country from all walks of life.

I admire your calmness when being filmed or interviewed – do you have any tips for SuperLucky readers who would like to apply for a game show but are lacking in confidence?

Thank you! I come from a drama/performing background as a kid – plus I’m from the generation that films a lot of videos on your phone, so I’ve never been camera shy, or a stranger to making a fool of myself. Game shows and quiz shows are easier to get on than you might think for this exact reason. People don’t want to be on screen or make a fool of themselves – so not many apply.

The biggest thing I would say, is that it’s never as bad as you think. All of the teams that produce these shows are so professional and look after you. If you mess up or say anything you shouldn’t – it’ll all be edited out. Whether you win or lose, very few people will remember that time that you went on a quiz show, and it will soon be a distant memory to most.

So if you don’t do as well as you’d hoped, you don’t have to tell anyone when you’re on TV, and if you win – scream it from the rooftops!

What’s your favourite prize, and why was it so special?

It’s not the highest value prize – but my favourite prize was actually a competition with KFC – where you had to take a picture of you with popcorn chicken, and tweet it to them. I did this, and very shortly after they replied saying I won! The prize was £100 worth of theatre tickets, and £50 to spend on a taxi to the show. What’s even better, is I got my mum to enter as well – and she won too! We combined our prizes and got front row tickets to see Memphis in the West End of London, and used our taxi credit to get a private trip there and back for free. It was such a cool experience!

Your Secrets to Saving tour kicked off earlier this year – tell me a bit more about the events! Has it been strange to meet your social media followers in real life?

I’ve been wanting to do live events for such a long time. Especially after the past few years we’ve had, not being able to get out to the theatre – I wanted to make a show where we could all see each other again, have a laugh and a cheap night out – while still learning some valuable advice. And thus – Secrets To Saving Money LIVE was born. Tickets are totally free and I’m travelling all around the UK, where in a bumper packed 90 minutes, you should have a lot of notes and things to try to start cutting back your bills.

It’s been weird meeting people you’ve spoken to online face to face! There’s a lot of instances where we feel like we know each other, but of course we’ve never met.

Can’t wait to see you Di in Portsmouth – where it should be a lot of fun!

Lots of instant win competitions offer print-at-home coupons as prizes but some store staff are wary of accepting them! Do you have any tips for using these in supermarkets?

I love competitions that get you a freebie product via a coupon. It may not be the biggest win, but it ties in a special love of my life… coupons! If you do have any printable coupons, you shouldn’t be scared about using them. All major supermarkets (excluding Aldi & Lidl) accept printed coupons, as long as it matches the product. Some cashiers may not know what they’re doing due to lack of training, but being as helpful as you can if that situation arises is the best bet. If it’s not accepted for any reason, send a note to Head Office or the supermarket’s social media account, and they’ll fix it for you – and sometimes send you a gift card as a gesture of goodwill.

What does your partner Ollie think of the hobby? Does he enter many comps himself?

Ollie didn’t really understand why people do comping in the beginning… until he started winning prizes, then quickly got the buzz. We have worked on a few competitions together, and have won prizes that include a trip on the Lucky Party Plane to Majorca with Jet2 and £5,000 in cash.

Just a month ago, he won £65 of Tesco vouchers through a text to win – which even that he was happy with! At the moment he mostly enters comps I tell him to, or send to him, but he’s starting to do more himself as time goes on!

What would be your dream competition prize?

I love winning prizes that money can’t buy – things like film premiere tickets or experiences that you wouldn’t otherwise get. A backstage meet and greet with a celebrity at a premiere or award show would be top of my list of prizes to win.

What’s your favourite type of competition?

At the moment, my favourite type of competition to enter are text to wins. It’s so easy to just fire off a text and get entered into competitions, where some have a lot of chances to win a prize! I’m regularly looking at the text to win thread in the Lucky Learners Facebook group, and entering all that are on there.

Is there anything about competitions (or promoters!) that frustrates you?

When you can’t find any T&Cs! Before I enter anything, I have a quick read… because I may be not eligible, or a prize might have to be taken on a certain date which I can’t do. But some companies just don’t have them anywhere. It’s very frustrating!

Do you have any embarrassing comping stories to share?

One time when me and my mum were walking down the street at our local shopping centre, we noticed a lot of different Lucozade free sample stands that were scattered up the whole road. When you went to each one, you could get a free full size Lucozade, and enter a competition with your name and number to win some fitness equipment.

In total there were 5 different stands as you kept walking down – all giving out free samples and doing the comp, so we went to the first one, got our free drinks, entered the comp – and bunged them into a bag, to visit the next one! By the time we finished them all, we had 10 free drinks, and entered 10 times. I quickly changed into a hoodie and tried to go back for a second time round!

Despite all of our entries, we didn’t win… but we still got about £15+ worth of free Lucozade!

Finally, what comping tip can you share with us?

Don’t get put off with how many entries there are to a competition. You have the same chance of winning as everybody else – and your chance of winning if you don’t enter is zero!

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Thanks so much for taking the time to answer these questions Jordon, and I’ll see you in a few weeks! If you enjoyed this interview please do check out the others here.