GBP1million letter dumped in junk mail box

The email informing Phung Ngu that she had won GBP1million on the Daily Draw free games site was wrongly directed to her laptop's junk mail box.

Had Phung Ngu been a less meticulous person, the email might have lain undiscovered, but Halifax counter supervisor Phung who always carefully scrutinises her junked mail before deleting it, recognised it was from her favourite online free-to-play games site Fair Exchange and retrieved it.

"At first I couldn't believe I was a millionaire," said 29-year-old Phung.

"So I called Fair Exchange to check and it was only when they asked me to confirm my identity that the truth hit home.

"I was so excited I couldn't remember my Daily Draw password - even though I'd used it to play every day for three years.

"I check my hotmail junk mail every day because occasionally something important gets dumped in there, sometimes even from companies I've put on my safe list - though never anything as important as this before".

Phung's comment will strike a chord with all companies that send out permission-based email and are locked in an ongoing battle with the email service providers over their constantly changing definitions of junk mail and the unwillingness of some to work with these companies to ensure requested mail is correctly delivered to the in-box.

"We were worried when Phung did not respond to the email, because we had no other contact number for her," said Bryn Morgan, marketing director of PDV, the company which owns the Fair Exchange free games portals, "and we wanted her to know about her GBP1m win straight away.

"We'd decided to look for a home phone number and were praying it was not ex-directory, when she finally called us.

"This was fortunate, because Phung says her mother doesn't speak English and Phung has two jobs so works long hours, which makes home telephone contact difficult".

Phung, a self-confessed workaholic, won't be giving up her day job at the Halifax, or her second job at Loomis cash centre, despite her millionaire status.

She will also continue to play every day on the various Fair Exchange free-to-play games websites: "I enjoy it and have won various small cash prizes," said Phung, whose Chinese father and Vietnamese mother brought her to the UK when she was a year old.

Fair Exchange is owned and operated by PDV, one of the UK's largest privately owned online permission-based marketing companies.

The site has more than 3 million registered customers and offers a variety of free games that customers can play to win a variety of prizes - from GBP1,000,000 to cars and cameras.

Customer play for free as games and prizes are played by exchanging information for chances to win.

The site, which was recently rebranded and redesigned, was founded in 2000 by Derick Hill and Smedvig Capital, launching its first consumer website in 2001.

This website, The Daily Draw, rapidly met a growing demand for sophisticated and highly targeted one-to-one communication and was recently integrated into the Fair Exchange website.

Fair Exchange and PDV remain the only free-to-play site in Europe to have actually paid out GBP1million jackpots to customers.

PDV, which is DMA registered and regulated, is experienced at profiling and recruiting pre-qualified and permission-based consumers into client-lead generation programmes.

It also offers clients exclusivity over the data collected via their questionnaires.

The PDV database includes more than 3.2 million members (with a six month active base of over 650,000).

Because its member acquisition programme focuses on building ongoing relationships, rather than relying solely on new member recruitment, PDV members are highly responsive to marketing communications and requests for detailed personal data.

PDV has always been committed to a fair exchange policy which offers consumers access to the Fair Points loyalty scheme in return for their information, which incentivises and rewards continued interaction.

PDV also caps the number of mailings each member receives and operates a rigorous privacy policy.

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