Lotta Bottle

Another lucky week! The luckiest part? Not getting a ride in an ambulance with a two-year-old boy.

You might reasonably ask exactly how this relates to comping … Well, the short of it is that he made such a beeline for the front door when the courier rang the bell that he ended up doing a backwards roll down the stairs. (SPOILER: he was fine; I was a nervous wreck.) And for what? Eight pints of milk. Seriously - the promoter sent MILK by courier?!

It’s not that the prize came out of the blue - I knew I’d won milk. But what I was expecting was a voucher or two - not a dirty great hamper of moo juice; not £3 worth of perishable goods sent by courier. How much that milk would have cost to send I couldn’t say, but I do know that if you need a rich tea biscuit by this time tomorrow, the Royal Mail would charge at least twice as much.

An isolated incident? Not at all. Last year, one promoter sent me 750 grams of salt. Cost of delivery? Nearly three times the value of the prize.

Yes, I do live in Norwich. But despite what you might read on the internet, we do have supermarkets. And those supermarkets do accept vouchers. So what’s going on here?

Ask any economist and they’ll tell you the same: follow the money.

In other words, it’s black ops couriers. By targeting FMCG firms, they can divert a steady dollar stream to their employers without raising suspicion. It’s embezzlement in plain sight, laundered and legit. There are whole syndicates of them - Google it - pooling their intelligence and planting moles in companies with cheap, heavy goods.

Go on, call me crazy - but did you see how many people won potatoes last year?!

In the interests of exposing this madness, let’s conduct a quick survey: what’s the heaviest item to come your way that would have been better served with a voucher? Drop me a comment below!