Publishers Clearing House (PCH)

PCH is claiming I owe $111 in already paid for merchandise which is actually junk (all made in China), I have proof they are liars as I have check carbons and my bank statement which both prove they're lying - on my bank statement it clearly shows a debit from the checks I sent them that clearly show they deposited each into their greedy lying and scam filled accounts (debit has "PUBLISHERS CLEARING HOUSE" as the ones depositing those checks into their account). And they still threaten to send my account to collections! They do I can provide proof of their lies and their attempt will fail!

If you check them out on the BBB site you will notice they have a total of 451 complaints against them! With the most being for Problem with Products or Service (they mostly sell junk made in China and Customer Service is a joke) with 160 followed by Billing/Collection almost tied at 159 then at 103 Advertising/Sales and next to last 24 for Delivery Issues (people have had trouble their either with Magazine subscriptions or receiving things they never ordered or being billed for already paid for products, that either were paid in full or final payment paid a month or two before), dead last is Guarantee/Warranty at 5! That should tell you something right there!

Product/Service Issues
Billing/Collection
Advertising/Sales
Delivery Issues
Guarantee/Warranty

And yes, all you have to do is Google Reviews for Publishers Clearing House and almost all of them are complaints that include all of the above! Best advice I can give is avoid PCH at all costs! They may be legitimate but at the same time may as well be a scam because they sure operate like one!

I have played their games for months, always getting a bunch of emails every day, jumped through so many hoops doing all their searches, only getting tokens, then seeing that I'm getting advertisements from these recommended search items, showing that they spy on your browser once you perform these searches. All I ever got after blowing ten million tokens on a single gift card sweepstakes prize this year were some more tokens. I have entered lots of other token sweeps, but never collected ANY prize from them. Very time consuming, doesn't seem to be worth the effort. As others say they really try to shame you into buying their cheesy merchandise all day long, and getting up in jewel ranking and becoming a VIP just gets you more hoops to jump through, MORE badgering than ever to buy more crap, and getting soaked on shipping and handling. I've only ever seen one check for ten dollars, not really worth taking to the bank for all my input effort, and a five - dollar check I never received when I had just gone up in ranking. I hate the way they beat you over the head to buy, buy, buy, telling you to "show us how badly you want to win", but they don't really show US that they want to do much but send you virtual tokens which don't seem to be worth the time it takes to earn even if you had a billion of them to blow on one prize, I would say it would be time better spent just playing the state power ball lottery every now and again, the odds are less astronomical than trying to win anything from Uncle Scrooge, I mean PCH.The winners all do seem to be well - dressed and living in nice houses, never do they show someone from a poor neighborhood getting a life- changing prize, usually some elder folks who probably won't even live long enough to collect the majority of the multi- year prize. It's said that the only time the window is open for someone to win in their system is only a fraction of an unannounced second, I suppose you would have to happen to be playing a game at that exact moment in time to ever win a big prize. I believe that's the only way these can be called games of chance, not so much in happening to have picked the right numbers or anything. I'm sure they make loads of money every time you use their browser to search out anything, and sell your personal information over and over again, makes you feel like you're' the hoe and they are your pimp, making you jump through hoops like an addicted well- trained seal. Their instant win games you NEVER make the field goal, usually come in last or next to last in the car race, never pick the winning horse, etc. Making you feel like an unlucky, unskilled schmuck. I think it's just filthy rich people having fun at other people's expense, selling people to death on cheap junk they doubtlessly even need to sell to stay rich until the end of days.

I wasn't going to review this site, but since they do sell things it made the cut. I was surprised at all the people who said they got scammed by PCH that I was reading on a different consumer site.

I play PCHlotto regularly and It's fun! And I don't have to buy a ticket!
They also have a blog about their trips to find winners. They will find you if you are on vacation. They will sit and wait for you to come home from the store. The Prize Patrol is a SURPRISE with their giant check and flowers and champagne! That IS the first time a winner knows they won!

Sometimes other companies pose as PCH and say you have won prizes but it is usually a phishing scam. You may want to check your computer for a virus or spyware that knows you have been to PCH. I think if people were more careful online they would realize that they had clicked a popup-window that was an ad on a PCH site. There's a window that pops up and says I won when the PCHloto is loading the games page. I just hit the "X" and close that window because it is NOT PCH!. They do have "offers" at the end before they enter you for 10 million bucks but if you wait for the entire page to load at the bottom you will see a button to "skip" those offers. I get their emails too and have no problem entering or getting to the end of an entry without buying something.

Also, I have entered by mail for years before the internet and would occasionally order their random gadgets. I have never had a problem with them. I didn't get charged for items and they didn't ship me things I never ordered. So, either I am very lucky or some other folks on consumer affairs got scammed by a company pretending to be PCH!

The whole point of the Prize Patrol is to surprise the winner. You won't get paperwork in the mail to win a prize. You don't have to pay for your prize either! Just taxes, unless you won the tax free drawing! They do word things at times to make your heart jump, but it's just a come on to get you to open the email.
I think PCH shaped up after they got in trouble for misleading the elderly. They do have fun games to play as well. You may have to watch an ad first but you can win tokens to earn more entries on most games. The more entries you have the higher your odds of winning.

Nobody ever wins and you never hear about anyone winning, WHAT A SCAM, they just want u to buy buy buy.

Tokens Tokens Tokens! I hope you like Tokens people because that's all you are ever likely to win playing PCH lotto games. Millions of Tokens that you can use to bid on prizes that you will also most likely never win. Lotto cards that you have to hit 7or 8 numbers plus the power number to win cash. It's almost impossible to win the regular Powerball jackpot with only 6 numbers much less 7 or 8 numbers & you get absolutely nothing for coming up 1 or 2 numbers short. Other games that you have 7 numbers to match but you will never get more than 3; never! Then there is the power number bouncing ball game; talk about rigged! A couple times the ball looked like it would land in a money slot then somehow reversed course and fell in a token slot. Forget about winning $100 or $500 much less $10,000 Tic Tac Dough? Should be Tic Tac NO! As in forget about winning any money here as well. 3 of the 8 lines are tokens only & 5 are money lines. 5 to 3 odds? Sounds pretty good right? Forget it! More Tokens is all you'll get; oh boy! Now we come to the most offensive & irritating part. For starters, everyday your inbox is flooded with emails that threaten forfeiture if you don't keep entering on a daily basis. You'd think you could enter once and be done with it but NO! You know why? Because at every turn & between every game or card you play You have to shop for things you probably don't need or want. They tell you you don't have to buy anything to win but I'm not so sure, especially when they use terms like elevated status if you do buy something. I understand the money for these cash prizes comes from these products but quit shoving them down our throat! It's irritating! Plus people might be more inclined to buy something if you would let them win a few bucks here & there. Lotto? Keno? Slots? Games? After a while you start to notice the limited number of patterns that come up on these games & slowly realize that they are all rigged against you. You'd have better luck in Vegas. They list winners on a daily basis but again I'm not so sure. There are times I would like to sue them for fraud, but I'm sure they have their proverbial $#*! covered, Until I actually win some money PCH is & continues to be what I have always believed, nothing but a GIANT MARKETING SCAM! Buyer Beware!

Well Im not very good at this but I'll try.The Company that got me hooked in was "Award Notification Commission in Kansas City KS PO Box 2905 zip code ******* I guess I can say they started sending me letters first then emails saying I was a potential winner in one of they're Sweepstakes, at first I didnt know whether if it was real or not so I just didn't answer them at first but the letters just kept coming and the papper work they would send me looked so real I mean the papper work was so official looking that I didnt give asceond thought. MY bad! Anyways They started asking for filing fees and I would send it like adummy:-( but as the months went by I found my self sending more and more money orders untill I realized I was probably never going to get anything from them, so I Google the Company and there was in living color that they had so many complaints against them. I felt so stupid I was so mad at myself for letting them pull me in the way they did I hope they get whats coming to them soon before they get someone else again but they probably have already and there's nothing I could do about it either I really hope that by me giving you they're address tou could do something about and if for some you need any help doing it I have some of they're letters still and the money order receipts left, well I hope that was helpful. Sincerely Debra Garcia Ornelas

More for shipping and handling than for the cheep Chinese crap they sell!

Tired of the constant hounding to place orders! Everything pending on orders. It needs to stop!

Now I have almost FOUR HUNDRED MILLION TOKENS! I HAVE TURNED IN ALL OF THEM. I HAVE GOT NOTHING IN RETURN! CROOKED PUBLISHER'S CLEARING HOUSE!