Several Southwestern Ontario residents felt their hearts sink like an anchor after receiving an erroneous email from Tim Hortons this week saying they’d won a boat.
Several Southwestern Ontario residents felt their hearts sink like an anchor after receiving an erroneous email from Tim Hortons this week saying they’d won a boat.
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Previously a manual contest with customers rolling up the rim of their paper cup to see if they’d won, for the past few years it’s only been available on a digital app, called Roll Up To Win.
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Clark Manning, a Dresden man who played the game with his parents, said they too initially heard they won a 2024 Tracker Targa 18 WT boat and trailer, valued at approximately $60,000.
“We kind of go in on this together,” he said Thursday. “(Tim Hortons) sent a first email doing a wrap-up… ‘Here’s what you won.’ Everything on that email is accurate, other than the boat winning.”
Hours later, to their dismay, they received a correction email.
It is unclear how many people were affected, though there were multiple news stories, including from the Greater Toronto Area, about people with similar experiences.
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There is also a Facebook group, Tim Hortons ‘You Won a Boat’ Group 2024, with more than 1,000 members either personally affected or simply curious.
Some museumd about a potential class-action lawsuit.
“It would be nice if it would happen,” Manning said. “But in a class action, we wouldn’t get a boat, obviously.”
While he knows the company didn’t do it on purpose, he called it carelessness on their part.
“It’s kind of ridiculous,” he said. “(And) they didn’t offer any compensation in the end… It was pretty upsetting.
“We have a cottage at Rondeau… If we had the boat, we would have it made in the shade. But yeah. It ended up being snatched out from under us.”
Jim Ford, a Thamesford retiree, also was elated by the short-lived good news.
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“I thought, ‘Wow.’ So, I’m showing it to all my buddies … I went over to Tim Hortons and they said, ‘Yeah, you’re a winner,’ ” he said.
“I’m 68. I’ve never won anything in my life… I don’t fish a lot, but it would’ve been pretty cool. Relatives of mine have had boats and I’ve been out on them and I love it.”
Then he got word he hadn’t actually won.
He admitted feeling deflated, especially given the high cost of living.
“I’m so excited about this and now you just took the air right out of the sails,” he said. “There’s got to be something they can do for all these people.”
The company should simply return to the old way of offering prizes directly on their cups, Ford said. Many customers are older and don’t use smartphones.
It’s not the first time this has happened, as some Tim Hortons customers last year experienced a glitch that told them they won $10,000.
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In a statement Thursday, Tim Hortons said it developed a Roll Up To Win recap email message “with the best intentions of giving our guests a fun overview of their 2024 play history.
“Unfortunately there was a human error that resulted in some guests receiving some incorrect information in their recap message.”
The company also forwarded a letter sent to customers, thanking them for being a valued guest while informing them of the glitch.
“Unfortunately, some prizes that you did not win may have been included in the recap email you received. If this was the case, today’s email does not mean that you won those prizes. Any prizes you won in the contest would have been revealed instantly when you played Roll Up To Win and any large value prizes would have had a further verification process.”
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The recap email also may have had incorrect information about the number of rolls a person earned this year, Tim Hortons said.
“We know that the millions of prizes won in our contest were distributed to winners accurately and as per our contest rules,” it added.
“The issue we are addressing in this email is solely related to the accuracy of the recap email from (Wednesday), which in some cases may not have been correct.
“We apologize for the frustration this has caused and for not living up to our high standards of providing an exceptional guest experience.”
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