Trust & safety

A prize draw asks you to hand over money for something you cannot watch happen. Being wary of that is reasonable. We would rather answer that than ask you to take our word for it.

The draw is checkable

Before entries close on any draw, we publish a fingerprint of the random seed that will pick the winner. After the draw, we publish the seed itself and the method, so anyone can run it again and get the same result.

You do not have to trust us on this, and you should not have to. How we draw sets out the mechanism.

Two things follow from it:

• A draw with no fingerprint published in advance does not run. The system refuses it. This is not a policy we might make an exception to — there is no route to a draw without one.
• If a draw has to be run again, the redraw gets its own fingerprint, published before it runs. Same rule, no shortcuts.

Every winner is a real person

Every winner's identity is checked before a prize is released.

The check is carried out by Didit. We never receive or store the identity document, the selfie, or the facial measurements — what comes back to us is a pass or a fail. Didit holds the underlying images for 30 days.

If a check fails, a person at Local Draws reviews it before any decision is made about the prize. No prize is withheld by an automated system on its own.

Your card and your data

Card details never touch Local Draws. Payments are taken by DNA Payments Limited.

You have to be 18 to hold an account. We take a date of birth at signup, and under-18s cannot create one.

The Privacy Policy covers what we hold, why, and for how long.

The prize is there either way

Some prizes we buy ourselves. Some come from a Prize Partner. Either way, delivering the prize is ours to do.

If for any reason a prize cannot be provided, the winner receives a substitute of equal or greater value.

And a prize is never left unclaimed. If a winner does not come forward, we draw again — and we keep drawing until the prize is claimed. There is no limit on that.

If you think something has gone wrong

Email hello@localdraws.com. We acknowledge complaints within 5 working days and give a full answer within 4 weeks.

If a complaint is about who won a draw, the prize is held until the complaint is resolved. We would rather hold a prize for a week than hand it over while a real question is still open.

The Draw Rules and Terms of Use are the documents that bind us. This page summarises them. Where the two differ, they are the ones that count.