Chasing the 3G Guy

This will probably sound like a case of sour grapes (and it probably is a bit), but I think there's probably some opportunities for lessons to be learnt here.

As those in New Zealand know, our Vodafone is running a competition in which three Dell Inspiron Mini 9 Netbooks can be won daily for five days. In order to win a netbook, the basic premise of the competition is to find the 3G Guy based on clues he gives out online. Today, the 3G Guy was in Wellington so I thought I'd have go.

Around 9am, the first clue went up...

Clue #1: I am not going to see the son or the holy ghost . . . #find3gguy

After a few minutes pondering, I worked out that this was Te Papa (Museum of New Zealand) and promptly headed down there. I got down there just after 9.15 and had a good look around for him. As I couldn't find him there, I checked (about 9.30) to see if there was another clue. I was a bit surprised when I saw this...

We have a winner! Nik collared me en route to the te papa museum...nice one!

It turns out that the winner had grabbed the 3G Guy up around Manners Street. This immediately pissed me right off as I'd been at the location for about 15 minutes and the 3G Guy had posted the clue to his "location" from over three blocks away.  In addition, he had been grabbed nowhere near the location where he was meant to be.

I eventually calmed down and waited for the next location search.  A few hours later, the next clue was up...

12pm clue #1 - This guy is a made man

This wasn't obvious and I did a little running around, but was unable to locate him. To cut a long story short, the winner found the 3G Guy by a restaurant on a "man-made beach". What this beach had to do with the clue doesn't appear to be that obvious, but I accepted this as a fair loss.

The final competition of the day was to locate the 3G Guy using a Google Map on the Vodafone website based on clues as before. Here are the clues and my associated thoughts...

6pm online draw: clue#1 Probably gonna smoke a cigar here

Matterhorn Bar - a noted cigar bar in Wellington

Clue #2: NZ's notorious for having a lot of these

New Zealand has a bit of fame for its bars.

Clue#3 A farmer could probably use one of those

Umm, perhaps there's a farmer's tool called a matterhorn?

Clue #4: There's lots of these a farmer could use here . . . or a window cleaner

Uh, is he meaning the bucket fountain? Although that's within spitting distance of the Matterhorn, it's clearly a different location for the first clue.

Final Clue: Elijah wood URINATED into that?! Mr Baggins!

He does mean the bucket fountain! WTF? He's hinted at two different locations!  It turns out the location was the bucket fountain in the end.  I wouldn't mind this, but the first clues say one location (to me) and the remaining clues say another.

I don't know what's happened in the other cities in the competition, but this seems to me to have been run pretty poorly in Wellington.  The second location was a fair win and I can accept the third, but the first was just poor form.  It's not just that I was directly affected - I would be just as indignant if it happened to someone else.  If you set up a competition with a specific method to win, you can't just play fancy-free with your own rules.

Poor form Vodafone.