Posted by First of all, it must be said that I’m not linked to Publishers Clearing House anyhow and this is completely an independent review. Here’s the question I’m going to answer: Is the Publishers Clearing House a scam or this company can convince you to use its services?
You have probably heard about PCH when you wanted to subscribe to a new online magazine or when you were looking for a way to have a side-income. The same as all my past reviews, I’ve tried to be as honest as possible in my review and see both the pros and cons of PCH without any prejudice.
Also, In addition to answering the above question as well as giving a summary of the background of PCH, I’ll explain how this company could get the attention of many people in a short time and I’ll answer an important question which many persons like you may have in mind when it comes to trying a new online service.
Summary
Product Name: Publishers Clearing House
Official Website: https://www.pch.com
Owner: Robin B. Smith
Type: Direct Marketing Company
Cost to Join: Depends on your odds
Recommended? No
Overall Rating: 4.5 out of 10
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What Is Publishers Clearing House All About?
I think using “direct marketing” is the best definition for PCH company. This company has an old brand and was found more than 50 years ago in New York with the aim of providing magazine subscriptions with prize-based games.
With the help of wife and daughter of the owner of the company, Robin B. Smith could start it in Mertz’s basement. At the first, they only offered less 30 magazine subscriptions but they could expand the business shortly and started to offer more subscriptions and hire people for different positions.
How Publishers Clearing House Works?
Let’s take a look at the mission statement of the company first. According to what it’s written in PCH website, offering winning opportunities for games and other relevant events is the aim of PCH. The company says, they are happy when they have satisfied members and that’s why they try to do their best to give members these winning opportunities as much as possible.
How Publishers Clearing House Makes Profit?
If PCH shares all these winning situations with members, how they could make a balance between money that they give away to people with their expenses.
Well, we are talking about the big numbers here. Taking a short look at the revenue report of this private company shows that only in 2012, they’ve made +$700 million in revenue from direct selling on their website pch.com. This revenue has been coming from different sources but mostly focused on selling flower bulbs, Jewelry, Books and CDs and the most important, magazine subscriptions.
Well, this big amount of revenue is not surprising for a company with half a century of experience in offering magazine subscriptions. By taking a look at 1990, you’ll find out that only in those years, PCH sold +$7.5 million magazine subscriptions and the commission it’s got from the publishers started from 70% and went up to 90% at that time.
Although it seems that PCH has changed its strategy recently so I can’t confirm that they’re still getting that much commission. Now this company decided to use social media channels more than before and attract new clients by lottery games or online coupons.
It’s clear that even a single new member is profitable for PCH because it lets them to make more money by displaying ads to members or send them promotional emails so more members is equal to more money. Of course it’s not easy to win one of their lottery games and your winning chance is less 1% in most cases.
Some people believe that sweepstakes of PCH are trusted by many of Americans and one of the reasons for this trustworthy is that this company is up there for +40 years.
During the past 40 years, Sweepstakes a significant number of people have been attracted to online entertainment by PCH and it’s turned into a source of entertainment for many people.
You may be curious to know how much PCH has been paid as prizes. During all these years it’s paid +$200 million and this amount is growing month after the month.
One of the most common ways to get rewards by PCH is using its online surveys. Many local and international companies contact PCH to use get information from their audience (you and me) and these companies use our feedback and opinion to solve problems of their services and products and improve them better a shorter time.
Semi-legit Company?
I’ve reviewed both legit and scam programs like DaDaABC, MindValley and Parallel Profits and I bet that this is not the first time you have landed on a website that offers prizes like vacations or car but have you ever think about your winning odds? Also, there is some bad news about PCH.
For example, according to Fox News; some times ago a man who was thinking that he won a prize of $650k in PCH, has been scammed at the end. He received an official letter from this company which said that he’s the lucky winner of $650.000 but he needs to pay $1.200 for bank transfer and taxes and of course he didn’t get anything after he paid that $+1000.
Or in another case, another woman claimed that PCH sends daily annoying emails to encourage her to buy lottery tokens from this company. She ignored these emails but they continue to send these messages from different sender’s addresses!
Finally, she decided to get these tokens and she collected more than 200 millions of these tokens in only one year but she didn’t win anything and she believes that there is no winner for this game except than the PCH.
The woman said that it was not possible to redeem taken tokens and there’s not any logical reason why she could not do it. She labeled PCH as a scam and it does not worth your time to try it.
Will You Compete with Human or a Computer?!
Some strange things happen when you start playing in PCH. For example, when I wanted to play Keno, there were only 3 cards available and when I contacted support, instead of solving the issue and giving me an answer, they requested me to fill out a survey before going to the next step.
Also, the points of IDs I see as my competitors (which should be real people) are very close to me and in the middle of the game, their points doubled suddenly and I never can win the game.
I have serious doubt that they’re not human and it’s a machine (robot) that handle this game and actually you’re playing with a computer, not a human which is totally unfair and it’s clear that you never win a game which is against a computer.
Another dark side of PCH is pushing you to purchase low-quality items. For instance, when you sing up with PCH, you will see that unless you decide to purchase an item from PCH, not all sweepstakes are available to you.
One of my friends bought one of their items for $7 to be able to get more sweepstakes and increase his chance of winning the lottery but he told me that the quality of the purchased product was awful and it didn’t worth even $1!
How to Join Publishers Clearing House?
Although it’s the 21 century now but you still can join PCH through traditional ways like telephone or mail. If you prefer to contact them by mail, you need to send a mail to their address (101 Winners Circle Jericho, NY 11753) and response to the mail they’ll send to you.
Of course, using traditional ways take more time and that’s why i always recommend you to go with online options first. They have a website which let you complete the sign-up process online. By visiting the official website PCH.com and filling out an online form, you can become a member of publishers clearing house.
Do I Recommend PCH?
It’s hard to give a direct Yes or No answer to this question because there are both good and bad things about PCH. The good side is that it’s a kind of risk-free lottery since you don’t need to pay anything to join the game and if you win one of their prizes, your personal and financial life will be completely changed. The prizes of PCH are like the dreams most people are living with but you know well that not all dreams come to true.
Although odds of winning one of their million dollars prizes is extremely low but keep in mind that in addition to those eye-catching giveaways, you have a chance to win some other prizes that have much better odds.
You can collect tokens and get the chance of winning prizes by playing games or completing surveys in PCH and the dashboard of PCH updates every 5 or 10 minutes so you have chance to win something every 10 minutes.
On the other hand, getting annoying promotional emails and taking a long time for the sign-up process (even if you do it online) are downsides of the PCH. You have less than 1% to win one of the prizes and it’s up to you to decide if it worths to give away your contact info to different marketing companies or not.
Also, you need to mark them as spam one after another or take time to unsubscribe from them one by one. This is not an easy task if you don’t have a lot of free time druing the day.
Final Word – Is Publishers Clearing House a Scam?
Ok, it’s time to answer this important question about the legitimacy of Publishers Clearing House. Well, the first thing you should know is that PCH focused on direct marketing and it’s a real company which is established in the New York City so there’s no doubt that this company exists.
There are different ways to take advantage of PCH from subscribing to magazines to subsidizes cash giveaways and I don’t think that an old company which is founded in 1953 can scam people and even if it wanted to do this, it could not stay alive for such that long time.
It does not really matter that if you believe in prizes of PCH or not, the truth is that they offer you magazine subscriptions and want you to believe that your adds of winning million dollars prizes will be increased significantly if you subscribe to one of their offered magazines.
All in all, I would not call Publishers Clearing House a scam and although I’m not telling that it’s a 100% valuable opportunity but if you can accept the downsides of this company that I’ve mentioned above, you can feel free to give it a try.
Conclusion
I still hear that people win some of the PCH prizes over and there; the last one I’ve heard was PCH gave one of its $5.000 prizes to a woman from Pennsylvania but this woman was just one of the thousands of people who got sweepstakes in the hope of winning those eye-catching prizes and it’s very clear that only one of the thousands of people win this prize and many others just feel disappointing after trying their chance.
Some financial experts warned that PCH has a get-rich-quick scheme and their “You May Be the Next Winner” ads can be kind of deceptive. You can try your chance as much as you like but keep in mind that continuing this lottery games can be addictive and even if it’s free, you may waste a lot of time and energy behind it and don’t win anything at the end so maybe it’s better to invest your time on something more valuable which can bring you result after a specific amount of time.
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