Winner of OnePlus One in contest claims to have been ripped off

Easy come, easy go? One of our loyal readers had apparently won a free OnePlus One handset upon its launch this coming Wednesday. But mere days later, he was stripped of the prize. The story stars with a contest being run by OnePlus. The company was giving away an official mug to the person writing post number 50, and every 50th post after that. A free OnePlus One was promised to those writing posts 5,001, 10,000, and 50,000. And this is where our reader comes in.

Named Alvaro B., our loyal reader uses the handle JinRoh online. He was lucky enough to have published the 5001st post on the OnePlus forum (see the slideshow). This happened on April 16th. After winning the phone, Alvaro went and told every relative and friend about his lucky post and talking about the OnePlus One he had won. But then, something funny took place.

On Saturday morning, Alvaro checked the forum and found that his post had been renumbered 5072, meaning that he no longer was the winner of the phone. This happened because of a problem OnePlus had deciding who wrote the 50,000th post. So the company re-numbered all off the previous messages and added back deleted posts that they had removed previously. This also affected the winner of the phone who had authored post 10,000. The original winner of that OnePlus One has also lost his free handset.

Will OnePlus take the high road and give the promised handsets to the displaced posters? Stay tuned.


Thanks, Alvaro