Nestle and Kitkat mess up the contest again...two participants are denied their just and legal prize

The Google Nexus KitKat contest which started in India in September 2013, has still not been brought to its logical conclusion. Many Winners are yet to receive their Google Nexus 7 2013 as promised by Nestle Kitkat.  

It has been a extremely controversial contest right from the start, with its organisers facing a lot of complaints and to an extent even online campaign from winners who are extremely unhappy with the way the contest has been organized by Nestle India, Google and managed by  GroupM Media, Gurgaon.

As the readers must be knowing, Nestle in assistance with a organising agency called GroupM had organised a campaign to coincide with the launch of Android 4.4 KITKAT in India.

Now Nestle India and the KitKat winners team are gearing for another battle, where two winners of the competition, Mr. Parimal Sen and Mr. Mayur Patil’s contention and claim have been rejected after waiting for their prizes for nearly more than four months. When contacted, Nestle have said that “According to the  Terms and Conditions the wrapper of the winning KitKat bar must be included along with the documents sent by winners”.  Nestle allegedly say the wrappers are missing for these two winners and hence has cancelled the claims of the above two contestants. 

But according to Parimal and Mayur, they had sent the winning wrapper along with the documents as directed by Nestle in their Terms & Conditions, which have reached the Nestle /GroupM office as seen in Courier details below.

Mayur had a discussion with the Nestle customer care Exec and here is a Youtube video giving the audio transcript of the conversation which occurred.

Despite of the fact that both the contestants have proof of their respective packages reaching Nestle/GroupM, the organizers claim that they have not received the same and have been asking both these winners to send to all over documents again. This shows a lot of inconsistency on part of the organisers including the top Kitkat hierarchy, where at one end the winners are producing Courier Tracking proofs showing the documents have been delivered and at the other, the organizers,  Nestle/GroupM is allegedly not received their packages.   Rather than solving this problem amicably, the organizers, who have already faced a lot of heat on account of discrimination against Indians are persisting with their stand, thereby resulting in both Parimal and Mayur not getting their genuine prizes.

Both the winners also said Nestle made them wait for more than four months before informing them about the above package problems.  It seems that the organizers deliberately dragged the issue to such an end that they were sure other winners would have received their own Google Nexus 7 2013 and lost interest about the contest.  Nestle/GroupM informed both Parimal/Mayur only on 6th Feb of their alleged non receipt of packages, a whole 4 months after the contested was concluded,  A long wait as this for any contest winner can be frustrating,  especially when you come to know that you are disqualified only at the end.

Such a controversy is not the first to hit Nestle India during the Contest. Neslte India were previously giving winners a year older version of the Nexus 7, after winners came together and protested and the incident being reported by various Top blog sites including comboupdates, Android Police, Phandroid. Nestle took cognisance of the huge uproar this created and backtracked on its decision and decided that Indians would indeed be getting the latest version of the Google Nexus 7 like the winners in other parts of the world.

Another inconsistency noted is the very poor communication or sometime lack of it on behalf of the organizers.  Also the use of English language in the communication has been very horrible with emails coming from a not so professional id ‘nestlekitkat1@gmail.com’. See this for example:

The Facebook group created by the Google Nexus 7 2013 winners to fight against the discrimination pointed out above, is again up in arms for their comrades.  Comboupdates sincerely hopes that Nestle/Kitkat would heed to the requests of the two winners and despatch their prizes to them immediately.  It would be a great sorrow if Nestle were to disqualify these two by hiding behind the excuse of some stupid mistake on part of the desk clerk sitting at Despatch of Group M.