Lee and Kazzy’s most recent competition win led to a trip to Morocco and a hot air balloon ride
A couple say they have scooped up nearly £80,000 in prizes, including luxury holidays, by entering up to 50 competitions a day.
“My shopping list is things that have a competition,” said Kazzy Minton, 63, from Freshwater East, Pembrokeshire.
Since March 2021 she and her husband Lee, 56, have won 857 prizes – worth £77,000.
“It’s a hobby. I spend two hours a day doing my competitions, and then I get on with my life.”
Since 2021, their wins have included all-expenses-paid holidays to Colombia and Norway, a £6,000 trip to Wrexham AFC, a Euros weekend at an English manor house and a £4,000 diamond ring.
Image source, Nikolas Gogstad-Andersen / Visit Norway
Kazzy says “creative comping” won her a trip to Arctic Norway
Kazzy is a self-declared comper, defined as somebody who habitually enters competitions to win as many prizes as possible.
Her success, she said, was down to mostly avoiding free online competitions, which get a lot of players, and focusing instead on creative contests.
“They’re called effort competitions, where you have to actually do something, take a video or a photo, go shopping, all those require a bit more commitment,” she explained.
“That’s what I’m good at, taking a nice photo, editing a little video or buying something.”
One of the couple’s most recent wins came after Kazzy spotted a competition run by the confectionery maker Swizzels, asking entrants to show how much of a fan they were.
Image source, Mark Waugh / Swizzels-Matlow
Lee tattooed Swizzels on his knee to win a £1,000 prize and tour of the confectionary maker’s factory in Derbyshire
She asked Lee to “think about” ideas for her entry. Instead, he came home from his job as a tattoo artist with the company’s name tattooed on his knee.
“I was expecting him to have a think at work, not an ink at work, but he never ceases to surprise me,” said Kazzy.
Lee’s entry won the couple £1,000, which they spent on a trip to Morocco, plus a year’s supply of confectionary and a VIP tour of the company’s plant in Derbyshire.
Last year they also won a trip for two to a private island off Colombia after a photograph of Lee doing a painting next to a can of beer took top prize in a beer company competition.
Image source, Kazzy Minton
Kazzy and Lee won an all expenses paid trip to an exclusive resort off Columbia’s Caribbean coast
Kazzy also spent a week in Arctic Norway last June after an essay and video about why she wanted to experience 24-hours of sunlight won a competition run by Visit Norway.
“I didn’t really know what was going on with that,” Kazzy said.
“I arrived in Oslo all on my own thinking, ‘Oh, my god what have I done?'”
How do you become a comper?
Kazzy lost her two-year-old daughter Abigail to cancer at Easter in 1996.
“The only flower she knew the name of was daffodils. So I’ve always collected things with daffodils on,” Kazzy said.
Kazzy’s younger sister Nicola spotted a promotion by a jewellery company for St David’s Day, with prizes that included daffodil jewellery.
Despite never entering a competition before, Kazzy scooped the top prize of daffodil earrings, later writing to the promoter to say she felt she was “meant to win”.
A couple of months later, she won an Xbox in a crisps company’s promotion.
“I just thought, ‘this is really easy’,” she recalled, explaining how her search for new competitions to enter led her to the comper community online.
One of Kazzy’s heroes is Di Coke, who goes by the comper name of Super Lucky Di.
Image source, Kazzy Minton
Kazzy recently met her comper hero Super Lucky Di in Bridgend
“She is an amazing woman with a massive Facebook group with all the latest competitions,” she said.
The pair recently met in Bridgend for a “good natter” about their shared hobby.
“We went quallie shopping together,” she said, explaining how a quallie is the promotional product you must buy to be able to enter.
Other comper lingo includes TTW (text to win), NPN (no purchase necessary), and PN (purchase necessary) contests.
“I’m a purchase necessary or creative comper,” said Kazzy.
And that means one thing for her weekly shop.
“If I’m gonna buy biscuits then why not buy a packet that gives me a chance of winning something,” she said.
“If I don’t win, we haven’t lost anything because we’ve had the packet of biscuits.”
‘We’re not all on the dole’
Kazzy said compers can be stereotyped as spending all their time on the hobby.
“We’re not all on the dole,” she said. “I’m a really hard working, busy woman.”
She and Lee run three businesses, including his tattoo parlour and her sewing shop in Pembroke. She also works as an independent social worker and is doing a PhD on play in hospital settings.
But from 06:30 until 08:30 each morning, Kazzy said it was all about her competitions.
“It’s a sense of community,” Kazzy said of her online comper friends.
“Everybody shares competitions willingly and with absolute joy for people in our group who win.”
