Pet Owners Seek Justice From VMP

We, the undersigned owners of the cats and dogs who participated in the Bayer-Advocate ‘VOTEMYPET’ competition between 22nd June and 30th September 2009 endorse the statements in the Preamble regarding the management of the said competition and the list of demands in the Petition:

We expected that:

1. the competition rules would remain completely consistent throughout the competition; but some of the rules were changed during the competition and this had contradictory and negative effects on participants’ efforts and their interpretation of the efforts of others; further, competitors received contradictory answers to the same questions and this caused upset amongst the competitors and had the effect of some accusing others of ‘cheating’ due to lack of consistent interpretation of rules by the organizers;

2. competitors would receive full respect and due consideration of the questions and issues that would be raised during the competition; but many of these went unanswered or were inadequately answered;

3. the organizers would moderate inappropriate behavior that might occur during the competition and act swiftly and consistently to eliminate or at least minimize said behaviours, and that they would act strongly to intervene against extreme and threatening behaviours that might occur during the competition and that they would have the foresight and intention to do so from the outset; but we experienced inconsistent and weak action from the organizers and regard this as a failure of the Duty of Care onus of the organizers and the corporation on whose behalf they ran the competition;

4. the organizers would pay due and continual attention to the campaign content of at least the Top 20 dogs and cats in each State and Territory so that a full and insightful picture of the competitors who reached the finals would be available to the judges when the time arose, and that they would articulate and apply a clear and plausible set of criteria by which the pets would be assessed to enable the competitors to address these criteria in an unambiguous manner during the competition; but it manifested that the leading pets were not assessed in the ‘fine tooth comb’ manner claimed by the organizers and the deemed ‘criteria’ for judging the winners were weakly and erratically stated and ultimately held no credibility;

5. the organizers would address the finalists after the winners had been chosen in a manner which both recognized their campaign and its intrinsic contribution value and as such acknowledge them in this regard; but the finalists were treated extremely badly by the organizers after the end of the competition in terms of being barely acknowledged, referred to in ways that did not apply to them at all or were wide off the mark of what an insightful judging situation should have been able to find, and finally insulted by the manner of dispensing and content of the finalist ‘prize pack’;

6. The organizers would give credit to the winners of the Electorates in order to encourage the goal of winning an Electorate and to give a reason for the Electorates being there in the first place; but Electorate winners have been completely ignored;

7. The organizers would communicate with all pet owners at the end of the competition in a manner which acknowledged the effort, loyalty, emotion and sheer ingenuity which all active participants were able to demonstrate, but this has been completely overlooked and additionally, participants who have raised multiple issues since the end of the competition have been treated with disdain.