Posted on 04/14/2025 1:16:36 PM PDT by Red Badger
As a child, I remember my grandparents, my parents, my aunts and uncles, and all their children too, spending countless hours licking stamp after stamp, just so they would have a chance to win Publishing Clearing House and have Ed McMahon personally deliver them a multi-million dollar prize.
And I can personally vouch for Publishing Clearing House being the real deal.
In 2015, my father had the prize patrol show up and hand him a giant check for $10,000. They gave him a smaller cashable version too, but he still has the big one in his closet, so he can drag it out and show it off when new people come to visit.
You have to admit, $10,000 is a heck of a paycheck for all those years of licking stamps.
But I guess saliva just isn't worth what it used to be. Publishing Clearing House has announced they are filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
The Chapter 11 proceedings, filed in New York on Wednesday, arrive amid growing financial strain for PCH — which has struggled with rising operational costs and changing consumer habits in recent years.
But, Chapter 11 bankruptcy doesn't spell the end for Publishing Clearing House. They plan on continuing to offer their sweepstakes.
They're just restructuring their debt, clearing some pesky bills off the plate so to speak: things like bank loans, landlords, and previous prize winners.
The company pays about $30,000 to prize winners each week, with approximately $1.8 million owed to recent prize winners. It also offers lifetime prizes, and it currently owes those prize winners about $26 million over the next 60 years, according to court documents.
In that light, I'm glad my dad got his $10 grand up front and didn't win one of those $5,000-per-week-for-life prizes.
Oh man, they havent delivered my check yet!
50 magazine subscriptions and still no win!..................
Well, crap! I guess I’m never going to be a winner with PCH./s
Ed McMahon is not available to comment.
They were inundating me with emails recently, which all got promptly deleted.
Then, about a week ago, they stopped.
They aren’t going away, just dumping all their debt, including past winners!................
“In that light, I’m glad my dad got his $10 grand up front and didn’t win one of those $5,000-per-week-for-life prizes.”
Dude flunked 1st grade math
Yeah, I saw that...............
sounds like any check you could receive, if you had entered and won, would bounce ...
Bit of an error here. Ed McMahon was the pitch man for American Family, another sweepstakes company and competitor with Publishers Clearinghouse.
I figured they finally determined I was never going to respond to their “UFGENT!” emails.
I hope so anyway. It had been going on for weeks.
“You may have already won…”
*URGENT
“They aren’t going away, just dumping all their debt, including past winners!................”
Source, please.
All you’ve got to do is pay a fee, maybe $2000. That’s a “delivery fee” or a “federal tax”. Something like that. You can pay in Bitcoin or with gift cards.
It’s a common scam. And it must pay off, because scammers keep on using it.
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