Mail on Sunday publishes second apology for front page splash

In June, the Mail on Sunday's Richard Dyson and Martin Delgado carried out an investigation into the website Yipiii. The results were splashed on the front page:

The paper claimed that their reporters had spent £162 on the website and:

only won a £19.99 fish bowl. 

And:

The reporters did not use the free plays they were offered.

A week later, they admitted that wasn't true:

In our front-page report last week we said Mail on Sunday reporters had spent £162 on Yipiii plays but won only a £20 toy goldfish bowl.

In fact, one reporter used ‘free plays’ acquired during the experiment and went on to win an iPad worth up to £400.

And in a different experiment another journalist spent £40 and won £35 of flowers and a £101 iPod Nano.

We apologise to Yipiii for not mentioning these.

Also, we said customers can top up their accounts as often as they like. In fact, top-ups are limited to £200 per day. 

Yes - the paper 'forgot' to mention the £500-worth of Apple goods it had won on the site.

Today, they have apologised again:

In a report (June 10) on the ‘winmarket’ Yipiii Ltd, which offers a roulette game to win online shopping, we said we had 162 £1 plays but won only a £20 toy.

In fact, the 162 plays included ‘free spins’ won on previous plays and after our test, but before publication, a reporter won a £400 iPad with remaining credit. Players have an 85 per cent chance of a prize or further play and non-winning stakes can be used as discounts on purchases through the site.

Users need to actively log in for the roulette wheel to appear when they are shopping. We apologise to Yipiii for not including this information in the article.

Unlike the original 'investigation', neither apology has appeared on the front page. 

Mail on Sunday reporters forget they won a £400 iPad

Last week's Mail on Sunday led on an investigation into the website Yipiii:

They also devoted pages six and seven to it:

Yet on 29 May, another article on the Mail website - in the This Is Money section - had been rather positive about Yipiii. Simon Lambert's article began:

If you want to buy something why not play to win it for free first, especially if you can’t lose your stake?

That, in a nutshell, is the theory behind Yipiii, a new website, which offers an ingenious new twist on cashback and reward shopping.

Lambert gave quite a positive answer to a question posed in the headline: 'Is Yipiii a winner?'

Befitting its aim to inject some fun into internet shopping, Yipiii is bold, colourful and easy to use...

It’s true that this moneyback element does essentially make Yipiii risk-free, as any money put in you can get back out, and, in fact, thanks to free spins etc, you actually get back more than you put in...

You sense that if Yipiii could achieve critical mass it could prove to be genuinely revolutionary, as online shops will be extremely interested in signing up and offering good deals – certainly the calibre of partners so far is impressive.

The idea has legs, and so for the curious, it’s definitely worth a spin. Who knows maybe one day the concept will have spread far enough that you could fill the car up with petrol and then spin the wheel to see if you can drive away without paying a penny.

The Mail on Sunday's rather more critical article claimed - in the box at the bottom of page seven - that their reporters had spent £162 on the website and:

only won a £19.99 fish bowl. 

They also claimed:

The reporters did not use the free plays they were offered. 

Yet now, one week later, the Mail on Sunday has published a damning correction and apology:

In our front-page report last week we said Mail on Sunday reporters had spent £162 on Yipiii plays but won only a £20 toy goldfish bowl.

In fact, one reporter used ‘free plays’ acquired during the experiment and went on to win an iPad worth up to £400.

And in a different experiment another journalist spent £40 and won £35 of flowers and a £101 iPod Nano.

We apologise to Yipiii for not mentioning these.

Also, we said customers can top up their accounts as often as they like. In fact, top-ups are limited to £200 per day.

So having claimed they didn't use the free plays and only won a goldfish bowl toy, it emerges they did use the free plays and won an iPod Nano and an iPad - £556-worth of prizes, rather than £20.

The question is: why did the Mail on Sunday's reporters 'forget' to tell their readers that they won these other prizes?