The PR's dealing with have sent me a email in response to my blog post which I want to share with anyone who has entered the .
"We were incredibly excited about opening our modelling books up to a younger age group and to give Next customers the chance to choose the babies that they wanted to see modelling for Next. However as the competition has progressed it is undeniable that we have received a massive response but also faced some problems. We wanted to take this opportunity to let you know exactly what we are doing to address these issues:
1. Some entrants have reported receiving shockingly offensive messages via Private Message from other Facebook users. We cannot tolerate this type of behaviour and want to obliterate cyber bullying from our community. Where we find reports of this activity we are Private Messaging the entrant who reported each incident to ask for full information so that we offer legal support from Next to put a stop to this behaviour.
2. Several entrants have had their competition entries wrongly rejected by misinformed moderators and this caused huge upset to these entrants. We have issued a public apology to those concerned and the moderators responsible for this action are no longer employed by Next
3. We have received messages from parents who do not agree with the public voting system and would like us to choose our finalists. Although the public vote will decide the Top 24 babies (12 from each category) who’ll be invited to our photo-finish-final in early December, it will be a panel of judges from Next, Prima, Baby Expert and Urban Angels who decide the overall winners."