TV phone-in scams

[Admin]

Last night, Panorama exposed some of the dirty secrets behind TV phone-in competitions. GMTV got the brunt of it but it seems that certain practices are common to all phone-ins.

Here are some of the tricks used to fool the public:

Picking winners before the lines had closed.

I'm not sure what they gain from doing this (less time consuming perhaps) but what has been happening is that the companies who run these competitions for the TV producers are choosing the winners from the callers well before the phone lines have been closed. This means that a lot of people who are phoning in to enter competitions actually have zero chance of winning. It's equivalent to selling raffle tickets to people after the raffle has already been drawn.

Displaying competition numbers in repeat programmes.

The Blue Peter fiasco was mentioned here. It seems their faux pas in selecting a winner when their phone system went down was a knee-jerk response and not entirely unjustified. But, when the programme was repeated later on, the competition lines were displayed again (even though the prize had already been awarded) and a further 3,500 children phoned in to enter.

Pretending to be broadcasting live.

The example given was from Saturday Morning Kitchen (or similar). People were encouraged to phone in to 'interact' and make choices for guest Eamon Holmes. This was broadcast as if it was live and that the phone-in was in real time. However, one astute viewer realised that Eamon Holmes was (supposedly) simultaneously broadcasting live on BBC TV and presenting a show on Radio 5 Live.

The TV programme was not live and the phone calls made obviously had no bearing on matters at all. Pure, deliberate deception.

Pretending the lines aren't busy.

This ploy is used by the late night phone-in quizzes. They often have thousands of callers (yes really!!) at a time on the phones but they present the quiz as if there's no-one phoning in. This gives viewers the impression that if they call they will have a good chance of getting through. Of course, again, it's pure and deliberate deception.

Customers are billed even though they don't get through.

Several people explained how they didn't realise that all you have to do to get billed the £1.00 entry fee is simply to dial the competition phone number. Some people thought they couldn't get through and so kept on trying only to discover later that they had been billed £1.00 for every attempt.

Faking winners.

I can't remember the specific example, but it was revealed that sometimes the people running these quizzes arrange it so that the winner is one of the employees of the company. This way they rake in the cash but don't have to give out the prize.

What was particularly disturbing about the whole phone-in con was the attitude of the perpetrators. Those of us who have studied the anatomy of scams know that the con-artists who rip people off actually view their victims with contempt - i.e. if they're stupid enough to be scammed then they deserve everything the get.

The people behind these phone-ins displayed the same sort of attitude. If people are stupid enough to pay £1.00 a time to enter competitions that they have no hope of winning, then that's their look out.

Bloody disgusting. >:(

The likes of GMTV have tried to distance themselves from this by claiming that it was the companies who were doing the competitions for them that are to blame and not themselves. Well, if a company employs another company to do work for them then they are still responsible. If they didn't know about these dodgy practises (something I find quite hard to believe) then why not? This rip-off has been going on for years now and this isn't the first time that 'irregularities' have been highlighted.

Let's wait and see what happens. I think that the TV companies and the companies working for them should be prosecuted for willingly perpetrating a fraud. I suspect, however, that an 'investigation' will be done so that 'lessons can be learned' so that 'this never happens again'. Until next time of course.

[Cuddles]

I watched this as well. It's fairly shocking that they thought they could get away with this, but as I mentioned in another thread, it's always fairly shocking that people are stupid enough to fall for some of it. They make such a fuss about someone spending £800 in one night, but what they fail to point out is that this is because someone is stupid enough to phone up a premium rate number 800 times in one night. Yes, much of what they have done is wrong, but if people are that desperate to throw their money away they're going to lose it somehow. Rather than make a big fuss about blaming whoever it is this time that takes money from people, whether legally or not, I think there needs to be more emphasis on why people are willing to throw their money away in the first place.

Picking winners before the lines had closed.

As you say, this was just odd. It's a clear case of fraud, yet there doesn't seem to be any advantage to anyone from actually doing it.

Displaying competition numbers in repeat programmes.

I think this was probably just a mistake that had the unfortunate timing of coming straight after another mistake. Programs with competitions are often repeated and usually someone flashes up a message saying the competition is now closed. It seems far more likely that it was a simple oversight rather than a case of deliberate fraud. If it hadn't been for the other problem in the program I doubt this would have even been noticed.

Pretending to be broadcasting live.

Again, this is clearly fraud. I've had doubts about most programs that claim to be live, but most of the time I figure that it isn't hurting anyone even if they are just pretending. However, encouraging people to give you money when you know they can't get anything out of it is just wrong.

Pretending the lines aren't busy.

I have to say I see nothing wrong with this at all. It's just standard sales banter, and the same sort of thing is used by virtually every person trying to sell something. It's no different from a car salesman saying there are other people interested in a car. It may be misleading, but if you're going to complain about TV shows doing it then you have to complain about every single salesman in the country doing it.

Customers are billed even though they don't get through.

I'm not sure about this one, it depends on exactly what happened but they didn't give enough details. Phone calls are charged for connection. Whether you get through to a person or an answering machine, if your call is connected then you are charged for it. This is true for personal numbers just as much as premium rate lines. If people were being billed just for letting the phone ring then that is wrong. However, it seems far more likely that they were being billed for reaching a machine that either put them on hold or just told them to phone back later. If people didn't understand that it is entirely their own fault and not that of the TV shows. If this is considered unfair then we need to change the way the phone system works, complaining about people who just use the system will achieve nothing.

Faking winners.

If this is true, then it is wrong. However, this is the one accusation that Panorama provided no evidence for (aside from the Blue Peter case). All they had was someone who used to work there claiming that he had seen people do it. If this is true then the people involved need to be punished, but without any actual evidence we really can't complain about it.

[Lister]

I watched this as well. It's fairly shocking that they
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I'm not sure about this one, it depends on exactly what happened but they didn't give enough details. Phone calls are charged for connection. Whether you get through to a person or an answering machine, if your call is connected then you are charged for it. This is true for personal numbers just as much as premium rate lines. If people were being billed just for letting the phone ring then that is wrong. However, it seems far more likely that they were being billed for reaching a machine that either put them on hold or just told them to phone back later. If people didn't understand that it is entirely their own fault and not that of the TV shows. If this is considered unfair then we need to change the way the phone system works, complaining about people who just use the system will achieve nothing.

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True, but it depends on what the answering device does. Something that is sometimes done is that the answering machine instead of playing a recorded message just simulates a continued ringing tone or even a busy tone. That can be done purposely to encourage the person to call again and again. The sounds are telling the caller that the phone is busy or just not being answered, but in reality each and evry call is a successful call (from the phone system's point of view) and is being charged.

A similar (but not deliberate) thing happens with automatic phone/fax switches. These allow you to use a phone line both for calls as well as for faxes (and is often built in to the fax machine itself). What these do is answer the phone after two or three rings. They then simulate a ringing tone while at the same time the machine listens for the start tone of a fax machine at the other end. If it does not pick up the tone it is assumed that it is a normal phone call and keeps the line open until someone answers the phone.

[tkingdoll]

Picking winners before the lines had closed.

I'm not sure what they gain from doing this (less time consuming perhaps) but what has been happening is that the companies who run these competitions for the TV producers are choosing the winners from the callers well before the phone lines have been closed. This means that a lot of people who are phoning in to enter competitions actually have zero chance of winning. It's equivalent to selling raffle tickets to people after the raffle has already been drawn.

There is a clear advantage to this approach - you can make more money in the same amount of time.

Consider the following scenario: The phone line opens at 10am. You need a clear 30 minutes after picking the winner for the call-back, the setting up of the live call if the winner is to be on air, getting a standby in place, setting up the graphic with the winner's name on it, etc. In other words you have to be sure everything is OK with that winner.

So you can publicly close the phone line 30 minutes before the winner is announced...or you can pick the winner, then get another 25 minutes of call revenue in while you do the admin. Then you announce the lines are closed and 5 mins later announce your winner.

In cases where the winner is announced the next day, there's no benefit though.

I hope there are some prosecutions for fraud, but really it's no different to the faking of TV shows by the BBC (as you pay a licence fee). And faking stuff is the rule, not the exception, sadly.

And yes, that does go for science shows too. It's a sorry state of affairs.

[td17_uk]

i have to agree with most of the complaints they are fraud nothing more nothing less but the whole premium phone line thing is nobodies fault except the people that call them.

i watched one of these channels the other night, they are now required to show the number of calls they are taking, it varies as to the programme they show calls per minete, 15 minetes etc etc. the one i watched had 13,000 yes thats right i said 13,000 calls in fifteen minetes but took only 3 calls in the studio now come on you'd have to be totally stupid to even consider calling a line that takes your money but only puts one call though every 4333 calls, if you cant work that out for yourself you should even have access to a telephone or any other item you may hurt yourself with LOL