Itv make 20 Millions for calls to Quiz shows

Zinger549

Read in the papare today that ITv Make 20 million for calls to ITv Play and the Mint.:mad: But the good new is that they are restricting the amount of times you can call to 150 a night :mad:

trisontana

Was it this article? :-
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=412735&in_page_id=2&ito=1565

As you can see these quiz shows might face some curbs on their activities.

anewman

Zinger549 wrote:

But the good new is that they are restricting the amount of times you can call to 150 a night

When is that good? That's £90 a night. (Edit - just noticed you put an angry face after so I presume you mean what I just said here.)

Basically when you phone, thousands of other people are calling at the same time. All they have to do is pay someone to talk a load of BS on the screen for minutes on end and then accept one of the possibly around a million or more calls that they select one from. Basically you have no chance of getting through.

They make money from the calls hence the people on the TV encouraging you to call and redial etc.

I have noticed they also use dirty tricks to make you think it is really easy to get through. These include asking the called if they have called before (surprise surprise they usually have not and this is the first time they called and they got through - they will do this with caller line ID). The other thing they do is let the same person through again to make it look like it is easy to get through again and again, when it is not at all.

My advice to everyone is... If you enjoy watching these programs, feel free to watch them but DO NOT waste any money at all calling them.

Astaroth

Seems like they are in a no win situation then... either new callers get through or repeat callers and both show it is easy to get through? I dont know the shows in question to comment on what claims they make on the show or what goes on behind the scenes but I would imagine that it is much more likely to either be random or a simple "who will make the best entertainment" that selects the callers rather than a caller ID logging and number of times called logic based selection criteria.

TV shows, just in case anyone forgot, are made to make the company profit and not to ultimately to keep bored families entertained or make the audience richer. Short of potentially having to be required to pay a proportion of their earnings to gambling addiction services (similar to casinos etc) I dont see why their activities need to be curbed.

anewman

Astaroth wrote:

Short of potentially having to be required to pay a proportion of their earnings to gambling addiction services (similar to casinos etc) I dont see why their activities need to be curbed.

I understand what you mean. However, I myself *STRONGLY* believe that their activities *DO* need to be curtailed. While it is the choice of a person to call up, and they should realise the cost this adds to their phone bill, they are rather misleading in what they say. If they said "ok we have this competition, call in if you like, I can't be bothered, you don't have a chance in hell of getting through and winning a prize but you can try anyway" then I wouldn't be bothered but they say quite the opposite again and again.

I personally do not believe the selection is in any way random. As I said before I believe there is some intentionality to it in an attempt to deceive viewers into believing it is easier than it really is. As I say, the presenters have things in their ears and they do say "is this the first time you called?" invariably the caller will answer "yes". They do not ask this question all the time and the fact they usually get the answer yes when they ask suggests to me they *know* they have a first time caller. This will be done by CLID as I believe callers are just put on hold and straight through to the studio (hence all the people with their TV's left on and the echo effects that produces). They will *ALWAYS* make a big thing about someone getting through first time. They also *ALWAYS* make a big thing about someone getting through more than once in one night, and I remember once on Quizmania they were trying to make it out like a caller who got through again and again was just making money out of them and living the high life off them. It is simply to try and convince people to call as each time someone makes a call they make money. It's deception plain and simple.

To have the same person get through more than once is unbelievable when you can imagine one person calling repeatedly running up a bill running to hundreds of pounds in one night statistically has little chance of getting through. There will possibly be people out there who have bills of maybe thousands who never once got through. Yes these people have a problem but intentional deception delivered directly into people's living rooms across the country doesn't help.

Of course those with the biggest problems will simply have their phones cut off and have their bill debts handed on to debt collection agencies. Hence preventing them from calling again. Because of this you will always see apparent "concessions" from ITV - but it is only usually in their interest. The max 150 calls a night is in their interest. If they can prevent people going bonkers and getting their phones cut off, they will call more and make them more money in the future. Also it will give them a few minutes to ramble on about how people can't call in as much and people should call in now as they have a better chance.

But as Astaroth correctly states, as much as they ramble on and like you to think they are giving away free money, They are not!

Astaroth

But you could say exactly the same about the national lottery - their advertisement is clearly stating how easy it is to win and not only that but their show is on the BBC (in theory not for profit company) which gives it much more credence as clearly the BBC wouldnt support anything that isnt honest and in the best interest for the masses.

As I say, I dont know how their system works so cannot say for certain one way or another but I know how much of a pain the !!!! the Gambling Commission was when my current and previous employers have wanted to do a simple prize draw type competition so I would imagine that they have an even closer eye on entities where the competitions/ gambling is the main basis of the operations.

Having never watched these programmes (or called one for that matter) I have no idea how frequently people get through more than once but with anything there is luck involved and often tricks to increase your chances. I know with one concert that I wanted to go to which inevitably sold out within hours of tickets going on sale and hundreds of thousands of people not being able to get through I "accidently" programmed the orderline into our power dialling system for our outbound telesales system for a previous employer. Needless to say with a system that is able to dial a number over 5000 times a minute it didnt take long for it to get through (it could tell the difference between engaged/ recorded messages and "real people") - unfortunately I got through another 20 times or so before I worked out how to turn it off Obviously doubt many if any have this sort of toy to play with but just to illustrate that there are methods if people really want.

If it was truely a "keep them on the phone" tactic I would imagine the limits would be a lot lower (depending on how much the calls cost and the frequency of the competition). I did look at some of the programms on sky earlier and saw they charged £1 to call them and as far as I can see it is all the channel shows so even if they limited it to 150 calls a day I doubt many could realistically afford £4,500 a month in phone calls.

jellycat40

Just to say that I spent £15 trying to get through to Deal or No Deal. i did not even get a successful call to leave my details. I was just convinced on that day that I would. Don't know why. In the end common sense won and I gave up but still had to explain to OH what the £15 was!!!!

Louise

Midmac

jellycat40 wrote:

Just to say that I spent £15 trying to get through to Deal or No Deal. i did not even get a successful call to leave my details. I was just convinced on that day that I would. Don't know why. In the end common sense won and I gave up but still had to explain to OH what the £15 was!!!!

Louise

You can enter on the Deal or no deal website for free, and according to them it has exactly the same odds of getting through as those on the phone lines.

I used to do it everyday and got shortlisted a few times, but no winnings

anewman

You can use the web entry and there are some form filler add-ins for browsers like firefox which let you automatically fill in all of the form details except the verification code. Also there is some cases when you can simply hit submit again (cannot remember what indicated you could do this - trial and error I guess.)

After spending a few nights of repeatedly entering online, and my phone ringing a few times and being told I am unlucky and to try again, I stopped wasting my time.

Also remember some of the people calling will be poorish and unable to afford the internet, but for some reason will be able to afford the 60p's in the hope they'll get £20k at the end of it.

After entering a good few hundred times online (which on the phone would have cost quite a bit) and never getting through, I cannot imagine anyone can. Either way the web entry is just a ruise to try convince people they are not being ripped off. They always tell you to call. The presenters will never say "I'll give you a hint, do not phone, save your money and enter online."

Skiduck

I find ITV Play and The Mint dreadful television, it's very lazy broadcasting on behalf of ITV and should at be confined to ITV 3 or 4. You only have to look at friday and saturday nights on the standard channels to find that, most of the time, the TV is stale and repetative - who wants to watch REPEATS of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

I prefer a good dvd or making babies now

C_Ronaldo

they could do something better than quiz shows,