Cann't you marvell at that new ITV late night  'EXTRACT U FROM YA CASH PROGRAM,' Quizzmania !   They have the decency to tell you, that you haven't been selected straight away (for  is it ~60p), instead of keeping you hanging on , in eager  & futile, Anticipation.

There are those who count, An' those who cann't.
An' the former make their living from the latter.

I watch it during my lunch break on my night shift.

It is such a con.  I've studied the way they arrange the programme (well, what else can I do in my 40 minute break, lol)

It is 60p per call, whether selected or not, so obviously they want to tell you straight away if you've not been selected, so you can try again.

However, they try and give the impression that nobody is calling in by stringing out the programme and waiting for callers.  What is probably happening is that loads of people get the impression that nobody is calling, and they all try and get through.  After being told they can't be selected, they think "Oh dear, but at least the call was only 5 seconds" without thinking it's 60p per call, and not per minute!!  They might even think they didn't get through cos the lines were too busy, and to try again.  I phone my local radio station for competitions (they use 0870, but I use their geo) and when I don't get through I keep trying, but the engaged tone is free!!  Quizmania do keep within the law by telling us that it's 60p per call whether selected or not, and have given plenty of warnings, but they rely on those who are too tired to take notice at that time of night.

They do however say that you can get a free entry on the website, however at work I don't have access to the net, and when I'm not at work (ie tonight) I'm usually in bed before it starts off (not sure if it's on at weekends) so never watch it at home.

I prefer to take part in competitions that don't require such an outlay, and that the prizes are funded by advertising (ie radio phone ins)  The prizes are usually given away by the either the sponsor who donates the prizes to the radio station, or the radio station likes to run a competition that encourages people to tune in longer, hence their advertisers reach more people.

Or you enter your name for a prize draw, but have to receive some junk mail.  Again the aim is to encourage us to receive junk mail, and bribe us with the possibility of a prize, but there is no cost to do so, and the junk mail can just be thrown away (in fact it costs them money to send the junk mail!!)

But with quizmania, there are never any adverts, and Debbie King and co need their wages paid, along with the backstage staff, and of course fund the prizes.  If there's no adverts then ITV need to get their money to make the show profitable, and it's done by way of a premium rate number.

However unlike 0870, anyone who does call this number knows it's a rip off, and they make a choice whether to call or not, it despite the cunning way it operates, it is operated within the law, and the cost of the call is clearly shown.  Most people know full well that quizmania receive a cut from the call.

When companies invite us to call 0870, most like to hide the fact that they receive some of the call costs, they hide the fact that it's more expensive than a normal geo number, and they also don't want us knowing that we can call them on a geographic number instead if we wanted to.

With this in light, quizmania only rip off people who want to take part on a quiz show, and those people know (or should know) the cost of calling.  That is more moral than people like Dial-a-phone, DVLA, Sky, and many others insisting that we must call 0870 numbers because we need their services.

Shiggaddi wrote on Feb 19^th, 2006 at 11:57pm:

When companies invite us to call 0870, most like to hide the fact that they receive some of the call costs, they hide the fact that it's more expensive than a normal geo number, and they also don't want us knowing that we can call them on a geographic number instead if we wanted to. With this in light, quizmania only rip off people who want to take part on a quiz show, and those people know (or should know) the cost of calling.  That is more moral than people like Dial-a-phone, DVLA, Sky, and many others insisting that we must call 0870 numbers because we need their services.

Surely Quizmania relies heavily on teenage/early 20s kids plus the wives of phonebill payers being largely ignorant of the huge potential quarterly costs of phone bills because they don't personally pay for the calls.  It also relies on many of these people being drunk at the time the program is shown and it relies on the disgrace of there being no automatically set up free protection for the BT phone line owner against other members of the household stealing their money.

Its not the same ripoff as 084/7 (where people are actively misled to a very intensive degree over the actual call cost) but the old 09 PRS one where a very high percentage of calls to those number ranges are almost certainly not made by the bill payers.  One can only imagine how people would feel if this kind of thing could happen with their credit cards or bank accounts. :o

And I simply just can't believe that the all commerce of any kind at all is good obsessed Messrs Stephen Carter and David Currie at Ofcom haven't decided to take action against this utter disgrace of a program that has no place at all on any of the five main channels at any time.   There are specialist satellite and Freeview channels for people who want this kind of thing but I don't think any of the existing five terrestrial channels should be allowed to give any of their air time to this junk.  But then another current Ofcom consultation proposes allowing active sponsorship of a whole terrestrial television channel's output (CH3 to 5 and the whole channel and not just the odd program) by one or more commercial companies.  As ever Ofcom seems to be paying more attention to Section 6 rather than Section 3 of the Communciations Act 2003. ::) >:(

What has not been mentioned on here is the cost from a mobile. How many of these people will be calling from them?

As NGM points out, there is no way for a PIN system to be implemented to protect against other members of a household abusing the telephone. It's an all or nothing as far allowing calls to 09 numbers. I think that this is unfair and a complete disgrace that telephone companies don't implement such a feature. I also believe that there should be a way of barring individual numbers or allowing certain numbers when call barring is in place on a certain number range/type. With the internet, it would be quite straightforward to have a webpage to change these sort of settings.

Good to see you back Dave.  Have you been ill or on holiday for the last few days? ;

By the way what about that £150 FreePay banner ad on this site?  Can you pass any comment on that or is that purely a matter I should try to take up with Daniel/ForumAdmin (as I have done by PM and in the forum but without success so far).

My own solution to these garbage, money grabbing TV 'shows' was to simply instigate BT's block on all 09 numbers.
In the last five years I have never felt any disadvantage from not being able to phone a Premium number 8-)

Agree with NGM about the site banner - a disgrace to this site.

omy wrote on Feb 20^th, 2006 at 3:24pm:

In the last five years I have never felt any disadvantage from not being able to phone a Premium number 8-)

Must confess to having called the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire application line about 30 or 40 times over several years and I ended up appearing on a show as a result but sadly did not make it through fastest finger due to two horrible questions about football being asked for fastest finger (one of my biggest knowledge weak spots).  Also have been sad enough to vote in Eurovision Song Contest using 09 number (10p per call).  Never called any form of sex chat line 09 number though.  I am told that such things are much cheaper on the internet in any case, not of course that I could possibly comment. :o

Dave wrote on Feb 20^th, 2006 at 3:04pm:

What has not been mentioned on here is the cost from a mobile. How many of these people will be calling from them?

I'm hoping Ofcon will address this by forcing mobiles to have tariff notifications at the beginning of the call for all calls made from a mobile except for geographical numbers.

Quote:

It's an all or nothing as far allowing calls to 09 numbers. I think that this is unfair and a complete disgrace that telephone companies don't implement such a feature. I also believe that there should be a way of barring individual numbers or allowing certain numbers when call barring is in place on a certain number range/type.

It's not in the teleco's interest to block any numbers if they can help after all they all profit from it.  If there was some kind of pattern to these 09x numbers like 091x cost 10p/min, 092x cost 20p/min, etc then us consumers would have more of an idea of the costs involved by just looking at the number and of course if blocking by number range was made available then we could block say any number from 095x upwards (ie block calls costing more than 50p/min).

Quote:

With the internet, it would be quite straightforward to have a webpage to change these sort of settings.

This is true to a certain degree.  The main problem would be the teleco's then having their computer systems implement blocking of certain number ranges.  This, depending on how customisable their computer system is, may mean having their computer system re-programmed, etc so as to block any calls type of range we may want to block.  This would involve a great amount of money if this was required (ie programming cost, etc) whereas now I'm guessing that the teleco's computer systems are programmed to block any number beginning 09 which is a lot easier to programme and implement than allowing us to choose from the huge range of different 09x numbers out there.

This is from a programming point of view so basically yes it is possible but chances are it would be costly for the telcos and then of course they'd want to charge us end consumers £1.75, etc for this facility which I doubt many would go for it because we don't pay for premium rate barring now which I'm surprised to be honest due to how profitable these calls are for the teleco's.

the web 'free' entry is
http://tv.evopay.com/quizmania/web/

I have never called the 09 telephone number,

I have a script which auto fills in the boxes and stuff and then submits it. I normally get a few phone calls back from an 020 number which 'doesnt accept incoming calls'. I have only been 'put thru to the studio' once.
I dont enter my real email and I dont enter any other real details apart from my telephone.
Shame they dont accept 08x numbers in the box.

It's moved http://quizmania.eckoh.com/