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.

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.

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

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

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

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