New pr disaster for premium rate phone in quizzes

[Analoguesat]

Viewers 'lose millions' to GMTV



Callers to premium-rate phone competitions on the GMTV breakfast show have been defrauded out of millions of pounds, a BBC investigation has found.
Panorama found a company working for GMTV had been finalising shortlists of potential winners "long before" phone lines closed, for the past four years.

GMTV has moved to suspend all phone-in quizzes, but said it was confident it had not breached regulators' codes.

The phone operator, Opera Interactive Technology, denied any wrongdoing.

Panorama said tens of thousands of callers have been paying £1.80 a time to enter the competition - but as many as half had no chance of winning.

The programme estimated that since 2003 callers had wasted £45,000 a day - or £10m a year - entering competitions where Opera had finalised shortlists of potential winners before phone lines closed.


BBC - full report here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6582235.stm

[Analoguesat]

Originally Posted by Analoguesat

GMTV has moved to suspend all phone-in quizzes, but said it was confident it had not breached regulators' codes.

The phone operator, Opera Interactive Technology, denied any wrongdoing.

How the hell do they work that out then? If the allegations are true there has been blatant dishonesty on the competitions for 4 years and they think they havent done anything wrong????

Ictis & or Ofcom should throw the book at them for systematic fraudulant gaming.

[BGonaSTICK]

I think the current rules say that 'you can cheat and lie as much as you like, as long as nobody finds out', so it all comes down to semantics i.e. whether it can be applied retrospectively :