Topic: Another money making scam?

(Warning, another Trogg rant)

I have been thinking about this for a little while and after reading an article in the NZ Herald I thought I would voice my issue.

Currently we have the competitions to “txt to win one of 27 cars” and assorted voting for NZ Idol and Holmes. All of these cost approximately $1 per text.
In the Herald article once NZ Idol contestant was shocked to find her 15-year-old cousin had voted for her 250 times and her stepfather voted for her 500 times. So $750 was spend from one family in an attempt to tip the scales.

Issue 1; Are some contestants of NZ Idol still there only because their families have spent a small fortune on voting (even if the family can’t afford it)?

Issue 2; What about the opinion polls that you see on shows like Holmes, can these be a true representation of public opinion when there is the potential for one ‘side’ to place excessive votes?

Sure these txt (and 0900 phone) voting and polls cost a little bit of money to organise but can someone honestly say that it costs thousands of dollars for each voting or poll.
How about an arbitrary cost of maybe 25c for each vote cast? AND have a logging system so that if more than one vote is received from a number (for that poll) then a return txt is sent to say that the second vote was not counted (and that there is no point in spending any more money voting in this poll).

The other thing that is potentially “interesting” regarding txt voting is the current txt a daily word and go in the draw to win one of 27 cars competition.
There are 27 cars worth approximately $35,000 each (list price) but when you consider that the competition organiser will probably be getting them at fleet rates for a bulk sale I am guessing that they are only worth about $27,000 each. All it would take is about 100 crazy voters / entrants to send in similar numbers of votes to the NZ Idol family above and the car would be paid for. That isn't out of the question considering the number of people in this country that would be inclined to enter (well there are probably 500,000 mobile phones in NZ).

Imagine that, you run a promotion for a company offering a prize and the customers actually pay for the prize AND you even make a profit. The promoter’s and the car supplier’s dream (free advertising for the car supplier).

Is this just another case of greed outweighing logical though? :shrug:

It's all about making money Trogg my dear old man.

TXT promotions make people a shitload of money. I'd quote you some numbers but I'm probably not allowed to.

I do agree with the voting upgrades when it comes to things like Idol though, people should only be allowed to vote once. It wouldn't be too hard to put that in place either. BUT, of course they wouldn't make as much money so ..... it's a bit of :goodorbad: really isn't it?

One thing that has come to mind since your vocing of this point...

If a txt costs the customer 99c, the promoters don't get the entire 99c...some of that goes to the place that is providing the service.

Oh, hang on...99c?

Hell, they're usually 20c right?

Hmm. Seems it IS all about the bling.

What can WE organise to make lots and lots of money from suckers?

heh heh - makes a mockery of the 'democratic' process, eh? :roll:

Originally posted by kall@Mar 23 2004, 09:35 AM
Oh, hang on...99c?

Hell, they're usually 20c right?

Actually, the customer gets charged more than 20c per txt by the provider because of the load that the provider has to take when running these promotions.

I'm not sure of the exact cost the provider charges to the customer though although I know that it's not 99c.

Not that I work for a phone company or anything

Yeah, I was thinking of how Telescum run the 0900 service.

Minimum charge is 99c, a fixed portion of that goes to Telescum. If the promoter wants to raise their profit, they can.

Originally posted by kall@Mar 23 2004, 08:34 AM

One thing that has come to mind since your vocing of this point...

Zoinks, I spotted a typo!!

Originally posted by Ms Whips+Mar 31 2004, 04:33 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Ms Whips @ Mar 31 2004, 04:33 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-kall@Mar 23 2004, 08:34 AM

One thing that has come to mind since your vocing of this point...

Zoinks, I spotted a typo&#33;&#33;

[/b][/quote]
Yes Virginia there is a Santa Claus.

And given that the mighty Kall has made a typo then perhaps there is an Easter Bunny also (although I would hate to be the Easter Bunny around Central Otago in a couple of weeks time).

*waits for Kall to use the edit function and fix the typo*