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Call this hotline to finally rid yourself of your pesky cash!
The above is a screenshot from a popular gameshow-type scam that seems to have infected a lot of European television stations. Before it arrived in Slovenia, I’d seen it in the UK and on the notorious German channel DSF. Although the Germans seem to be the only ones that incorporate nudity (nsfw) the general idea is always the same: there is a stupid puzzle or question, and a female host begs people to call in and solve it.
They never solve it, of course. At least, I’ve never seen it happen. You can flip around for a while and when you come back, they’re usually still where you left them.
I’m not sure how the Slovenian version works, but the British versions have revealed themselves to be particularly crooked and evil. One of them, Quiz Call, awarded prizes to its own employees while letting people dangle on the line with no hope of winning. And of course the answers are as obscure as humanly possible when finally revealed. For example: “Films Beginning with M.” listed Mulan 2 as a correct answer. Not “Mulan” — which someone guessed, but got wrong — but the goddamn direct-to-video sequel “Mulan 2.”
According to this story in the Guardian, just the odds of getting through at one show on ITV were about 8,500 to one. You’d have a better chance picking up a golf club and shooting a hole-in-one.
The Slovenian version is called Srečna Linija, comes out of Malta, and airs on the privately owned television station Kanal A. Kudos to Kanal A for acting like scumbag three-card-Monte dealers hanging out behind the train station. Still: I admit that I’m looking forward to their next big show: “Hey man, wanna buy a watch?” I hope the hosts will be a bit more naked next time around.
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Well, in Spain we had one even more ridiculous… They put a terribly famous proverb, or questions like what was the color of Santiago’s white horse.
Then you had to observe in shame how the own employees called and just gave completely absurd answers in one word, repeating themselves and trying -unsuccessfully- to fake their voices so that you don’t see they’re the same guys all along.
Obviously when there were 3 mins left, someone called and, after a long chat (long > 2 words) he guessed it correctly.
If you dared to call, you were left for 30 mins (max allowed length for an added charge call) hearing that there was a horrible queue and you shouldn’t hang as all calls get eventually on air. All this while the host was scratching his nose -no calls-, talking again about the great prizes, and repeating the “don’t hang” part.
The channel and company behind were sent to court not long ago, but dunno what happened finally.
Here I just watched once at work a crappy one about guessing how many squares were in a drawing. It’s a terribly known one and I knew the answer by heart… but their “correct” result was of course different.
Bloggers fighting 9live - the German story: www.spiegel.de/spiegelspecial/0,1518,490716,00.html
I was watching a version on CarliTV a few days ago where question was literally trivial, yet nobody seemed to call for 20 minutes. Girl “presenting the show” seemed to be going nuts out of boredom.
It’s hard to imagine that they could leave you waiting on phone without a plausible excuse.
True, you could only win 50 EUR instead of 1000.
Btw, the answer to the above riddle is Metulj (Butterfly). Took me 5 seconds to see so I wouldn’t exactly call it difficult either.
If anyone understands Spanish…
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygcTqNrjMFo
Marko… not that they go nuts… they are just drunk www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWNSNoHzdjk
Ha, ha, good to hear that Spain is in on the racket as well.
Regarding employees calling in: I was watching the Slovenian version a few days ago, and some guy called in and there was a really suspicious delay:
Hostess: We’ve got someone on the line.
Caller: Yes, hello.
Hostess: Who is this?
Caller: (long pause)
Hostess: What’s your name, who’s calling?
Caller: (long pause — presumably trying to think up a good name) Uh… Edgar.
He then got the answer spectacularly wrong. (Note: I don’t think he said “Edgar,” but it was something equally strange.)
How are these shows not illegal?
novala: Fantastic story, thanks for posting it. Their site seems to be down, unfortunately.
Marko: The Spiegel article talks about how the hosts constantly pretend that they can’t believe no one is calling, when in fact the lines are jammed full of gullible suckers.
If any Slobbers reading this want to undertake some kind of collective online fight against these low lifes, let me know!
I find it very brave for financially normal sized bloggers to fight 9live. At the end of the day, the TV station might have more money for lawyers.
I didn’t know that article, but I knew that hilarious shows of 9live. But that moderator also insults “normal” people with stupid answers. Seems like that verbal diarrhoea is part of the program. Quite annoying is that this is de facto covered by governmental organisations funded by GEZ fees. Sad enough, that there are people who throw away all their money that way.
Hey! I’m always on for a good fight!
How was it…
You have my sword!
They had one of those shows here in the states too at that wonderful early afternoon witching hour when only senior citizens and housewives would be around to be swindled. The way I understand it every call and text is charged 99 cents a pop and much the same as the European ones I don’t think anyone wins much of anything.
These programs are widespread in UK and on my last visit my cousin pointed out to me that my uncle was losing a lot of money calling into those programs. I think the fact that little old people are being swindled should be enough bad PR to get these people outta every town. Just conscript a mini-army of hopping mad cane-waving pensioners and a few others wheeled around by equally angry housewives and send them over to the production offices. Trust me, those crooks will pack up their carts and roll out.
Here’s a link to the American program, btw.
They seem to be defunct at the moment, hmmmm.
I thought you were going to talk about the programs that give really simple questions and correctly answering enters you in a drawing to win the money. These trick people into calling or texting in thinking that, because they know the answer to the question, their chances are better, because there will be people calling in with the incorrect answer that won’t even be eligible.
It’s less of a scam, but still a way to dupe the desperate into giving their money.
how ’bout this one, seen by TV total
www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwJ7Q4RbWwA
hopefully it does not end in spam section as one of my previous ones
cija: That clip is head-shakingly hilarious!
Here’s another clip that they aired on TV total. It’s great that people like Raab are at least making fun of these jerks.
(And sorry the spam filter caught you — it shouldn’t happen again.)
We have two kinds in Serbia, TV astrologers/tarot frauds and these TV quizes you write about. While the quizes are explained here, TV astrologers are even better, as they seem to be making stuff up as they go - the longer they talk to the victim the more money they make, plus all the other people waiting on line to get through.
Milan the Tarot majstor is already a legend for his obviously fake predictions, for example:
Victim: When will I marry and what will be my husbands name?
Milan the Tarot majstor: You will marry in exactly 146 days, your husbands name: Michael Schumacher.
Victim: Thank You!
Milan: No problem, call again.
etc etc. and people still call…
In Flanders, the girls that host these games are the laughing stock of the region for their amped up and very crippled use of Flemish/Dutch and their bimbette arsenal of insanely stupid expressions. S it’s become a bit of a cult thing over here.
That aside, a law was passed capping the prize money and instructing that at least someone should win at the end of the game, because there was such an upheaval about these so- called quizzes.
Still, my cousin did win €1500 by calling them at the right time once, the lucky [i]baisturt[/i]…
Apparently it crossed the pond, to Argentina as well! A friend of mine who was recently here told me about it, after recognizing not only the format, but the BACKGROUND MUSIC as well!!!
Thank God I only watch VH1’s oldies! Woohoo!!
I was just in Bucharest over the weekend and saw one of these programs… very shady, very funny…