The Dirty Secrets of Your TradeSo, Television is a hot bed of lies, deceit and made up competitions. We can't say that we are that surprised... every job is full of this stuff. It's not like the newspapers currently kicking TV whilst it is down are all that innocent.
We'd like you to even things out a bit. Spill the beans on your own trade. Tell us the dirty secrets that the public need to know.
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chthonic, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 10:31)
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Cheap International Phone calls part IIOh Rilux, you are merely tipping the iceberg of scams here. As I mentioned before, I used to design the pricing methods that someone like yourself implemented. Here's a few more tricks...
1. Many of the phonecards advertise the rates you get for a 20 or 50 pound card. These are not the rates you get for a 5 or 10 quid card. Quite often you won't be able to get the 20 or 50 card so you have to buy the cheaper one and hence, you don't get the rates advertised. The rate you pay per minute is up to 30% higher
2. Free 5 pound worth of calls with every card. This fiver worth of 'free call' is already reflected in the advertised call per minute price so you don't really get extra at all.
3. Continuous call. This is one I thought up myself. You advertise rates really cheap and put 'prices are based on a single continuous call'. vast majority of people do not use their entire card in 1 call. From your 2nd call onwards the price per call is increased by up to 50%. best bit? When people check their balance after the first call the price seems correct. People rarely check it again so it's a trick that's never picked up.
4. Card Expiry - We printed loads of cards that expire 7 days after first use. We justified this by saying 'that reflects the fast moving nature of telecoms pricing'. The reality is that a lot of people could not use their remaining card value after one week. Last report showed apprx 40% of unusable credit which is money in the bank for the card company.
5. DTI - The DTI test prepaid phonecards by checking the balance on the first minute and checking the duration of a single call from new to zero balance. Another trick here is that the card companies charge you normal for the 1st minute, then increase the charge minute by minute (about 25% extra per minute) until minute 6-8 and then charges less so the total duration works out. The average phonecall duration is 3-4 mins so you end up being charged about 20% more per call on average.
I could go on, I have loads of these....but I won't because it's probably boring to everyone here except maybe Rilux.
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sneep used to date Freddie Starr's hamster, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 13:18,
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