Saturday, July 21, 2007

A Greek TV Scam?

Is local "Channel 10" involved in conning needy people out of their money? I don't know, but it certainly looks like it. Can there be another explanation?

The set up is an “Anagram Game” where you can "win up to several thousand Euros":

They give you for example … POU-RKA-ZIA.

The word to be found is the evident "KARPOUZIA" (watermelons).

They then have some “caller” who of course misses the idiotically obvious "KARPOUZIA" ... offers instead “KARPOUZI” and uses a second chance to say... “KARPOUZA” (Is that even a word?). :D

Could his person possibly be part of the set-up? No, you think? Of course not!:)

The "presenter" then goes through a whole routine: "WHAT A SHAME! ... though this answer is not right … it was very close etc". She then continues with the pitch: “CALL IF YOU KNOW THE SOLUTION!” while whistles and bells and meaningless countdowns and computer-game sound-effects and suspense-movie music are blasting in the background: 10 … 9 … 8 … 7 … etc

The trick for them is of course to get people to call (1,19 Euro each call, 1,52 Euros with a cell and 1,43 euro for each SMS). And they of course say that they only have some lines opened, like 5, 9, 12, 19, 20, 21, 30 … which the "red Button" will randomly choose from. Right!

So what do you think the chances are that a real person ever gets on the air? My take is that after they've milked enough money ... they might let one real caller on ... but then again ... they probably have a friend call even for that one.

Do people actually fall for this?

Probably yes, the weak-minded, the senile and children ... though "one needs to be over 18 to call"! :)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is not a Greek privilege only, it's done all around the world and it works quite well actually.

Alexander said...

It's drives me crazy though that they use perfectly good airwaves for something like that.