Dear Sir,
This is to bring to your notice that some televison channels air some Real time shows which show lucrative prizes for callers who call them real time form their mobiles to answer the aired quiz questions and win lucrative prizes. Some of the channels involved are : NDTV Imagine, E24 etc.
The questions are very simple where they show an incomplete or jumbled picture of a renowned bollywood actor/actress which is very easy to guess and the prize quoted is as high as 50 K to 1 Lac. However the call or SMS (to register your mobile no. and they claim the more you call the more chances you have to win) charges are permium rate and are as high as 10/- to 12/- per minute (for calls) or per txt msg. On some channels they say that the more no. of times you call in, the better are your chances for the computer (as they claim) to randomly pick your number and call you back. On soe programs you have to call them to get through to the studio and you are in queue forever even after the program ends. Now during the course of a call to such a channel where I was told by the automated response that I am in the waiting lounge and will be transferred any time, I say numerous (atleast 50 calls) coming to the hosts on air but none of them gave the correct answer. Here they had shown Peity Zinta's Smile which is very peculiar and very easy to guess however none of the callers seems to guess it. At times there was a gap of 5 -10 mins between calls and at times the calls were continuous hwoever despite being on hold for around 1 hr 30 mins I never got through to the studio...None of the callers guess it right so I and Other real callers would be hopefull and getting charged 12/- per minute for this call which is almost 960/- for this permium rated call. Ialso noticed that all the callers said the names only(without framing a sentence),. then on being asked their location, they mentioned the locationonly ( again not forming a sentence) and then finally gave the answer only (Just the name of the heroine, which was always wrong). During the course of the call, many incorrect guesses were repeated. For example callers gave the wrong answer, Aishwarya Rai within a span of 10 Mins. Which means either the caller got onto this program or was not bothered and was chnaging teh channel frequently and did not bother to hear other responses. Sir, what I am trying to say is that the real callers never get through or are never called back. These calls shown on the channel are faked ones. People were not able to guess Abhishek Bachan's jumbled face (pic with this trademak beard and broken into four quardrants and jumbled) which is a cakewalk. My Grandmom or my 10 yr old nephew will gues it at once but still fake callers giving inorrect answers are shown for hours so that real callers are hopeful and be on line or keep on sending msgs. Not a single advertisement is shown during these programs so how do these channels make money? It is very obvious that the telecom companies are getting their share from the premium rated calls and SMS charges which the innocent customer ends up paying to them and they finance these programs. Mobile service providers Vodaphone, Airtel, Reliance , Tata etc are all invlved in these scams.
You can check out these channels after 1 AM in the night and try calling or msging yourself. You will notice how many fake callers (I guess they are a part of the production team and these are not even actual calls) give wrong answers keeping the hopeful caller online. If they really start giving these kind of amounts to real callers on the kind of easy questions they have, they will go broke.
In the beginning I thought maybe the Television channel will get the money through the imense viewership and advertisements and would be shelling out the prize money but I guess thay hardly pay anybody. Once they are not able to get the right answer(as they enact), they will give very obvious clues or show more of the picture and drop the prize amount (tp 20% of the original amount) and then after a few callers someone guesses it right (That too I guess is a fake caller).
Please look into this. There are big televison channels and Mobile service providers involved in such petty scams.
Thanks & Regards,
Debraj Chakravarty
+91-[protected]
Mumbai Was this information helpful? | 
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