Well who was to blame?

Last night BBC Panorama aired their investigation into irregularities for premium rate services for GMTV (amongst other programs such as Blue Peter!). This morning I watched live to see the response and the MD of GMTV was on air to answer questions and to underline that they had ended their business with Opera Telecom. I am guessing a lot of service providers right now are looking to pitch to GMTV in the meanwhile. I wonder who is actually to blame here, if I was the client I surely would have asked how many entries were taken upon the winner being picked, and then when I wanted to check the revenues from that competition I would have noticed the gap in the figures between the winner selection and the actual time the competition was really closed ... me thinks there is more to come on this side of things. Couple of things to check, a more up to date story from the beeb and the official response on the GMTV web site. They have dated this back to 2003 which is the really interesting aspect of this which I doubt they will ever manage to quantify. I dont think anyone comes out from this well, Opera Telecom should have been managing this and keep it above board as they would be well aware of the OfCom and ICSTIS regulations, its their business, plus the client GMTV (who has been running these competitions for years) should also be more than aware of how these services work. I also think the regulators shouldnt escape some blame here as all they do is slap the wrists in such circumstances and then react when it is all basically too late to do much except mop up the mess ... and what a mess!

May Mobile Monday London

A quick note on the next Mobile Monday London for May, it is going to be on the 14th (previous monday is a bank holiday). The theme will be mobile widgets, a subject I dont know a huge amount about but ironically I will be the MC for the evening. So if you would like to present send me an email at alex@mobilemonday.org.uk or join the yahoo group at groups.yahoo.com/group/momolondon to await further news and we will see you there.

Premium rate back in the news

Quick post this time, it appears GMTV (a British early morning breakfast news/show) is now under the magifying glass this week due to more dodgy goings on regards premium rate competitions. Again it appears that competition winners are being selected before they close them meaning large numbers of people are not even entered for the draw. Panorama is on at 8.30 on the BBC covering all of the controvesy around this subject and I think a bit of naming and shaming is going to take place. I am glad I havent worked for a company that has rigged this type of thing. Shows what can happen when the companies in question do not follow a strong ethical and quality procedure in house. GMTV have issused that Delloitte are being brought in for a full independent investigation so I await that news to see if anything will actually change ... or as I suspect things will evenutally go back to normal.