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Irish "Psychics" Live

MrJoeSoap

Okay, I really wasn't sure about where to put this but I really do want people to hear this. Mods, please move if you feel it doesn't belong here.

Anyways, my friend asked me this morning whether I had heard Pat Kenny's report on "Irish Psychics Live" this morning on RTE Radio One. Now I'm not a fan of Pat Kenny by any means (plus I was asleep!) so I said I'd check out the show online.

Basically what happened was one of the shows researchers rang the Irish Psychics Live hotline five times. Now we all (probably) know that these lines are complete and utter nonsense with one aim in mind - taking your money. The show, however, raised a few more interesting points.

The owner, Tom Higgins (A cowboy of Tony Quinn proportions), wants to be the first Irish man in space. After hearing this, I think he should be. And I think he should stay there.

The first two minutes of the phone calls (€4.80) are advertisements for other services provided by IPL.

Once in contact with the "psychics", Kennys' researcher was:

*Asked if she had a chatty friend who was single. (Ask yourself this one too).
*Told her mother was dead. (She wasn't).

and numerous other incidents of absolute rubbish.

Anyway, this is where it got interesting. Tom Higgins, the head of the organisation was on the line and Pat Kenny absolutely laid into him, I really suggest you listen to the clip because it was quite powerful stuff from a man certainly not known for his powerful interviews. Higgins claimed that the clips that had been played were too specific and could not be viewed as indicative of the whole service, which infuriated Kenny even more. The psychic line is obliged, by law, to let the caller know when €30 is amounted on the call - not surprisingly, they don't.

To be honest, I'm just fed up with the likes of these cowboy's, Una Power et al. Of course people should have the right to call these lines, and all I really have to do is ignore it and it will go away. The fact is however, that it deeply annoys me that these con-artists are not kept in check and exposed on a more regular and critical basis.

Finally, fair play Pat Kenny (its not often I say it) for showing your clear hatred for the soul-less nature of these outfits and spending the time exposing them to the public.

LISTEN HERE (It starts after around 44 minutes)

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Sparky

we listen to pat on the radio, hes actually quite easy to listen to on radio, and the piece on the psychies i found very informative, and im going to play this to my mam, because she always falls for these lines that offer you this and that and i actually had to bar those numbers from my mobile because my dad banned them from the landline aswell.
She bought a speakeasy phone a yr ago and put €400 into it at one stage, not all to do with psychics but more of these youll win this and that crap.
These companies work on peoples weakness's, my mams thinking she has good luck
With all the money she had spent on ringing up on crap, she could of bought herself what she could be winning on those robbing lines

/right end of rant

natter

I really think there should be some sort of law banning these kinda things. My ex's sister got totally addicted to all this crap, she used to run up massive phone bills. Ok I know you should have a bit of cop on bout this sorta stuff but these people are only out there to rob ya of money... They shouldnt be allowed do it.

cournioni

MrJoeSoap wrote:

Tom Higgins, the head of the organisation was on the line and Pat Kenny absolutely laid into him

Bet he didn't see that coming...

alleepally

This fcuker and all his ilk should not be allowed advertise their services. They prey on the weak and vunerable, people who can ill afford it.

I find it really strange that a religious group is not allowed to advertise under IRTC codes, and yet Tarot lines are... I have a letter ready to go to the IRTC asking why they continue to advertise when they could in and of themselves be considered a religion for people.

Sparky

i had to laugh at the introduction of "i have a tape of you pat promoting us, i have it here, play it on air"
Pat quickly brushes it off.

vms7ply9t6dw4b

MrJoeSoap wrote:

My hatred for this man is only rivalled by my hatred for Tony Quinn, but thats another matter.

Whats your beef with Tony Quinn? Are you one of these fat people who took the slimming tablets for two weeks and didnt see results and now blames the company?:rolleyes:

Mina Loy

whos tony quinn when hes at home?

MrJoeSoap

Rodrigo Wonderful Pasteboard wrote:

Whats your beef with Tony Quinn? Are you one of these fat people who took the slimming tablets for two weeks and didnt see results and now blames the company?:rolleyes:

Stench Blossoms

Rodrigo Wonderful Pasteboard wrote:

Whats your beef with Tony Quinn? Are you one of these fat people who took the slimming tablets for two weeks and didnt see results and now blames the company?

When I was in secondary school, a guy came in to tell us about Tony Quinn.. I think a relation of his was scammed by Tony Quinn on one of these holiday things and because she started to get suspicious she ended up in a mental institute in some foreign county.

My god the stuff he told us would scare you off tony quinn forever.

Capt'n Midnight

http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2005/09/04/story7647.asp

A company which made random mobile phone calls to more than 160,000 people was fined €1,500 in Dublin District Court last week.

It is the first time an Irish company has been successfully prosecuted for spam offences under data protection law. The action followed complaints to the Data Protection Commissioner by customers who returned missed calls on their mobile phones. When they phoned, they heard a message inviting them to ring a premium rate number to play a quiz game.

The unsolicited calls came from 4's a Fortune, which is run by Tom Higgins, the managing director of Irish Psychics Live.

compare to a scam run from the UK

Thousands of Irish businesses and residents received a similar call. Calls to the premium rate number to claim the awards cost €2.40 a minute and lasted “no more than 3 minutes, 10 seconds'‘. This brought the total cost of the call to €7.60. Last week, the regulator of premium rate services, Regtel, shut down the service, which was run from Britain. Regtel, which is currently investigating the service, said that anyone who called the premium rate number would be refunded.

The point being that the UK regulator has done more to stop Irish People being scammed than our own one. Only a hand full of the people defrauded by Tom Higgins company got refunds.

Sparky

fcukers should be shot at dawn.
even the kids get scammed with the mobile ringtone things, atleast they done something about that.

solas

About six years ago, when these fone lines were starting out I dialed up the number from work and put it on speaker fone in the canteen.
During the conversation I was told that I was psychic and would be able to do this work and was promptly offered a job with them

The lads started giggling in the background and she got a bit testy so I kindly refused and told her I already had a job, she was nice enough all the same. Shame, 30 euro for 20 mins work are great rates.

There should most certainly be a law against this kind of scamming in Ireland. Listening to Higgins I heard a slight american accent comming through, which doesn't really suprise me, these 1800 psychic numbers are the brainchild of American con artists cashing in on the new age hype by offering the amazing services of "having your fortune told by a genuine Irish psychic".

Now try not to rush out and sell your famous psychic genetics all at once people.

Does anyone know where Higgins is from?

solas

just found this while trying to find out more about him.
http://www.irelandsfirstastronaut.com/article.aspx?more=1#patkenny

Irish Psychics Live Owes Much Of Its Success To Pat Kenny

When the pre-recorded reading ended Pat Kenny seemed taken aback. He asked whether the fair-haired man could be him. He then revealed that earlier that morning Ryan had received the predicted promotion in the post. Pat Kenny went on to comment: “As a fellow sceptic of Ryan’s my mind has been opened…”

lostexpectation

solas wrote:

just found this while trying to find out more about him.
http://www.irelandsfirstastronaut.com/article.aspx?more=1#patkenny

from that it seems to me that Tom researched Ryan and shaped the reading, it amazing that Pat said little about it on that show.

Pat was terrible this only re-enforces my opinion on him, he's only "good" because of the position he is in he gets to report on some of the key issues of the day, its the stories that are good not him.

stevenmu

No wonder this country's a complete mess.

'oooh look, the bad men are trying to take our money, let's make the government get rid of them'.

If people's mothers, ex's sisters, or solas' boss are willing to waste their money on crap then that's their own fault. If it wasn't IPL they'd probably just give it the next door-to-door volcano insurance salesman who comes by (Don't you think we're overdue for one?). We live in a free society with a free economy, which means people are free to throw away money in whatever stupid way they want.

People need to take responsibility for their own actions, and their own mistakes and stop expecting the government to fix everything and wipe their ar$e for them afterwards.

solas

stevenmu wrote:

or solas' boss

hush now.

stevenmu wrote:

We live in a free society with a free economy, which means people are free to throw away money in whatever stupid way they want.

the same thought did run through my mind initially, it seems pat Kenny was very obliging originally too. Its true to form for the Irish to suddenly develop morals.
This doesn't excuse Higgins from breaking the law though.

Capt'n Midnight

stevenmu wrote:

People need to take responsibility for their own actions, and their own mistakes and stop expecting the government to fix everything and wipe their ar$e for them afterwards.

why do we have laws and a police force then ?

Many of the things that "business men" do in this country are illegal and the law is enforced in the UK, especially with phone scams. Here the problem is that only one company has been punished and the fine is less than 2% of the fine of the find Joe Public could get for having a camera phone in a cinema.

Also and this is important, not everyone is technically aware and so can't judge the honesty/validity of these things.

jonny68

Why are people so gullible in the first place to actually waste their money calling these cowboys :rolleyes:

CrowdedHouse

You can be sure whoever supplies the phone lines are getting a nice slice of the action too.

I see on one of the papers today Higgins is making a complaint to the Broadcasting Commission

J.R.HARTLEY

stevenmu wrote:

No wonder this country's a complete mess.

'oooh look, the bad men are trying to take our money, let's make the government get rid of them'.

If people's mothers, ex's sisters, or solas' boss are willing to waste their money on crap then that's their own fault. If it wasn't IPL they'd probably just give it the next door-to-door volcano insurance salesman who comes by (Don't you think we're overdue for one?). We live in a free society with a free economy, which means people are free to throw away money in whatever stupid way they want.

People need to take responsibility for their own actions, and their own mistakes and stop expecting the government to fix everything and wipe their ar$e for them afterwards.

there are strict laws in place that IPL are flouting, for example, not warning people when they have reached 30 euros on their call, certainly if we can see through these tricksters our duty is to those who can't, if people wan't to spend money on it fine, but the problem arose out of people being unaware and illegally uninformed of how much they were spending

MrJoeSoap

jonny68 wrote:

Why are people so gullible in the first place to actually waste their money calling these cowboys :rolleyes:

Some people do genuinely believe in psychic's, and I have a feeling that when such people are in a vulnerable position (having lost a close loved one etc...) they may be inclined to talk to someone about it, and to hear a reassuring and anonymous voice tell them things will be alright.

MrJoeSoap

Irish Psychics Live Owes Much Of Its Success To Pat Kenny

When the pre-recorded reading ended Pat Kenny seemed taken aback. He asked whether the fair-haired man could be him. He then revealed that earlier that morning Ryan had received the predicted promotion in the post. Pat Kenny went on to comment: “As a fellow sceptic of Ryan’s my mind has been opened…”

Tom takes up the story: “After what amounted to a personal endorsement of the fledgling Irish Psychics Live by one of the most respected media personalities in the country, the service was abruptly inundated with thousands of calls. The response jammed Telecom Eireann’s switches, but as we only had five or six psychics online at any one time, we just couldn’t handle the call volumes and most of the immediate calls were lost. But what absolutely amazed me was that people didn’t give up trying. They kept calling back and calling back until they got through to us. Then they went and told their friends and their friends started calling, and so on and so on… there was this tremendous snowballing effect. As a result I would say that Irish Psychics Live owes much of its success to RTE and Pat Kenny.”

Over the following months and years the volume of calls continued unabated, turning Irish Psychics Live into the hottest premium rate phenomenon in the industry’s history, and the most successful service of its kind anywhere in the world.

“It was an amazing experience to preside over such an astonishingly successful venture,” says Tom. “I certainly had an amount of luck on my side but I believe the reason Irish Psychics Live has remained so successful to this day is that we try to hire only people who we believe are genuinely psychic and who care passionately about the work they do. Whether you believe in psychic powers or not you cannot fail to be amazed by some of the people who work for us; they are astonishingly gifted people with a real desire to do good.

“Of course we can never achieve perfection, but we can aspire to it. And I think it is precisely for this reason that many of those who rang as a result of the Pat Kenny show all those years ago, still call us regularly today.”

Following the success of Irish Psychics Live in 2000 Tom designed, patented, and launched the world’s first telephone quiz game, QuizCall.
Tom explains: “Although QuizCall was meant to take advantage of the huge interest in quizzes engendered by the television show, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, QuizCall became hugely successful in its own right and was both popular and profitable. But like many things in the premium rate business it eventually ran its course and was suspended in 2003.” However Tom has plans to reintroduce the game to the Irish and UK markets, in a new format, during 2005.

Taken from the unintentionally hilarious Tom Higgins website:

http://www.firstirishastronaut.com/default.aspx

[Edit] - Sorry, just saw the posts above ^^^

stevenmu

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

why do we have laws and a police force then ?

Many of the things that "business men" do in this country are illegal and the law is enforced in the UK, especially with phone scams. Here the problem is that only one company has been punished and the fine is less than 2% of the fine of the find Joe Public could get for having a camera phone in a cinema.

Also and this is important, not everyone is technically aware and so can't judge the honesty/validity of these things.

The main reasons for law are to bring order to society, insuring a level playing field for all, and to protect our rights. The thing with IPL is that they seem to get much of their business through word of mouth and repeat customers, if everybody who rang felt they were being ripped off then there'd be numurous complaints and they'd probably go bust. It may be our opinion that people are being ripped off but many people seem to be happy to call again and again, the law is not there to enforce opinions.

Think 'sex lines', it's a pretty safe guess that many of the girls working on them are not as hot as the ads in the sunday world make them out to be. We all know that and yet some people still ring them (I presume they do anyway, there's millions of them). They charge loads, they don't live up to their promises, but if people want to ring them that's up to them, and if they waste all their money on them that's their own fault.

J.R.HARTLEY wrote:

there are strict laws in place that IPL are flouting, for example, not warning people when they have reached 30 euros on their call, certainly if we can see through these tricksters our duty is to those who can't, if people wan't to spend money on it fine, but the problem arose out of people being unaware and illegally uninformed of how much they were spending

That's a technicality, do you think a whole company should be shut down, and people made redundant over that ? Ever cross a road not at a designated pedestrian crossing ? Ever spit in public or throw chewing gum or a bit of rubbish on the ground ? Ever drive 5/10 kph over the limit ?

Our 'duty' as you put it, should be to not teach people to pass the blame. If somebody wastes their money in an idiotic scam we should really tell them 'It's not your fault, the evil company made you do it' ? Is it not better to point out their mistake so that they can learn from it and in turn teach others ?

solas

stevenmu wrote:

If somebody wastes their money in an idiotic scam we should really tell them 'It's not your fault, the evil company made you do it'

but we have a duty to protect the world from the evil psychic ones.

/wonders if they are still recruiting

J.R.HARTLEY

stevenmu wrote:

That's a technicality, do you think a whole company should be shut down, and people made redundant over that ? Ever cross a road not at a designated pedestrian crossing ? Ever spit in public or throw chewing gum or a bit of rubbish on the ground ? Ever drive 5/10 kph over the limit ?

Our 'duty' as you put it, should be to not teach people to pass the blame. If somebody wastes their money in an idiotic scam we should really tell them 'It's not your fault, the evil company made you do it' ? Is it not better to point out their mistake so that they can learn from it and in turn teach others ?

steven can you show me where i said they should be shut down.
whats with the hostile posts.
i think proper sanctions should be taken against the company for it. a decent fine.
comreg are there for a reason, to regulate the comunications industry and this covers the taking into hand of those who are taking advantage of people in that industry.

stevenmu wrote:

Ever cross a road not at a designated pedestrian crossing ?

yes AND i got hit by a car for my troubles:D

mike65

Kenny read out a few of the more printable comments from this thread on todays programme, and he mentioned boards.ie clearly!

Mike.

walt0r

You would have to be absolutely retarded to believe in psychics. James Randi has had a long running offer of 1 million dollars on www.randi.org to ANYBODY who can show that they possess psychic/paranormal abilities. Needless to say, nobody has even passed the preliminary tests let alone come close to claiming this prize.

solas

Kenny read out a few of the more printable comments from this thread on todays programme, and he mentioned boards.ie clearly!

linky?

[edit]found it

AARRRGH

Wow! What a scumbag. Fair play to Pat for not letting him away with him.

stevenmu

J.R.HARTLEY wrote:

steven can you show me where i said they should be shut down.

I guess maybe you didn't specifically say it, but that's seems to be the general opinion and I thought that's what you were getting at too.
whats with the hostile posts.[/quote]Sorry, didn't mean to come across as hostile, I was aiming more for 'rant on a soapbox'.

J.R.HARTLEY wrote:

i think proper sanctions should be taken against the company for it. a decent fine.
comreg are there for a reason, to regulate the comunications industry and this covers the taking into hand of those who are taking advantage of people in that industry.

This confuses me now, imho the various technical rule breaches they make (€30 warning etc) aren't really substantive and won't make much difference to the people who call them if enforced. That leads me to assume that you feel it's their core business (psychic readings etc) which is "taking advantage of people", and that they should be fined for this. Seeing as you don't think they should be put down, are you saying they should be let stay in business and repeatedly fined for what they do ? I'm sure I've misunderstood you somewhere along the line because that makes no sense at all.