£2m fine for breakfast broadcaster

Breakfast broadcaster GMTV has been fined a record £2m by media regulator Ofcom for conducting fraudulent phone-in competitions.

During its investigation Ofcom found that GMTV was guilty of early selection, meaning competition finalists were picked before phone lines had closed to entries. This meant that many callers stood no chance of being entered into the competition and in some cases viewers were wasting up to £1.80 a call.

Ofcom also found that in some instances the breakfast show was selecting 15 competition finalists between 6-8am and the remaining five at 09.00 after the lines had closed. The regulator said that this meant that viewers calling between 8.30-9am had “significantly less chance of being selected as a finalist than those who entered before 8.30am.”

This totalled 18 million people being charged for premium-rate calls without a chance of winning the competition. With the average cost of a call being over £1, it is thought that the revenue generated by callers with no hope of winning could be in excess of £20m.

When contacted by Computeractive, GMTV admitted “serious operational errors in the running of its competitions.”

The company said it would be offering refunds to entrants, who are being urged to apply through its online refund system which will remain open, for “the foreseeable future”. It would not say how it would ensure all these people received their refunds saying only “Deloitte are handling all claims on our behalf.”

In addition it has also held 250 new prize draws, each with a prize of £10,000 for those who were “left out first time around” and made a £250,000 donation to Childline.

In a separate case, premium-rate telephone regulator Icstis has cracked down on the phone company behind GMTV phone services.

It has fined Opera Telecom a record £250,000, banned it from holding phone competitions for three months and ordered it to pay a refund to viewers who lodged complaints.

Icstis said the case was one of the biggest in terms of consumer harm and amount of money loss.

This year there have been a number of cases where the public were encouraged to phone in to take part in competitions which had already closed. This included Channel 4’s Richard and Judy, where viewers were urged to call the You Say, We Pay quiz, and the BBC was fined £50,000 by Ofcom for altering the result of a poll to name a cat.