There’s an advert on the TV currently that is a disgrace. It asks people to text in to “find out if you and your partner are compatible” with some ridiculous numerology test. At first I just thought it a little piece of nonsense; then I saw the price. Disgusting!
The following is from its terms and conditions (Im not linking to it as that helps its Google ranking and I couldn’t stomach knowing I’d done that):
“Your1TrueLove is a subscription service (the “Service”) with an initial 3 messages sent at £3.00 each and then ongoing horoscope messages at £9.00 per week.”
So there you are, innocently texting for a bit of fun and suddenly you’re paying £9 a week! And let’s remember the people doing this are likely (I hope) to be teenagers. Put this in the Demotivator tool and it’ll quickly tell you that someone on £6 an hour would spend “£468.00 a year on the love test and [would need to] work 3.3 week(s) a year to pay for it.”
I depise such hideous things. It’s a simple way to prey on those who aren’t aware they will pay so much. Sure, charge a one-off £3 for the service; while it’s not worth it, I wouldn’t say it was immoral. Yet this type of thing isn’t a service you want regularly, it’s a one-off, so trapping people into an expensive subscription is just out of order.
Of course if ever you do get trapped on one of these services the thing to do is text STOP back (also see the Stop unwanted calls & texts article); this is now a requirement of all such (legal) operators. And if you want to calculate your love, there are plenty of free ones online such as The Love Calculator; although as it says the MSG and I aren’t compatible…. I don’t believe it anyway!
