ICSTIS, the premium rate services regulator, has today issued tough new rules to boost consumer trust and confidence in Quiz TV services. The new measures, which will come into force in four weeks’ time, will give viewers a better understanding of their chances of getting through to programmes, as well as giving them clearer information about the cost of each call they make to participate.
The three key areas of change are as follows:
1. Transparency
The chances of acceptance or rejection of an attempt by a viewer to get beyond the first stage must be shown on-screen in near real-time. A prominent and permanently visible stand-alone display showing the total number of entries to the service in the preceding 15-minute period is now required. This must be updated at no more than 10-minute intervals.
2. Pricing Information
Pricing information must be spoken by a presenter or voice-over at intervals of no more than 10 minutes. This will complement existing pricing information requirements, which ensure call costs are given on-screen and as part of the recorded introductory message on the phone lines themselves.
3. Call Cost Warnings
Call cost warnings must be provided to all callers at intervals of no more than each £10 spent in each calendar day. Alternatively, warnings may be provided at set call intervals in any calendar day that equate to accumulations of £10 of call spend (for example, after every tenth call where the cost of each call is £1).
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As part of our Loquax Blog we intend to ask websites why they run competitions and what they get from them. The idea is to help compers understand the viewpoint of a site running competitions and get to know the promoters. First up for interview is a good friend of Loquax, Prezzybox.com. We’ve had the pleasure of working with Prezzybox for a number of years as well as getting to know the owner Zak Edwards.
1. Who are Prezzybox & What Do They Do?
Prezzybox.com are an online gift retailer selling 1000’s of unique and exciting gifts gadgets and gizmos.
2. Why do Prezzybox.com run competitions?
For a number of reasons. It helps builds the brand name and enables us to build our customer database for future marketing opportunities.
3. What kind of prizes do you giveaway & on average how many people enter?
We’ve given away everything from little £20 prizes to £800 Football Tables. I think the value of the prize largely determines how many entrants you have but typically we’ll get around 2000 entrants but we’ve had as many as 5000 entrants when giving away an impressive prize.
4. How do you deal with multiple entries?
Our clever technical chaps build a system which only allows users to enter once.
5. How do you pick winners? And do you have a winner’s list section?
Our techies have actually written a script which will pick a winner at random. Yes - we have a winners list section too.
6. You run a review competition for your products - do you get many entries?
A surprising amount actually, which is really pleasing as the feature is still pretty new. We have around 100 new text reviews a month and approximately 20 pictures. The amazing thing is we’ve never actually promoted this feature yet or actually encouraged users to leave comments. We’ve put together a promotional schedule which we are launching in June to encourage customers to review products. This should hopefully increase these figures substantially.
7. Do you have any plans for competitions in the next few months? Anything to look out for?
Yes. We’re looking to do things a little bit more ‘cuter’. Instead of just running a run of the mill “answer this question” type competition we’re going to run a number of competitions which involve customer interactivity in a bid to have them using their brain a bit more. Hopefully this will increase site stickyness, have a viral element to it and also encourage users to navigate the site to get answers. Watch this space.
We’d like to thank Zak for his help in answering our questions. And don’t forget that all Loquax users can enjoy £5 off orders over £20 at Prezzybox.com by using discount code ‘loquax’.
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If you’re a fan of Dragon’s Den then you’ll be aware of the Isis Puzzle. The creators were after a £200,000 cash injection for 25% of their business from the Dragons, but despite an offer of £200,000 for half of the business, the owners of Isis left the den without their money. This hasn’t deterred them though and the Isis Puzzle continues to grow.
Intrigued by the puzzle, we decided to look and lo and behold even found a competition for you to enter at Isis Adventure. This is a free search and gives you the chance to win an Isis! According to the site “You will need to find a map in order to locate a free Isis. It’s you against the rest of the world, so you will need to act quickly”. It’ll be interesting to see how many other competition sites list this site over the next few weeks!
Back to the Isis - it’s essentially a puzzle. You need to purchase a handmade alloy orb that’s constructed in layers and covered in cryptic hieroglyphics. All you have to do is open it by cracking the combination - and that’s the tough part. Every Isis is unique, and once you’ve found the solution you can then go on and hunt for pyramids full of treasure and if that’s not enough, there are more orbs to buy. Each pyramid contains a gold coin worth £500 and a number of silver coins worth £20 each.
It’s a race against time, so there’s a competitive edge to it all. The orbs though are expensive (£99 at Firebox and The Gadget Shop) and that will no doubt put people off taking part. Players will be able to get clues from the games’ website to help them in the quest to unlock the mystery and find the hidden treasure.
If you fancy something different and want to exercise your brain (and have a few quid to spare) then Isis might be worth a try. If you don’t have the cash, but still want to see if you have what it takes to crack such a devious puzzle then make sure you try the free search puzzle at the Isis site.
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Loquax has launched two new prize draws this week. Up for grabs is a Nintendo Wii (or you can take an alternative cash prize draw if you wish) and yet again we’re giving away a fabulous Ipod Nano. Both competitions can be entered each week to gain extra entries into the draw. The Ipod Nano prize draw ends on 24th June, with the Wii closing on 25th July.
The prize draws are only open to registered users.
Congratulations go to M Messenger who won our last Ipod Nano prize draw (closed 24th March). A limited edition Red Ipod Nano - plus an engraved message from Loquax - is on it’s way to him.
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