Channel Five had an excellent programme tonight, 'House Trap', fronted by Esther Rantzen. It exposed the truly astonishing over-charging by a national TV aerial firm. Most victims were vulnerable people. As a retired aerial installer I was shocked and angered. Please watch it and warn your elderly and vulnerable.
When I were a young TV Engineer I had a manager who had the philosophy that the "old fogies" were going to die soon anyway, so they may as well give their money to him. My colleague who had a heart of gold and myself worked for him.
Many times, pensioners that had every appearance of being in need were charged a basic call out fee rather than the full cost of the repair.
Come uppance time occurred when a pensioners daughter phoned into the manager that his Engineer had not charged for the parts fitted and put NFF [no fault found] on the receipt. She wanted to know if he was on the fiddle.
The mark up on Pinnacle valves was ridiculous. They were a cheap brand, and you didn't dare tap one to see if the insulation was sound, so if the odd one or two got overlooked The return visit which should be a warranty on the failiures would at least not be too much of a drain on the customer if the next person charged the full rate.
AB
And see how channel 5 managed to show a commercial for the very company the show was investigating during an ad break.
GH
Its also interesting that they can stream the ads but the actual program doesn't have enough bandwidth to even play.
It streamed absolutely fine here, but there were no ads shown, just the program break screens then straight back in. Companies like this and there are a lot of them, need to be stopped and prosecuted hard.
Hmm, I hate this site. I cannot find any button to play the episode nor any links that show as real links. One has to guess it seems. Quite why it is that the BBC can make this kind of stuff work, but ch 5 cannot is a mystery to me and many other blind users. Brian
That sort of thing is quite common due to the way advertising is sold these days. The people who do the scheduling of ads are not interested in the show, only its timing and its basic audience profile. Brian
Try hitting spacebar twice after it loads ... which seems to pause and then unpause it.
Once upon a time, when the BBC owned the Radio Times, I had great pleasure in refusing an advert for someone's HiFi amplifier which read "Because it uses a 100 watt amplifier, there is no distorion".
At one time, the IBA had very strict guidelines about ads shown within a prog. For example, you couldn't have the same actor or actors in both. As that looked like sponsorship.
But of course controls on advertising don't suit the advertisers. So best to abolish the IBA. ;-)
On 09:33 23 Nov 2018, "Brian Gaff" snipped-for-privacy@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote in news:pt8hh1$15t$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:
I thought there was some regulation which specifically prevents interested parties placing adverts in programmes which mention them?
On 20:45 22 Nov 2018, Bill Wright snipped-for-privacy@f2s.com wrote in news:pt74hv$uhu$ snipped-for-privacy@gioia.aioe.org:
I can't get the video to play. What are the main points it makes?
The link is broken on the page. Go to
Bill
Streamed fine here, but then I use Ublock Origin addon with Firefox.
In article snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com, Archibald Tarquin Blenkinsopp snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com scribeth thus
We did much the same thing pensioners were to be treated to the odd freebie, it was the only company most of them had the old telly!...
Just as an aside,
The two Emley towers look good in the dark.
In message snipped-for-privacy@brightview.co.uk>, Jim K snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com writes
Like
Three days ago, at dusk, Emley was shrouded in mist with only the tops of the two structures poking though. The sun caught them and from here (16 miles away) they looked like a pair of evening stars.
Bill
Anoraks on lads, you can follow her antics here;)..
Yes. Also to ensure that adverts don't feature presenters or others appearing in the programme.
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