Vinaphone rakes in money by playing the "millionaire" game
After only five weeks of the "SMS Millionaire" program, Vinaphone has earned about 40 billion VND, while the total prize of the program is only... 2.7 billion VND.
Introduced as “a promotion program built on a skill quiz game”, Vinaphone's “SMS Millionaire” program has been inviting subscribers to participate in text messages in an unclear way.
Fee up to 8,000 VND/message.
After only five weeks of implementation, the total fees that customers have to pay is up to more than 40 billion VND.
This is Vinaphone's initial invitation to customers - Photo: TTP
Anh Quoc Anh, subscriber number 091834xxxx, received a message from Vinaphone with the following content: “Congratulations! 091834xxxx is invited to participate in the lucky draw to win 30,000,000 VND in cash from Vinaphone in just a few hours. Send GO to 9696 now to participate in the lucky draw! 8,000 VND/answer”.
Customer bait
Sounds interesting, Mr. Quoc Anh immediately tried his luck and received a message: "You have 10 points = 10 chances to win 30,000,000 VND in a few hours. Answer the next question to enter the surprise world of Vinaphone". Mr. Quoc Anh said that the messages that immediately followed were all quite easy questions and always included the network operator's very attractive encouragement to increase points to increase the chance of winning 30 million VND. For every correct answer, the 9696 switchboard would send another question, each time the account was answered, it lost 8,000 VND.
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Meanwhile, Mr. Xuan Hung, owner of number 091385xxxx, is determined to "play to the end" with the network operator to discover the truth of this game.
Mr. Hung answered questions continuously from the afternoon of November 3 to nearly 10 a.m. on November 4. His total score was nearly 45,000 points. During the game, Mr. Hung received very simple questions such as: "What country is the land of cherry blossoms? 1=France, 2=Japan", "In what year did Vietnam take the name Socialist Republic of Vietnam? 1=1976, 2=2005", "Who is the author of the short story Chi Pheo? 1=Nam Cao, 2=Nguyen Du"...
However, the network's words of encouragement and support were extremely rich and full of the nature of luring "thirsty gamblers" as Mr. Hung commented. Some messages include: "Your answers are great, you are here to win 30,000,000 VND tonight, right! It's possible! Don't hesitate! Speed up with the correct answer", "You are getting closer to 30,000,000 VND in cash, keep answering correctly!". Continuing to text, Mr. Hung received another message: "This is amazing! You are getting closer to 30,000,000 VND in cash from Vinaphone today! You are leading with 43,970 points, keep answering correctly" and followed by another question.
Subscriber 09192579xxx... in My Tho city (Tien Giang) has been participating in this game for the past week. By the afternoon of November 21, the total accumulated points of this subscriber reached 865,990 points. However, he still sees no sign of the end of the game.
Wrong answer also has points
The point accumulation method makes customers think that the game is a race for points, and whoever has the highest score will receive the prize. However, in reality, the prize is decided by a lucky draw.
On the afternoon of November 21, at the drawing session of the program "SMS Millionaire" in the 5th week, Mr. Nguyen Hoang Hai, head of the business department of Vinaphone's Service Development Center, admitted to Tuoi Tre that the system had sent invitation messages to customers to participate in this program. According to Mr. Hai, the system will first send invitation messages to customers to play according to the regulation of only sending three invitation messages to a subscriber. After receiving three messages without the subscriber participating, the system will not continue sending messages. However, for subscribers participating, the system will send questions for customers to answer, including the content inviting customers to play with the content that the more answers, the more points they will accumulate and the more chances to win.
According to Vinaphone regulations, customers who answer incorrectly will also receive 10 points to participate in the lucky draw and if they answer correctly, they will receive 20 points or more depending on the time of texting to participate. Therefore, there are customers who text nearly 3 million points in a day. Although the number of messages is so large, subscribers can only check by texting the switchboard and cannot check the information on the program's website. Thus, customers who accumulate millions of points are only different from those who play with fewer points in that they "have a higher chance" but do not know specifically how.
Vinaphone representative also admitted that the program does not have a maximum score for each subscriber, but any subscriber can send as many messages as they want, as long as there is enough money in the account to send messages. Therefore, as of 4pm on November 21, after only five weeks of implementation, the program had 646,983 customers sending messages with a total of 5,024,986 messages. With a fee of 8,000 VND/message, this amount of messages is equivalent to nearly 40.2 billion VND. Meanwhile, according to the license issued by the Department of Trade Promotion (Ministry of Industry and Trade), the "SMS Millionaire" program took place from October 18, 2011 to January 15, 2012. The total prize value is 2.7 billion VND.
Explaining why the program's text messages appear to invite subscribers to gamble for a chance to win 30 million VND, a Vinaphone representative said that in fact, this is a program that aims to disseminate knowledge and provide information about social and cultural life to subscribers through answering questions. Vinaphone's addition of daily prizes is just to make the program more... interesting.
However, in reality, the document sent by the Trade Promotion Agency to the Telecommunication Service Company confirming the registration for the promotion clearly stated the name of the promotion program as “SMS Millionaire” with the form of a lucky draw. The program's rules completely did not include the content of answering questions to provide knowledge to customers as explained above.
(According to Tuoi Tre)
