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 a vague 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 following messages were all quite easy questions and always accompanied by the network's very attractive encouragement to increase points to increase the chance of winning 30 million VND. For every correct answer, the 9696 switchboard sent another question, each time the account lost 8,000 VND.
MobiFone also invites to play the lottery |
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 of the 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 can be listed as: "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 all 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 format makes customers think the game is a race of scores, the highest scorer will receive the prize. But in reality, the prize is decided by a lucky draw.
On the afternoon of November 21, at the drawing 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 get 10 points to participate in the prize drawing and if they answer correctly, they will get 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 less 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 they have enough money in their account to send messages. Therefore, as of 4 p.m. on November 21, after just over 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 Trade Promotion Department (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 be inviting subscribers to gamble for a chance to win 30 million VND, a Vinaphone representative said that in reality, 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 absolutely do not include the content of answering questions to provide knowledge to customers as explained above.
(According to Tuoi Tre)
