83XFM shortcode "Doesn't work" because "You can't text letters"

I went to see Amazing Grace at the cinema tonight. I fancied a bit of ye olde stuff and, well, the film met my expectations.

However, I forgot it was Wednesday night. Never go to the cinema on Wednesdays in the UK. You see, Wednesday is “Orange Wednesday”. The UK operator, Orange, sponsors a 2-for-1 deal on cinema tickets at most cinemas. If you’re an Orange customer, you can get a 2-for-1 on any film if it’s a Wednesday.

Unfortunately the whole sorry process is a total arse. You have to text to get a special code. Then you have to arse around staring at the wall whilst the cinema staffer waits for the machine to verify your code, so they can process you and give you the tickets. The net result? Huge queues. Huge queues of folk brandishing their mobiles. Whilst it’s an excellent example of mobile marketing, it’s a total ARSE when you just want to buy a ticket and get in to see your film (that’s me).

Standing in the HUGE queue in front of me were four guys. One of which caught my attention with the exclamation:

Yeah! I tried that XFM thing, you had to text [something] to 83XFM, right? But it didn’t work!

His friend queried this.

Yeah, see, when you put 8-3-X-F-M, the phone just says, ‘invalid’. It don’t like letters.

‘Am I hearing things?’ I thought.

I almost broke into the conversation and said, ‘Have you tried typing the numbers corresponding to the letters on the keypad?’

I thought it better not to. I think they would not have been impressed at me pointing this out.

The guy went on for a few minutes about how silly it was for radio station XFM to promote a shortcode that had letters in it, when letters clearly didn’t work……………………….

SURELY people know you have to type the numbers?