Channel4's "Great Mobile Rip Off" dispatched to dustbin

Alas I was working. Blogging away here. I didn’t get the opportunity to sit down and waste 60 minutes — or, er, 40-odd minutes with the balance spent watching inane advertising — on viewing Channel4’s latest docutainment show, Dispatches.

Titled ‘The Great Mobile Rip Off’, it claimed to be ready to expose, shock and generally appall the viewing public.

Did it?

Well I’m sure they took a good swing at it. Based on the real-time feedback from some of the mobile industry’s great and good, it seems they failed miserably.

I know one operator that was seriously unimpressed at the way the show’s producer arsed about with them. The producer reportedly sent a list of ‘accusations’ by registered delivery to the operator. Then demanded an immediate response … a few weeks later. When the operator challenged them to produce proof of delivery (the operator couldn’t find any record of recieving any ‘accusations’), the producer was apparently unable to answer. Ridiculous. The operator then offered a spokesperson to put their (and the industry’s) side. No. Too late. We’re going to air. That was, I’m told, the response. Silly.

I saw a list of accusations. None of them new. All of them with a decent explanation. This is the sort of television programme that should have been made and aired years ago when there really WAS a great mobile rip off.

You can read the shock and horror trail here. (“Barnett reveals how the influence of the networks … stretches to the heart of the Government” — hardly surprising for one of the country’s largest tax-paying industries. Bet Tesco employs lobbyists.)

Pat Phelan, one of the go-to-guys when it comes to trying to do anything in the mobile world, wasn’t at all impressed at the show, commenting:

“People who know nothing about mobiles, shouldn’t be allowed to tell people who know a little about mobile anything”

Our very own Whatleydude was going nuts on Twitter. I asked what he felt:

Y’know that million monkeys and million typewriters thing? Well this is one monkey… Feel like gouging my eyes out with rusty spoons…

Did you watch? What d’ya reckon?