Miss Cleo has been getting a bum rap lately. I don't mean the company that promotes and profits from her personality and skill is getting the bad press, I mean Miss Cleo the person is getting the bad rap.
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"Since the law is leery of us anyway, I find the actions of some adult Internet product salesmen unfathomable." |
From recent reports, we've discovered that Miss Cleo's real name is actually Youree Cleomili Harris. She is from Jamaica and was known as a shaman there. Of course, I could hang a sign with a red palm in front of the house and be known as a psychic in my country. The thing is. I think Miss Cleo is a manufactured product, kind of like the Back Street Boys. I think some dudes with an eye to make big dollars in the 900 number psychic trade thought an entertaining unknown like Youree would do better than second rate celebrities had done at generating new clients.
They were right, her personality has garnered her huge amounts of notoriety and fans.
The company who produces her psychic hotline service is another matter. The FTC recently charged them with violating telemarketing regulations and outright harassment of customers. It seems they've supposedly been calling private citizens who are on a state sanctioned DO NOT CALL list.
The company's also been forced to change the language of their advertising to clearly inform the viewer/customer that money will be charged after the initial three minutes of the call. In other words, their info-mercials mislead watchers into believing that the whole first call was free. The company that bankrolls Miss Cleo (Psychic Readers Network) has been in the 1-900 psychic business for a good while and is not at all unfamiliar with lawsuits and customer complaints.
The problem for Miss Cleo is I seriously doubt she has much involvement in the financial workings of the Hotline Company. I think she's just a spokesmodel and probably makes no where near the money the owners of Psychic Readers Network do. Even though the FTC is looking to include her in the charges being brought against her company, I really think she's just an actress that took the wrong part.
When I hear about the Miss Cleo saga, I think about sales methods.
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For instance, according to some companies who were hired to supply the legions of psychic telephone operators, those operators didn't even shuffle tarot cards or give actual sessions. They read from scripts. They were told that they had to make those calls last and average of 19-21 minutes if they wanted to continue getting paid to be a telephone psychic. They had quotas. They weren't psychics and they were instructed to say whatever it took to keep the customer on the line at $4.99 a minute.
The Psychic Readers Network even affixes a disclaimer to all their advertisements: "For entertainment purposes only". Everything about the Psychic Readers Networks looks like psychic snake oil, yet the company has been purported to earn over $400 million a year.
While I think porn is a more substantial product than psychic readings as far as polite society is concerned, psychic hotlines aren't nearly as shameful as credit card charges to fuckygirly.com or phone fees to 1-900-sitface. Since the law is leery of us anyway, I find the actions of some adult Internet product salesmen unfathomable.
How can one promote a trial membership as absolutely free or force the download of a dialer without realizing they are cutting their own throats? How much can a webmaster make that would justify illegal site redirection or image theft? What does it avail a man to gain a fortune and screw the future of his whole profession?
Isn't it bad enough that credit card companies laud over us inequitable regulations? While I doubt that credit card merchants will never shut out adult businesses entirely, they are making it so only huge corporations with deep pockets can continue to operate an adult Internet venture. They set unrealistic percentiles in chargeback ratios that apply in the real world but are impractical in the cyber adult market. They prefer to penalize the vendor instead of the non-paying customer.
I guess I think of Miss Cleo because I see her and her type of business as being a degree removed from the adult Internet. I see us walking the same path and I worry. I cringe every time I hear of some adult webmaster cheating a sponsor or tricking a surfer. I keep fearing a day will come that some fool adult site owner will step over the line and screw the future for us all.