WHAT'S THE STORY WITH PREMIUM-RATE PHONE PSYCHICS?:ARE "psychics" who perform telephone readings genuine mystics taking advantage of technology to bring their gift to a wider audience or charlatans taking advantage of the gullible with high-priced but worthless yarns?
For most, the answer may be blindingly obvious, but that doesn’t stop many apparently rational people blowing irrational sums on having their fortunes told in such a fashion by “psychics” who are, if Pricewatch’s sole experience is any reflection, as insightful as an ironing board.
The most successful – and certainly the most well-known – provider of phone-led psychic services in Ireland is Realm Communications which was established 12 years ago by would-be spaceman Tom Higgins – he’s currently vying with Bill Cullen and PJ King to be Ireland’s first space tourist as part of Richard Branson’s space programme.
Realm’s Irish Psychics Live claims to be “the single most successful service of its kind anywhere in the world”, where “genuine Celtic psychics, the most psychic race in the world” are ready to take your call. Only “the most spiritually gifted individuals are selected”, potential callers are assured. “If you want to know what the future has in store for you why not call Irish Psychics Live?” the introduction to the service concludes.
Why not indeed? One reason may be found in the site’s terms and conditions where an apparent contradiction emerges. It says that Realm “does not make any specific claims about the abilities of its readers and does not imply or mean to imply that any or all of its readers are capable of foreseeing or predicting future events other than as a matter of personal opinion”.
This clarification exists because Regtel, the independent regulator of premium-rate telecommunications services, insists on it. Realm has long had a fractious relationship with Regtel and the pair have frequently clashed in the media and the courts.
Earlier this month a detente of sorts was reached which will see the Realm refund some users of its psychics services and adopt Regtel’s code of practice.
Evert Bopp won’t be getting a refund from Irish Psychics Live and nor is he entitled to one, but he does have strong opinions about the value for money he got from the service. Originally from Holland but living in Tipperary, Bopp was researching his family tree and wanted to find out what had become of his grandfather, last seen fleeing Japanese soldiers through an Indonesian jungle with a serious abdominal wound.
Bopp’s wife suggested, light-heartedly, that he contact Irish Psychics Live. The psychic “never came out with a straightforward answer,” he grumbles. “She was just asking leading questions and trying to assemble a picture – it was pretty transparent, really.”
After half an hour, she had deduced that his granddad had gone missing in central Europe, developed amnesia, settled down behind the Iron Curtain and raised a large family before retiring. The good – if entirely improbable – news was that he was still hale and hearty save for a nagging doubt that someone, somewhere was looking for him.
“It cost me a fortune but it was worth it just to see for sure what a sham it was,” he says.
Pricewatch decided to give Realm’s “genuine Celtic psychics” another chance and called last week. After a minute (or €2.40), I was connected to a pleasant-sounding Dublin woman who asked for my star sign – Leo, as it happens. Vaguely, I suggested that I was in the market for a new job and was told that there were four offers just around the corner. Mystic Marge (not her real name) sounded genuinely pleased when the cards revealed that my “money aspect is very good”. Yay! She then used her gift to establish that I was an accountant or banker and repeated the claim that, unlike the rest of the country, my finances were set for a big bounce. There’ll be travel involved in the new job and, while away later this year, I’ll meet the person I’m destined to marry. She’s beautiful, foreign, with long, dark hair and skin like alabaster. It will be a whirlwind romance.
WE’RE EIGHT MINUTES in and it’s going swimmingly – although my current wife might not agree – when a pre-recorded voice interrupts to tell me €20 has been spent; to be fair to Realm, there is no ambiguity about the charges. Mystic Marge tells me I will have three healthy children in the next four years (I hope my existing children aren’t too jealous). “No doctor is coming up in your cards,” she says, but adds, “I am getting that you can feel a bit down but we all can feel like that sometimes”. Indeed.
She says my new accountancy job will make me feel “more complete” and that I will have “strong ties to a foreign county”. She’s anxious to return to my beautiful, dark-haired future wife, but I’ve no more time to chat. If I’m going to become an accountant by the end of June and get married next year, there are exams to pass and a divorce to arrange.
The next call Pricewatch made was to Tom Higgins to find out if he could stand over his claim that the 60 “psychics” employed by Realm can possibly deliver accurate phone readings. His arguments are well practiced and, over the course of a long call (which would have cost in excess of €100 had we been paying premium rates), he stoutly rejected every single criticism of his service.
The conflict between the terms and conditions and the promotional material on the website is due to the regulator forcing Realm to include disclaimers. “Because we have to say that it is an entertainment service does not mean that there is not something else to it,” he says. Pricewatch’s reading was nonsense because we had not approached it with a “good heart”. Bopp’s criticism was unjustified because who can say for sure that his seriously hurt granddad did not wind up in Central Europe with amnesia after escaping from the Japanese army. Arch your eyebrows as high as you like – and Pricewatch’s were very, very high – and still Higgins holds the line. All he will accept is that “they can’t get it right all the time”.
He displays an almost childlike sense of hurt that anyone could possibly question his motivation for setting up the service and denies it makes him much money now – although he does accept it was very profitable at one time.
HE REPEATEDLY CLAIMS not to be running the site for financial gain but because he has an unshakeable faith in the psychic world. “I personally believe in it. If I thought this was a scam I would close it down now. I can tell you how violently passionate I am about it but I can’t prove it to you.”
He says it is a lot less harmful than cigarettes, alcohol and gambling but gets more bad press. “Why are we being picked on? We are being picked on because we are vulnerable.” He grows particularly animated when talking about Liveline with Joe Duffy, which ran a major – and unsurprisingly negative – item on Irish Psychics Live recently. Higgins believes he was treated unfairly by the show and says allegations that he was a liar and a cheat were allowed to go unchallenged. He claims that in the wake of the show his staff received a significant amount of abusive calls from anonymous callers to Realm’s Dublin headquarters.
A cynic would say they should have seen it coming.
