£91,000 phone bill calling chatlines

(09-05-2013 15:48 )munch1917 Wrote:  There may not be a specific 'Babeshows Anonymous', but it is my understanding that there IS help available via various organisations (charities, NHS mental health groups etc) for addictions of ALL kinds, both physical and mental, which would include this kind of addiction.
Getting access to that help may be more difficult, because this is a very specialist type of addiction, and the resources available are not as plentiful as for the more common addictions, and the help is more specialised and therefore the people providing it are more thin on the ground, but it is out there.

Indeed, this help group shows the difficulties and some success stories of those who are addicted to porn:
http://www.yourbrainrebalanced.com/index...29120e707&

One key difference with the Babe Shows is that in many cases the addiction is not a sexual one, which does not fall into the specialist treatment that the NHS can offer.

(09-05-2013 16:39 )MONEY BANG Wrote:  

(09-05-2013 16:06 )RESPONSIBLE ADULT Wrote:  Well Money Bang, you believe what you want to. But if you do really think someone from the Tory party would sully him/her self by involving themselves in something so unsavoury. Then I must say. "No it will never happen. NO, NEVER"!!

Unsavory? Offering support to victims is unsavory? Setting up a scheme to assist those who are unable to work back into paid employment is unsavory?

If they were campaigning for less regulation, freedom to have explicit content broadcast on TV, then yes, that would be viewed as "unsavory" in Conservative terms, helping those who are on long term sickness due to addiction (such as Kev, by his own admission in interviews) back to work is well in line with Conservative political mantra.

Besides, Kev has told the senior Conservative that he no longer wishes to assist in setting up such a foundation, unless someone else who is willing and able to confront their addiction steps up to assist in the foundations creation, then it is on hold.

"RESPONSIBLE ADULT" you seem to have missed numerous points in this discussion. You said previously that Kev does not exist, that he is a fictional character created by an advertising agency. May I suggest you read this link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...iness.html

But it is all made up.

(08-05-2013 18:33 )MONEY BANG Wrote:  If you can say, in all honesty, that there are not people who spend the vast percentage of their day watching and tweeting the Babe Show performers and visiting internet websites dedicated to the babe shows, then there is not a problem.

Many years ago I used to spend all my time in strip clubs. You could call it an addiction but I was having fun.

(09-05-2013 21:33 )elgar1uk Wrote:  Many years ago I used to spend all my time in strip clubs.

When you say "all my time" do you mean all your time or all your spare time?

(09-05-2013 21:33 )elgar1uk Wrote:  You could call it an addiction but I was having fun.

What I would call an addiction is behavior that meets this criteria:

Addiction is the continued use of a mood altering substance or behavior despite adverse consequences, or a neurological impairment leading to such behaviors.
Addictions can include, but are not limited to, drug abuse, exercise addiction, sexual addiction and gambling. Classic hallmarks of addiction include impaired control over substances or behavior, preoccupation with substance or behavior, continued use despite consequences, and denial. Habits and patterns associated with addiction are typically characterized by immediate gratification (short-term reward), coupled with delayed deleterious effects (long-term costs).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addiction

(06-05-2013 16:53 )RESPONSIBLE ADULT Wrote:  this plot was conceived by ad men, as a way of making the people that phone up these sites feel smug

If the story was conceived by ad men they would have got into most serious trouble with Vodafone and possibly even been sued by vodafone.

(09-05-2013 23:30 )MONEY BANG Wrote:  When you say "all my time" do you mean all your time or all your spare time?

All the time I wasn't working. (Since I could hold a job down I feel there were no adverse consequences.)

Since the forum member "RESPONSIBLE ADULT" continues to spin his outlandish conspiracy theories, I asked Kev to let his local news outlet know the Conservative MP had lent previous assistance. Today they published this story on page 8 of the Leicestershire Mercury:

"MP to help £90k bill man

By alan thompson

An MP is to write to a phone company after one of her constituents ran up a £90,000 mobile phone bill.
Kevin Waldrum made international headlines last month when he was charged £91,184 by Vodafone for calling adult entertainment services between September and November, after splitting with his girlfriend of two years.

He said he told the women he called about his heartache and they sympathised.
Unemployed Mr Waldrum continued to call after getting a £19,333 mobile phone bill for using the £2-a-minute line.

Another bill for £71,850 followed, but Vodafone later cut its demand to £29,083.
Loughborough MP Nicky Morgan met the 45-year-old unemployed man, of Loughborough, at her office.
She said she was going to ask Vodafone how people were allowed to run up such large bills.
She will also contact Leicestershire Trading Standards in a bid to stop other people making the same mistake.
Mrs Morgan said: "I find it concerning people are able to run up a bill of this size without being contacted by Vodafone.
"I will be approaching the company to see how it monitors excessive use and how it expect people can afford to pay massive bills such as this.
"It is able to send a message to people warning them. There is obviously a wider issue here.
"Kevin is also keen that no-one else should repeat his mistakes and I will take it up with Leicestershire County Council Trading Standards to see if it can use his case as a warning."
Kevin said: "It's good to know I've got someone like this behind me. I just hope she is able to help me.
"I've been left traumatised, with feelings of anxiety, stress and anger. I just want it to end.
"I've told Vodafone it will take me 47 years to pay back the money at £10 a week.
"My biggest hope is it will drop the bill and let me get on with the rest of my life.
"I admit I am 30 per cent to blame, but I'm not going to pay it. If the worst comes to the worst, they will have to bankrupt me – they're not getting a penny out of me.
"I don't want to go bankrupt, but I'd sooner do that than pay my bill."
"Once this is done with, I want to make sure other people don't get into my situation.
"I don't want other people to make my stupid mistake."
A spokeswoman for Vodafone said: "By his own admission, Mr Waldrum made calls to premium-rate adult entertainment services more or less continuously over a period of two months until we suspended the services on October 21 when the total debt was £91,000.
"We had barred a phone used by Mr Waldrum on September 11 for high usage but he got round this by requesting a replacement SIM card from a store.
"We cannot manage our customers' spending for them, but we will try to alert them to it if we are aware of an unusual high spending pattern.
"Looking back, we can see we could have alerted Mr Waldrum on September 18.
"Since we missed the opportunity to alert him at this stage, we have agreed to waive the £61,000 incurred after this point as a gesture of goodwill."

^^^ http://www.thisisleicestershire.co.uk/MP...story.html

So his claim that Voda had already cancelled the bill was clearly more bullshit.

I, and I am sure many others, still fail to see this idiot as a 'victim'. Nor do I see him as an 'addict'. He was only calling for two months, there are those who spend (considerably) lesser amounts, but have have been doing so consistently month after month for many years, they are more like addicts than this guy. Add in his bragging and bullshit on twitter, and it is hard to feel any pity for him.

To me he remains just another of life's dumbasses. He needs to take responsibility for his actions and accept the consequences. Actions have consequences in life, you can't just run away and expect someone else to deal with it. The best he does here is claim 30% responsibility, well his bill was 90G, they reduced it to under 30G, that's very roughly 30%, so that agrees with his own assessment, set about paying and shut up whining, but no, he still says he won't pay a penny!

Vodafone clearly dropped the ball here and need to look at their procedures, but they still aren't responsible for what every single idiot does with their service. When you get a contract, there is an element of good faith, an element of trust that you will use your contract sensibly and within your means. If you deliberately and consciously choose to do otherwise, as Kev has done, YOU have to take primary responsiblity for that, not just blame everyone else for allowing it.
If a driver gets a speeding ticket, it's their own fault, no good blaming the manufacturer for making a car that goes that fast!

The issue is that many people choose to ignore the concept of personal responsibility, it is alien to them. The "THATCHER DEAD" thread on this forum offers clear evidence that many chose to blame their own social and emotional inadequacies on the establishment, rather than take control of their own lives.

However, one thing that cannot be overlooked is that certain members of society are unable to function without the assistance of others, they are unable to take personal responsibility for themselves, these people should not be demonised or ridiculed.

So, thanks to Kevin and his amazing uncontrollable ability to dial premium rate phone numbers, the 900 channels are about to stumble right into the sights of our friends in Parliament.

This only ends one way.