The current furore over the great TV phone in rip off has no doubt fascinated many media watchers. I was watching TV coverage on this yesterday (there was the promise of more scandal to come btw) and I found myself reminded of the last scandal that happened under the nose of a media regulator, which saw many members of the public ripped off.
The Auction World.tv scandal happened back in 2004 and I would consider it a result of the failure of the regulator responsible, Ofcom, to react to a fast changing world of multichannel TV. Auction and shopping TV channels were a relatively new addition to British TV, but Ofcom didn't keep up, and before long Aution World.tv were the focus of an unprecedented amount of complaints from members of the public who had paid over the odds for substandard jewellery - if they even received the goods that they'd paid for at all. Ofcom eventually reacted to the complaints, fined Auction World.tv a record £450,000 and finally revoked their broadcasting license. This sent the rogue TV channel into bankruptcy and left hundreds out of pocket, and it could be argued that had Ofcom been quicker to act more people may have been able to get their money back. You can read the final Ofcom adjudication here while Wikipedia sums up the whole sorry affair here.
The TV phone in rip off could be seen as a repeat of Auction World - ICSTIS, the regulator, has failed to understand the growing interactive TV market, with the result that all kinds of dodgy practices have crept in. This won't be as bad as Auction World and people stand some chance of getting their money back this time. But surely regulators themselves now need to be placed under the spotlight and asked why they seem unable to keep up with progress in their supposed fields of expertise.
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