Strictly no refund in voting farce
Monday, December 15th, 2008
The BBC has angered Strictly Come Dancing fans by refusing to refund their money after it cancelled the public phone vote on Saturday night.
The latest in a series of phone-in blunders by the BBC, the corporation’s last minute decision to abandon the eviction has been described by viewers as a “farce” which resulted from the inability to master basic mathematics.
In Saturday’s semi-final the judging panel gave contestants Rachel Stevens and Lisa Snowdon two very high scores, meaning that due to his low score, Tom Chambers would automatically end up in the dance-off, regardless of how many public votes he received. However, many viewers had already rung in to keep the Holby City actor in the competition by the time producers made the decision to cancel the phone vote.
Many viewers were particularly baffled by the BBC’s failure to foresee the voting confusion, which threatens to put a dampener on next week’s final. Hundreds have already complained about the mistake, which also saw the show finishing abruptly ten minutes before it was scheduled to.
An insider from the show said “It was such a simple bit of maths to get wrong. What made it most embarrassing is that people from outside the BBC who were watching the show had to alert them to what was happening.”
The BBC has said that all the votes will rollover to the next show, in which all three couples will compete. But many viewers feel that they have been swindled, and do not want their votes to rollover to the next show when they haven’t even seen it. Irate posts on the official Strictly Come Dancing message boards imply that the judges deliberately gave Stevens and Snowdon high scores to keep Chambers in the competition.
“Absolutely disgusting, the BBC deceived all the voters, you should be ashamed of yourselves,” wrote one. “Assuring us that they go through to next week is a farce, we voted on this week’s dances.”
Another commenter wrote “Brendon and Vincent should be very angry. Their 50% chance of winning has now been diluted to 33% following the Saturday fiasco. Tom is NOT up to the standard of either girl and it is grossly unfair that he now has an equal chance of winning the final.”
Whatever the outcome of the final there are bound to be complaints. If Tom Chambers wins (admittedly an unlikely scenario), fans of Lisa Snowdon and Rachel Stevens will say that he shouldn’t have been there in the first place. If either Snowdon or Stevens wins then Chambers could claim that Stevens and Snowdon had an advantage, since the only people who voted for him were those who didn’t realise their response would be useless.
A spokesperson for the BBC said that the show’s producers are to “look at ways in which they can avoid this situation happening again, definitely”.
