to be astonished and saddened by one of those "text/chat sexy women"late night TV ads...

[Jasper]

where the caller gets the privilege of selecting what AGE of woman he wants to chat to (for £1.50 a minute) ? Maximum age 49 , by the way

Really, how have we come to this?

BLuddy....fuck off :o

And there was a terribly sad story a few years back where a young man with learning difficulties was convinced that the woman on a chat line was his fiancee. He told his friends and family he was getting married etc and spent a fortune on the calls. And that was how it came out, because he got a mobile phone bill of thousands that he couldnt pay :(

Sorry, the point of that post was that for most people its a laugh, a means to an end or something that only sad people do. But for the vulnerable, it isnt that funny.

I used to do this but texting. It was pretty horrible, like another poster said, I was basically 6 or 7 different women, sometimes all at once. All done through the computer, it was quite hard work and the pay was crap. Basically we were told to string them along as much as possible. Get the feeling most of them were a bit thick or sad and used to spend hundreds of pounds.

We used to be told to string out the texts as much as possible, so start off with no sex, then progress, but at £1.50 a text, it used to be about 10 messages before you'd even MENTION sex.

Horrible job, don't think I'd do it now.

There was an expose in themedia bout this, maybe 2 months ago. It started off with the headline X% of uni students are involved in the sex industry (thus hooking you in that they were all prostitutes) - when you read the article I found out it was predominatly male students pretending to be females on sex-text sites. As one ex-worker put it "I now know more about strange fetishes than I could have ever dreamed existed". But it went along way into funding his degree.

i did it through uni (phone not text). you got all ages of men calling from teens to oaps. many were married, very few were drunk. some were very odd but the majority seemed pretty normal. you did get a few regulars. i am sure they all knew it was not "real" - like you do when you watch a film.

the "threesomes" via conference call always seemed the most obviously fake to me but the callers didnt seem to mind. my props were an electric toothbrush and a jug water and tin foil (a lot of people appeared to like "watersports")

The pay is crap, most of the men want to believe you are what you say you are, most women who do it end up feeling degraded by it, there is no guarantee that by picking a 'college' girl, you will actually be speaking to a young woman, you are just as likely to be speaking to a 50+ year old.

The 'mature' category (40+yrs) is very popular and gets many many calls.

The only way to make decent money from it is to have 'regular' callers who specifically choose you to ring and ring again, hopefully, these guys will remain on the phone for a long time, since the usual practice is that pay increases the longer he is on the phone.

Sometimes, couples ring the lines too.

The job is sold as an easy job, in the comfort of your own home, the truth is..it is hard work, where some days you have to have the phone glued to your ear for every waking hour to make a reasonable wage, where every caller trots out virtually the same shite, and you have to act like it's the first time you've heard it (when it's the millionth time).
I've heard women say they would find it funny, wouldn't be able to stop laughing...but no matter how good the joke, it isn't funny when you've heard it a hundred times.

It's a very boring way of making very little money, and you rarely leave the house, although you talk to lots of sex starved men.

I actually emailed The Sun's "Dear Deirdre" once over her advice about working for chatlines!

There was a letter on her page from a woman who wondered if it was a reasonably way to make money, and Deirdre came out with such a load of crap that I was moved to email her.

I've never had any time for Deirdre since then.

reasonable, not reasonably.

because people are

lonely
gullible
socially inadequate

and the organisers are making big profits obviously, so there must be a demand for it

at least its safer than going on a date website and being stung for thousands of pounds in scams

What was Deirdre's advice Calamity?

Oh she went totally OTT!

She was full of dire warnings about abusive customers, and the risk of being asked to perform degrading acts, etc etc. I can't remember all of what she said but basically it was clear that she hadn't got a clue what she was talking about.

Personally, I never once had an abusive customer. The rudest any of them ever got was hanging up without saying thank you and goodbye - and they were very much in the minority!

littlemiss - my experience wasnt like that.

you set your own hours - rang the officeti say when you were starting an again when you wanted to finish

callers paid for the length of call they booked - not how long they were actually on for (and they ALWAYS over estimated :) ) you did get extra if they specifically requested one of your personas

you were always allowed to hang up of not comfortable and required to terminate and report any illegal calls (never got one thank god)

sorry for speliing - typing one handed whilst doing other stuff

I suppose it depends which company you work for then. There is a company who are almost always recruiting new women, and it's log on, get paid per minute, log off when you're ready. It is rubbish pay. There are women working for this company who target themselves to earn £50 a day, and will remain 'logged on' for every waking hour to achieve this if necessary, because of course, if you are 'logged on', that is no guarantee that the phone will ring, you have to wait for a caller to select you from your intro.

As others have said it is all a load of twaddle.
The idea is to keep the person (usually a man) on the phone for as long as possible thereby raking up a huge phone bill.
The women aren't really an 18 year old strune across satin sheets waiting for the man. More likely a 35 year old mother of 3 doing her shopping list whilst she chats to the man, trying to earn some extra cash to spend with her husband.

that sounds bad littlemiss

it was along time ago that i did it (wouldnt do it now) and i expect things have changed a lot

The company I worked for, it went like this:

Phone up and log on (all done with PI numbers). Get on with housework etc. Phone rings - pick up and it's either a friend or double glazing salesman or whatever, OR an automated voice from the chatline which says "Curvy Girls" or whichever category you've got a caller in.

Take call.

You're only paid for the length of time you're actually taking a call for - NOT the time you're logged in for.

Money goes up the longer you're on the phone.

When you're no longer in a position/don't want to take any more calls, you log off.

So you don't have the phone glued to your ear all day.

I had a fairly regular caller who was bloody brilliant in so many ways:

1. He'd be on the phone for a minimum of 3 hours;

2. He didn't require me to say much at all - he just wanted to talk about us going to a club together, and how other men would chat me up, and how he'd be really jealous (cuckold fantasist).

3. He had the most GORGEOUS voice - in fact I'd almost have paid to hear him recite the phone book!

How/where do they recruit though? Seriously, I've never seen an advert wanting women to sign up for it.

Reminds me of an old story: 20 years ago a friend of mine's DH went missing. A couple of days later he rang, very sorrowful, needing to be rescued from Manchester because the chat line girl had strung him along so successfully that he went off to find her, thinking they had a future together

i saw an ad in the back pages of a tabloid and was recruited from that but again ths was 15 years or so ago so probably not how they recruit now

mandy - i hope your friend did not take her DH back?

I think a woman from Bounty gave me the details of where to sign up Mandy! There was a thread on there on the subject and I enquired.

OMG about your friend's husband! Did she forgive him?

I think she did forgive him, yes, but he really was more of a cocklodger than anything else so I think she threw him out in the end. We lost touch not long after the Manchester incident.