Fri 29 Aug 2008
“You can help children in distress.” screamed the email from BT Broadband as it arrived in my inbox.
My first instinct was that volunteers were being sought to keep 24 hour watch over Gary Glitter, but this was soon proven to be incorrect. It seems my domestic broadband provider, BT Broadband, are doing something for the children. I am always keen to do a good deed, especially when I do not have to leave my desk or spend any money, so I read on.
“ChildLine urgently needs more people to answer the phone to help children in distress. Your help won’t cost you a penny. All you have to do is sign in to BT Yahoo! and use the BT Yahoo! search engine. When you complete a search we’ll make a donation to ChildLine*”
Just use the search engine? Is that all? With the phrase “Your help won’t cost you a penny” ringing in my ears, I read onwards.
“To start helping Childline now, follow these easy steps:
- Log in to your BT Yahoo! Home Page.
- Simply click on the ‘Make BT Yahoo! Your Home Page’ link at the top left of the page.
- Start using BT Yahoo! – it’s one of the best search engines around.
We are committed to helping ChildLine long term, so if you’d like to be part of it, make BT Yahoo! your Home Page and your default search method. The more you use BT Yahoo! search the more you could be helping.”
Right. So BT Broadband actually want me to change my homepage as well? They snuck that one in a bit quietly didn’t they? Fair enough though, it’s still free I suppose, and I could always change my homepage back to Pornotube BBC News straight away. Now, if I could only see how much my searching would earn ChildLine I could get on with it.
I finally found the difficult to read email footer which showed me the text associated with the * in the opening paragraph.
“*Only applies to searches completed by clicking on a sponsored link.
BT will donate 5% of online advertising revenue from this promotion to ChildLine, a service provided by the NSPCC, registered charity numbers 216401 and SC037717 via the NSPCC Trading Company Ltd. BT expects to donate at least £100,000 plus VAT to ChildLine.”
So I have to click on an advert.
It has nothing to do with searching at all. They just want me to change my homepage, and click on their adverts, all for a measly 5% contribution to ChildLine. Ah, but it is going to amount to “approximately £100,000 pounds” I hear you say. Fair enough, that is not an amount to be sneezed at, but let us consider that this promotion, designed to HELP CHILDREN IN DISTRESS, is going to earn BT approximately TWO MILLION pounds.
I will say that again, BT will earn TWO MILLION pounds from your efforts to help children in distress.
Fuck. That.
I am now going to prove that I am at least twenty times better than BT Broadband. You may have noticed that I carry some Google ads on this site above the comments. Last year I earned $131 from them, which covered my hosting costs and left me with, literally, enough money for five pints of strong continental lager.
However, for the next seven days I will donate EVERY single penny I earn through the adverts on this site to Childline. Not 5% like BT Broadband, but 100%.
I will take screenshots of my Google reports and the donation confirmation to prove it. It will be embarrassing if I only donate my weekly average of about £1.20, but I am NOT suggesting you should click on the adverts above this post, as that would be against Google rules, and would result in the advertisers losing money from poorly intentioned clicks. The advertiser that will lost out, if I have done my calculations correctly, being BT Broadband*.
That’s right. Every penny that BT Broadband pay to me, via Google, will go to ChildLine. I am sure can you see the somewhat poetic symmetry in this operation?
So, if some of you happen to be genuinely interested in changing your broadband supplier, or anything else advertised above, and were to click on a BT Broadband advert above, I can assure you that 100% of the revenue will be going to ChildLine.
I am hoping it will be more than a fiver.
16 Responses to “Helping Children in distress - a ChildLine donation”
August 29th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
And the advertisers are….
August 29th, 2008 at 10:15 pm
Boo!! They are mostly charities, come on BT Broadband!
August 30th, 2008 at 12:34 am
My pop-up blocker blocks Google Ads, sadly…
August 30th, 2008 at 1:56 am
Gert, does it cry as it blocks?
I have a pop-up blocker, an ad-blocker and a flash blocker. I’ll tweak all their settings so they show every bit of angry this week.
*shudder*
August 30th, 2008 at 7:03 am
Children’s charities. You have to give credit to BT Broadband for sheer sneakiness.
August 30th, 2008 at 7:07 am
‘Releasing children from poverty in Jesus’ name’. You’re a fine and compassionate man, Angry.
The link on the right starts talking to you. Turn the volume down before clicking on it, especially if you’re in the office this morning.
August 30th, 2008 at 9:02 am
Angry - you have restored my faith in humanity (temorarily at least).
August 30th, 2008 at 10:43 am
1-0 to the good guys. This scheme will strike fear into the massive heart of global commerce as BT shares plummet at the thought of the “Donationgate” scam spreads like wildfire through the stock exchange.
I can see the headlines now, “BT profits plunge by £7.31 down to £299,999,999,992.69 due to Angry website. Our informer says he’s got Halliburton in his sights next”
August 30th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
OK, this is not going to plan, as the adverts are for people helping kids already. So if you see an advert on a DIFFERENT post, and it is something you are interested in, click on that one instead. All click revenue goes to ChildLine
Bloody BT Broadband.
August 30th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
[...] you are wondering why I am putting up this very short post about BT Broadband, then click here for yesterdays post about BT [...]
August 30th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Angry, I fucking love you
August 30th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
I have an ad blocker as well (ah Firefox how do I love thee? In dirty, dirty ways… well, no, actually since that’s physically impossible and frankly you’re just an excellent browser who is putting the boot in to Gargantua the Perpetrator of Vista. But if you were an actual person and were reasonably fit and quite clean I would tongue kiss you). I will bite the bullet and disable it for the greater good. But only for this site and only for this week.
August 30th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
The only adverts I can see above the comments are both charities do you get dosh from them as well? they were asking me for some.
Did you volunteer for watching over Gary Glitter then?
I was amused to note that when he finally gave up his whistle stop tour of South East Asian transit lounges he was escorted on the flight from Bangkok to London by an official from the British Embassy. Since Gary presumably hadn’t bathed for a week and must have been getting ripe I have a vision of this guy being asked by his wife what sort of day he’d had at work after spending fifteen hours sitting next to a smelly pervert under the eyes of a load of hack journalists.
August 30th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Don’t click on the charities, unless you are definitely going to give them money, as they pay for clicks.
If you want to help, it would be much better to look at the next post (Saturdays) and go from there…
August 31st, 2008 at 3:12 am
BT are shits, pornotube?
September 5th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
[...] following my attempt to prove that I am at least twenty times better than BT Broadband, you can now all stop in your efforts to help children in [...]