How Psychic Hotlines really work:

I don't know if anyone has posted anything on this previously on the site, but I was responding to a post and thought it might be useful to share.

A couple years ago, I signed up to work as a phone psychic. My initial intention was to help people out but I soon learned that just like any other company, if you aren't in it for the money, you aren't going to get anywhere. Participants must have a dedicated phone line in their home which they call in on when they want to work. The longer you are "online" the more calls you get. Workers are given a disclaimer and a list of questions to ask the callers, which will take up all of your 3 "free minutes". Workers are also instructed to keep people on the phone for as long as possible; keep talking and try to get their attention so that they stay on the phone.

Most callers want to be told amazing things in their "free time", which is understandable by the way the commercials portray it. The worker answers the phone and immediately starts to tell the person things...this is only after the caller has been asked the questions and their 3 minutes are up. (The workers only make money after the 3 minutes, btw as insentive to keep the callers on the phone.) Alot of folks hang up after their minutes are up, as well they should since charges can be anywhere from 2.99 per minute to 5.99 per minute after that! The cost adds up more quickly than you know!

When I was an at home mom when I was working for the company. I thought it would be great for me since I could log in when my son was asleep and log off when he woke up...unfortunately, this isn't how they work. You are supposed to keep your line on from the time you wake up to the time you go to bed an answer it every time it rings (by the 2nd ring). If you don't work this way, you get very few calls.

I'm not contesting the validity of SOME of the people that work on these lines. My coach, whom I called at home and not over the hotline, was amazingly acute! There were times when he would call me out of the blue because he "felt that there was a problem"...it creeped me out that he was almost always right.

Unfortunately, there are alot of people who work on these lines that are "trained" to tell people obvious or common things in order to pique their interest. They will often ask questions and lead you into giving them hints to where they should go next. Most people are so eager to hear something that they will inadvertantly go right along with the operator and tell them everything they need to know!

For those of you who have called these lines and feel that you were ripped off, there IS hope though! You can call the company or the phone company and have the charges removed. I had a friend who was left on hold for an hour. She was tld that she would not be charged for any of the time she was on hold. When she finally got her reading, she was on the phone for about 10 minutes...but when she got her bill there was a charge for 368.00! She had been charged for the entire call! Luckily, she never had to pay it, but the shock of the charge taught her never to call another hotline!

Like I said, I don't doubt that there are valid psychics working on some of these lines, but there are so many different hotlines and people working on them that you will have a tough time finding any. I quit because I didn't believe in "keeping people on the phone". I genuinely wanted to help people and didn't feel that I should coerce anyone into going beyond their means if I had already answered their questions. While I did have a few hour long calls, it was never from my pushing them to remain on the line. Some of the callers are actually just lonely and looking for companionship! There have been times that I have considered going back to work for the lines, but knowing how they work and what I went through with them, I don't think I could.

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