Psychic Sally Revelations- Are all psychic’s frauds?
So, it’s out there – syndicated in pretty much every newspaper today.. Psychic Sally Morgan is a fraud.
These stories are obviously based upon some pretty heavy evidence, that being a couple of people in the back row heard some talking in the production box and the expression of opinions from well known skeptics such as Paul Zenon and Derren Brown.
I am not a fan of Psychic Sally, I have never worked before in any kind of paranormal investigation or psychic show with her, we have never spoken and I don’t even follow her on twitter or facebook and yet I still feel compelled to say.. I’m not buying it. I don’t know if Sally Morgan is a fraud, she certainly could be but she may well be a gifted medium – either way I will not base my judgement upon a very loose set of circumstance and opinion. Until The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Daily Mail provide actual evidence (other than a semi-anonymous radio station caller called Sue) that Sally is defrauding the thousands who attend live or watch her television show I will continue to reserve those judgements.
On to the main point that has really bothered me about the story is how by “proving” Sally is a fraud it is now fair game to call ALL psychics and Mediums fake.
My own experience as a psychic, manipulating audiences using various tricks, led me to become a magician, which feels altogether more honest.
In the course of paranormal investigations with ISPi I have worked with a lot of psychics/mediums, some of which were wonderful and left me truly fascinated- some were truly awful and made me cringe with embarassment. I fear tarring everyone with the same brush just because one may or may not have been getting information via an earpeice is a great disservice to those of whom have a gift, a real gift and one they honestly share with people for the greater good. I of course have my own experiences which are some would now likely consider “fake” but that is for another blog.
Will sign this off with one story I was told, will leave out names and places for reasons which will become obviously apparent as I explain..
I recently visited the home of one of my closest friends, a former hospice/respite worker and now manager of a care home – she had taken on this home a few months before and almost instantly became aware of activity throughout the home that could not be explained, over the course of some weeks the staff explained to her that they were growing increasingly uncomfortable with how intense this activity which manifested in touching, shouting, visions and damage to equipment was becoming. My friend, concerned with the high turnover of staff and the escalating cost of equipment breakage decided to look into having a medium come in and give them more information on what was really happening and after some online equiries found a group who agreed to visit.
The day of the medium visit was an especially turbulent one, all staff were asked to attend in order to try and allieviate fears and concerns and whilst waiting for the mediums to start many reported pinching and grabbing at clothes. The mediums got to work, going floor to floor- (might I add, they had zero information on the activity, It is fully possibly that information of the location could have been gathered online but it had little to do with the actual “haunting”) the one part that really stood out to my friend was during the course of the locations “exorcism” she was told that amongst the dozens of spirits in the building was a young girl who played with other children in a wing of the building, she was at this point standing right beside them. The medium slowly dropped to her knees and softly asked the young girl to show that she was there- and then, with no trickery or props the frill from my friends long blouse was pulled out from her waist and up towards her chest, a childlike tug she explained. At the conclusion the mediums assured they should get no further problems and if they did to get back in contact, they REFUSED any kind of payment even though they had made a near 100 mile round trip in order to be there.
There has not been any reported incidents since and for the first time in many years, the home is running at a profit.
For many, it is not all about money, it’s about the ability to actually help make a difference in the lives (and death) of others.
There are rogue traders in every profession, you just need to check out watchdog to see that, but we don’t honestly believe that due to the actions of an odd few plumbers or builders that the entire profession consists of con-artists so why so quick to do so for paranormal workers?
Sky High? (Updated)
I am starting to think that the costs of Sky are most likely spiralling heavenward due to poor customer retention. Let me enlighten you, this is the email I have just had to send to Sky’s CEO Jeremy Darroch.
I write on behalf of my father who is 68, profoundly deaf and a customer of Sky for nearly 20 years – his current bill with Sky averages £108 a month. A couple of years ago, my family purchased a sky HD box for his bedroom and upgraded the package to multiroom and added broadband and Sky Talk, this meant we now got all of our services through Sky. Just to break down what we have been getting:
Sky+ Box
Sky+HD Box
Sky World with Family Pack
Sky+HD Pack
Extra Subscription
Sky Broadband Unlimited
Sky Talk
Sky Talk Unlimited
following a series of issues with the HD box towards the end of 2010 the box stopped working completely at the end of December- we believe that this was due to the widely reported capacitor/PSU fault which affects the Thompson models, when at my fathers request I called Sky I was told it would be a £65 call out charge to replace the faulty box, it being Christmas time, it was not financially viable – so it was put off until the new year – we still continued to pay the subscription that my father was unable to use.
My father has continued to put off cancelling the HD package, hoping to be able to put aside the extra £65 on top of his existing £100+ package and has thusfar been unable to justify the further expense, especially when it is likely that he would get yet another reconditioned, faulty Thompson model which may only last another 6 months before he gets lumbered with another £65 charge.
On Jan 29th My father emailed customer services, explaining that although he did not want to, he felt he had little option but to cancel his Sky HD subscription and Multiroom – he was quite willing to to work with an advisor to find a compromise so that his viewing could resume and custom for Sky could be retained. He asked that he was contacted back via email due to being unable to communicate via telephone and I was away so unable to take a call (I usually deal with all phonecalls relating to the Sky account as my mother has zero understanding of any technology). Today, 10 days on we finally recieved a template response saying that it needed to be dealt with with a telephone call, no support or interest in the actual situation, not even an acknowledgement of my father telling them he is unable to communicate by phone.
When I arrived home today I found that my father, angry and upset at being totally ignored by Sky asked a neighbour to call and cancel the Sky+HD and Multiroom subscription on his behalf – he noted that this was done within a few moments by the customer service staff with no question or interest as to why it was being cancelled and with no attempt made to retain the custom. My father has now asked me to source prices from other suppliers for ALL of the services which are currently provided by Sky which includes telephone and broadband as he feel like he has no value to Sky as a customer and he wishes to cancel his full subscription as soon as possible.
My questions are, for a loyal customer whom has been with the company for such a long term, is this really the total disregard to expect from Sky? – do you really value your customers that little to not be willing to discuss where savings can be made or to waive the call out fee to replace a faulty box? (which is questionably not fit for purpose intended due to the poor quality capacitors) and are you willing to lose a high paying customer completely for the sake of lack of communication?
I leave it in your hands
I find it shocking in this day and age where customers have so much more in the way of choice and where every last penny counts in big business that some companies feel that actually addressing a customers issues is no longer required. Sky are well known for their “rope you in and then forget about you” tactics, it has been the same since their analogue service however to ignore the polite request of a disabled customer is really rather atrocious for any business.
To those thinking this is a bit of a drama for £65 please bear in mind that less than 2 years ago we paid £300 to have this box installed (they now give it away free) and it is now well known that the capcitors were of a poor quality leading to overload and burnout and eventual PSU failure. A simple google search gives you an idea of the extent of the problem – we were informed on the phone when we first called that they would simply replace the box with one that was available, in most cases another Thompson – all for the reasonable call out fee of £65 each time. Meanwhile, we still have the privilege of paying an extra £21 a month for the one that does not work.
I really am having an issue understanding where Sky’s priorities lay.. because it certainly does not seem to be with it’s customers.
I have just got off the phone from a lovely lady at the office to Jeremy Darroch who was very apologetic and couldn’t understand how customer services could have got it so wrong. There is going to be a full investigation into why this took so long to be resolved.
Sky have offered a free engineer visit this friday to replace the box, and I will recieve a call again from Mr Darroch’s office to confirm that the engineer visit lead to satisfactory resolution and to discuss the refunding of excess subs paid and compensation.
Will hopefully have a final update friday to say all went well..
Update 2 : Friday 11th Feb
Installers arrived on time and on the right day (a feat which I had been led to believe was fairly rare) and had the box replaced within 5 mins. Recieved a call again from Jeremy Darroch’s office who checked that everything with the box replacement was to my satisfaction – I was then offered a refund on the services I was unable to use and a further 6 months with a 50% discount on my Sky package – in total savings of over £400..
I believe that to be a satisfactory resolution, but c’mon Sky.. did it really need to get to this point over the sake of a 5 minute box replacement?
How Long?
It rather shocking to think that caelen.com has been away for four years now, so much has changed it’s difficult to know where to start back from! I have attempted to bring the site back on a few occasions now but have been beaten by some technicality each time, making what I wanted to do either too difficult or impossible – this time I was not going to let it win!
As you will see, there are still a few tweaks that are needed to the site (especially for IExplorer Users – give up and use a decent browser already!)and I hope that over the next few months I will settle back into the flow of regular updates and gossip – it’s been a long time and I have a LOT to talk about.
I am sure you can tell there is a lot of self-marketing on the site going on, between both the book and my photography – both avenues are hugely exciting for me at the moment, my photography is in more demand now than it has ever been with commercial enquiries every single day. This has, for the first time given me the option to be quite choosy about what I do – which is rather lovely.
“This Is Not The End”, A book I am in the process of co-writing with the wonderful Ray Jorden is a very personal project for me and is not only an opportunity to be a part of a quite wonderful concept but it is also a chance for some well needed healing and resolution for me – as the weeks go on I will keep you updated with how it progresses and will keep you in the loop over any media relating to it.
In addition to shilling just about everything I am currently involved in, I will be using the blog to touch on matters which are important to me and are a bit too indepth or “touchy” for a twitter or facebook style response – as many will remember I do have very strong opinions which I am not afraid to share and this will become apparent in subjects which are close to my heart like gay equality, fileshareing, freedom of information and more. Because of this, they blog may at times be considered to be unsuitable to teens or younger – especially if I am being sweary!
I hope you will enjoy the site – please do leave feedback or questions and I will try to get back to each of you.
Caelen.