Phone room meltdown but donations keep coming

If you were watching Nine’s Flood Relief Appeal on Sunday night you would have noticed co-host Eddie McGuire telling viewers that their call centre had gone down within minutes of the programme beginning.

There were so many people calling to donate the system couldn’t cope.

It wasn’t until some 90 minutes later that viewers were told it was operational again.

Despite the fantastic total of $10M raised, with a big slice thanks to corporate donations (many of whom were Nine sponsors), it does beg the question: how much might have been raised if the call centre had been up and running more quickly?

Thankfully, Nine was able to allay any concerns yesterday.

A Nine spokesperson said: “Within minutes of the Flood Relief Appeal phone lines opening we received 12,000 calls which resulted in the celebrity call centre phone lines malfunctioning for approximately 30 minutes.

“During this time the donation line was still active and phone lines manned by Telstra volunteers at another QLD Government location were still taking donations from people wishing to contribute to the appeal.”

So while Nine celebrities may have been unable to man the phones, the donations were still being accepted at the government-run Mt. Gravatt call centre, which has been home to the Premier’s appeal since the disaster began.

At issue was a Telstra Exchange unable to cope with the volume of calls, triggered by Nine’s Appeal.

TV Tonight understands that as soon as the tech trouble hit, Premier Bligh was on the phone to the Queensland head of Telstra, while Kevin Rudd was on the phone to the national head of Telstra. Rudd is understood to have stayed for four hours answering calls in his home state.