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On a pizza store, the phones were ringing non-stop. Sure, this would give the owner such a huge smile on his face if not for the fact that the callers were not interested on his pizza. The callers were calling because they want to cast votes for the popular reality TV show.
Each of them is trying to cast their votes for their favorite contestant on the hit Fox TV show ‘American Idol.’
There is no explanation on why the calls were directed to the pizza store, which lasted for two hours last Wednesday night. The number on the screen of American Idol was - 855-443-6411 – and this is not similar to the number that the pizzeria is using.
The talent show stated that viewers nationwide cast more than 71 million votes Wednesday night.
The restaurant's owner, Randy Sexton was disappointed that the calls were not done to order pizza. His staffs answered every last one of them, hoping that there would be someone that will order a pizza. Unfortunately, there were none. Sexton hopes that the problem gets sorted before next Wednesday's episode.
A spokeswoman from the talent show said that they are trying to fix the problem.
Sexton believes that it might be a keyboard typo - when voters' calls were routed through AT&T.
Most of the calls come from the East Coast.
Sandy Bennett, the one responsible for managing the show's voting system, can’t explain what just happened.
Bennett is the general manager of Los Angeles-based Telescope, 'a provider of audience participation, consumer engagement and social television solutions,' according to its website.
She said that blocking out-of-state calls to Gordy's throughout show nights might work, of course that is if Sexton would allow it.
Bennet noted that the purpose is to prevent miscall from happening while they are doing some investigation on what happened.
Another way is to place a trap on the line to detect the number that 'American Idol' voters are actually dialing.
'While they say they are calling 855-443-6411, it's quite possible it's something similar and is somehow tied to the pizza company,' Bennett wrote.
Sexton is not happy about the attention that his business is getting as he wants it to be deal with. He knows that the problem might affect his business in a bad way. There might be someone wanting to order pizza, but the call can’t go through because of too many people calling to casts their votes.
'I have three months of potential challenge if they don't figure out how to reroute or unroute calls in a different way,' he said.
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