Can I get a refund, please? That was the question on a lot of Eurovision fans’ minds in the Netherlands after their valid votes weren’t counted during the grand final.
Several Dutch media outlets, including De Telegraaf, reported that some viewers had not been able to vote during the finale. There were no similar reports during the first semi-final, during which The Netherlands also voted.
Those affected did not initially receive a message confirming whether their votes had gone through. But later that night they received messages saying that they couldn’t vote as “the voting has come to an end already”. Some televoters received this message as late as 4am. And while their votes didn’t count, the texters were still charged.
EBU concludes Dutch televoting results were legitimate
The EBU conducted an investigation and quickly concluded that the uncounted televotes would probably not have impacted the overall Dutch televoting results.
Even so, Dutch Eurovision viewers still took to social media to complain about the uncounted votes. Many wrote that they had sent multiple SMS votes, spending up to several euros.
In its investigation, the EBU concluded that the problem only affected the Dutch branch of T-Mobile. T-Mobile is one of the largest providers of telephone networks in the Netherlands with around 6 million customers as of 2020.
The telecom company told the ANP that they are still investigating. But it has already stated that all televoters with uncounted votes should be refunded.
Were you affected by this problem? Are you happy that you will receive a refund? Let us know in the comments down below!
I think the votes that were not counted would have made a difference tho. My whole family voted for Italy, so that would be around a 100 votes. I´ve talked to several people and they voted for them too, so i don’t understand how the televoting for them is so low.
But oh well, in the end it didn’t matter, Italy won yayyy
I received confirmations after the show was done lmao, so that means they didn’t count right? I voted for belgium 20 times and they were last in my country’s televote ranking.
Your country is tasteless, unlike you 😉
No, if you got a confirmation message, your vote did count. It doesn’t matter when you got it. Confirmations are usually handled by a separate process which often gets busy – sometimes precisely because counting the votes is set to have a higher CPU priority than sending confirmations.
If your votes were processed after voting has closed, you should either get an error message or no message at all. Confirmation messages are generally only generated when the vote is counted.
Here in Greece my confirmation messages came 30 minutes after the show was done
If they’re confirmation messages, it’s no big deal. It just means the server that sends them was overloaded. Your votes were most likely counted, as that is a different process done by a different system – essentially it counts votes, then sends confirmation messages to a queue.
I had the same thing happen in Sweden.
Neither of my votes went thru
Same. I am inDk
7/20 votes didn’t go through but my favorite won anyway so 🙂
Russia had problems with televoting too, both in the final and the semi. First of all, if you tried to call, you would hear “this number is nonexistent”. The problems with vote by sms, however, occurred because of the exactly opposite tactics – somebody tried too hard to protect users from unwanted losses of money so this year they introduced a horribly nerve-wracking confirmation system for votes. You needed to send “1” after every vote. The weak points of this system, however, were those that you couldn’t vote for the next country before you confirmed your previous vote, or even… Read more »
That’s the only realistic explanation for Russia’a 12 points to Cyprus unfortunately. There’s no way Russian televoters indeed liked El Diablo more than Shum, Zitti e Buoni and Voilà.
Worth adding that in the semi-final our televote accorded 12 points to Ukraine and only 5 to Cyprus. But shouldn’t you have sent 01 in order to get votes for Cyprus counted in and not simple 1 tho? Also Lithuania (performed 1st) recieved 7 televote points from us in the semi. Statistically, doubting (unless not all of the 4 mobile providers had this system. I’ve read those with Yota SIM-card weren’t able to vote at all. I use MegaFon’s card. There are 3 more mobile providers in Russia.). I don’t really want to believe our votes were stolen in such… Read more »
Wow you are on to something. I was wondering why the russian televote loved cyprus so much!
Shhh, don’t tell anyone but actually Cyprus was my 39th, can’t speak for the whole country tho.
Real 12 points from russian televote goes to Italy ))
Oh yeah two of my five votes didn’t go through either. But it said smt like ‘thanks for voting, but the voting didn’t start yet’
Australia’s televote in 2015 fully crashed and still had to pay :'(
oh yeah and that’s why they say to us now ‘you won’t receive a confirmation text’ because it just gets overloaded haha
More than the half of my votes weren’t received. all were sended on the beginning of the voting.
2 votes for russia, 2 for portugal, 2 for ukraine, 1 for spain, 1 for france and one for germany and san marino
You know if you spread your votes out like that they’re even less likely to actually matter right?
taste