Miss Cleo was the current leading lady of the psychic world until recently. Her organization has been under investigation from several states and has since disapeared from the lines leaving a lot of telephone psychics unemployed until their organizations can find a new hosting source...

They run television commercials, which cost from $10,000 to $50,000 to produce and anywhere from $200 per 30 seconds of airtime on a local station at three in the morning, to more than $200,000 for a single national network 30 second slot in prime time (which they rarely can afford to do). They even run Sunday morning infomercials, at roughly the same cost for production and airtime.

The actual psychics who do the readings are part of an existing network, with the same psychic readers working for virtually all of these different endorsees. The network is set up by a variety of companies, including one of the largest located in Florida. This company maintains a massive 900 line network (there is a charge for each minute of calling time billed back to the phone from which the call was made) that is computer controlled and operates much like the internet.

These days most psychics work out of their homes and are required to have two phone lines. One dedicated for taking the incoming calls, the other used for making the computer connection. When a psychic wants to go to work (they have to put in between 20 and 40 hours a week, usually late nights and early mornings) they dial up a special 800 number to connect with their network, where they hear the latest message from management which they review to see if there is something important they need to be aware of (such as when a lot of commercials are going to air). After this they use their secret password number to activate their phone connection to the network.

When you call one of the toll free 800 numbers you see on television for your 5 minute free reading, you get connected to what is called a boiler room filled with operators. Not much different than what happens at Ma Bell with 411 calls, the police department with 911 calls or at a companies like AOL and Earthlink when you join up for the first time. A room full of desks with people in headsets taking the next call.

These people usually give you important telephone numbers to call, such as the 800 customer service line and the direct phone line for the psychic line if you have a serious problem. Then they connect you into the 900 number computer network, where the next available psychic answers your call. This person can be located anywhere in the U.S. Long ago they, too, used to be in a boiler room, but now it is more cost effective to have a computer switcher in New York or Florida to "call forward" a given incoming caller to a home based sub-contractor than to run a boiler room. No cubicals, no headsets and no expensive telephone hardware to maintain at a big room that costs $5 per square foot to lease.

The psychics work out of regional Occult Book Stores that have a franchise status with the main organization. The head manager has a special computer rig that allows them to see the network of psychics and even help to regulate their status. The book store gets a percentage (over ride) of what they do or a fee, from which the psychics are paid. The psychics are paid per minute on a sliding scale of from 12 cents to 25 cents ($15 an hour pay for top performers). The psychics may also get additional pay for each name and address they get from a caller, supplied to the company on sheets that is faxed in nightly. The psychics are also paid extra for selling any package deals the company is offering (usually a compatibility chart and some free minutes of time for $50 or $100).

The psychics must be skilled at telemarketing to survive the lines and as with telemarketing there are quotas that must be met. You must bring at least 60% of all names and addresses in from the callers and maintain an average of 20 minutes per call over your weekly shift. One 30 minute call (which bills the caller between $75 and $125 for 25 minutes of paid time plus the 5 minutes of free reading and pays the psychic $7.50) plus two 5 minute calls (which make no money for the company, but pay the psychic $1.25 each) give the psychic reader a 13 minute average, which falls below the 20 minute quota. If they don't pull this average up, their status on the computer is reduced and the amount of calls they get drops accordingly. They may eventully be terminated from the program if they don't get their average up over 20 minutes!

As to how the psychic are picked and evaluated, this varies widely. A book store into this for the long term tries to find good people to either train in the telemarketing end or in the reading end. A lot of psychics are retired women or those on disability who did Tarot readings as a hobby and now do it for extra cash. Some are real psychics who do professional readings out of the home and have mastered the art of getting names and addresses, selling packages and keeping people on the line for at least 20 minutes. A few are novices who work with a small astrology book looking up your sun signs or a deck of Tarot Cards on which they have pasted the meanings of each card to read back to the caller. After a while, if they stay in the business, they actually become quite good at giving readings! Remember, we are all psychic to a degree. There are a lot of Astrologers and Tarot readers making $100 a session (or chart) from their homes that aren't as good as they should be, but no law stops them from hanging up a shingle. If they get a business license and follow the laws, anyone can put together computers or fix a car, even if they don't always get it right. There are quacks in the medical profession and some lawyers do get disbarred. No industry is perfect.

Recently Los Angeles UPN network station 13 did an expose on one psychic outlet in which the manager told prospective readers they didn't need to know anything about being a psychic to work the line. This is not an industry wide practice. The people we talked with were tested by the book store owners over the phone. They also were tested with "dummy" calls from the psychic firm who checks quality control. But if there's a buck to be made someone will cut corners to make that buck!

Some spokespeople go overboard in their commercials – there are several investigations and possibly even legal actions pending against one or more at any given time. We do know for a fact that psychics working the line were invited to send VHS demo tapes into the main company for consideration as one of those example psychics you see in the commercials (and remember please, that person you see getting sexier, whiter, teeth in the commercial is a highly paid union actor reading lines and trying to get you to buy that toothpaste, corn flakes or a new car).

The psychic line management also weeds out abusive readers, but this can take time because the computer can't track who took the call. The caller can ask the psychic for their ID number. The psychics are supposed to tell them this up front and to provide them with a direct customer service number for the company if asked for this information or when told by a caller of a previous abuse. Abuses are taken seriously because a lot of money is tied up in the business, which generates big bucks from those long 900 calls and some callers stay on the line (and pay for) calls up to 60 minutes in length (the maximum allowed by the phone company). That is a $295 call, but a real psychic to the stars would charge more than that for a personal reading, so it is not an outrageous fee (and some people reject the charges, which is allowed one time by the phone company – the psychic still gets their pay even though the company gets nothing).

One abuser we learned about had taped an hour long message with music in the background telling you to stay on the line, your call would be answered shortly. The caller, of course, was being charged $5 per minute after the first 5 minutes for this "terminal hold" message that sounded legitimate. It took over a month for the psychic line to weed this abuser out of the network.

Psychics are also warned to watch for suicidal callers, abused women or children or those in serious distress and have several help line numbers they are supposed to provide and then have these people get off the line to call those numbers for real help. A lot of callers are in such distress. One psychic who worked the lines told us of a call from unmarried, pregnant, 18 year old girl who wanted advice from him about whether her boyfriend was genuine and if she should marry him. Another caller was an elderly woman who waned to know if her lottery number would give her enough money to buy a ticket and visit her sister. In short para-psychologists must sometimes act as surrogate psychologist to the caller who can't talk to their parents or won't see a psychiatrist.

The life of the psychic is not an easy one. In peak periods there is no more than 10 seconds between phone calls. The first thing they do is get your birth date (required for the reading and to make sure you are over 18 years old), then they attempt to get your name, address, city and state. Yes, they sell these names on a mailing list to help keep costs down. Yes they will spam you with psychic junk mail. You can refuse, but the psychic can get into trouble for not collecting this information. Since most callers are women, not men, they are usually more apt to provide this extra information to a female psychic than a male psychic. The start and stop time must be logged in. Then the reading begins and many callers are impatient, which is actually not condusive to good psychic reading, which is why many storefront psychics can’t work the lines.

At a storefront psychic you pay a flat fee and get a relaxing half hour or hour reading. Many psychics aren’t clock watchers. So there is a decided difference between the two worlds. However, many callers are elderly or may be calling late at night when no one would go outside and no storefront psychic would be found open for business.

The lines exist. They are a huge, billion dollar business that employs a lot of people and bill a lot of services. When push comes to shove you have no more idea how “psychic” a telephone reader is than someone in a kiosk down the street! Monthly and yearly astrology books bring in big bucks for publishers and these are quite general, but yet no one seems to mind. A lot of callers need to talk with someone sympathetic and ask them tough questions they may not wish to share with their mother, doctor or psychiatrist. A lot of callers get good advice from the person doing their reading, at least in the mind of the person making the call.

No one twists anyone’s arm to buy a particular soft drink, $6 burger or dial 1-900-telephone psychic….