I'm quite prepared to lose gracefully (and have), but I'd also like to lose fairly too.

If there was a problem with the voting, then it should be discussed.

I was expecting Tabby to go, straight after Sharon said goodbye and thank you to the audience, before the lines even closed.

I've always thought it 'fixed' for each judge to have one act left in the last semi final, and I'm not surprised Simon has at least one act in the final.

I tried voting for Tabby on Saturday night and my votes weren't counted and I was also charged for them. I couldn't get through on his phone line but I was still charged. I sent text messages as soon as the voting opened but I received text messages back later that night saying that the voting lines had closed. This problem happened with everyone I asked who was using Vodaphone. O2 seemed to be working fine.

Although I think it is better that Tabby is out now. I don't think being signed with Simon would do him any good.

The Irish National broadcaster RTE has just had an afternoon discussion about this fiasco. And its true a lot of people are feeling the pain of having messages pending on the text vote only to have the show end and a few minutes later be told that they are to late to vote.

At the end of the day Louis Walsh summed it up on the late late show perfectly there is only one winner and that is Mr Cowell, but I do think it is disgracful to give out numbers knowing darn well that it does not make any difference.

Wow sour grape central.

So what are you saying Tabby should have gone through because all irish people would of voted for Tabby.
If a certain geographical area is missing then he still got all the votes from the other areas and was stil out fair and square.
Well unless you believe all the irish are so racialy biased it would of made a difference.

Well I Voted 5 Times For Steve-Got The DelivEry Report BUT The "Thanks For Voting For Steve" Message Didnt Reach My Phone Until AFTER The Results

Did They Count?

If votes are lost it's unfair no matter who the votes were for - the point being the votes COULD have made a difference...Especially if Kate Thornton's "1% difference" comment is to be believed. However, I feel none of the votes make a difference, they simply make money for the company...It's always going to be the producers who can sway the vote, by using any means necessary.

The other 2 contestants had the benefit of their families and friends voting. And if the semi final really was as close as they are making out it to be then those votes could make a difference. I wouldn't underestimate the amount of votes that family and friends contribute. I wouldn't think all Irish people would vote for Tabby but the majority of them probably would. The rest probably wouldn't even be watching it as everyone in Ireland can even get UTV to be able to watch it anyway.

And its not just that they weren't counted. We were also charged for them as well.

They should count. If your votes were too late you would have got a different message. It probably just took a while for the text message to get back to you.

Every single week it's that close if you beleive the hype. and saying the irish just vote for the irish is soooooooooooooooooooo insulting.

I never said that the Irish would only vote for the Irish.

No only the majority, which is pretty much saying the same thing.

I had a lot of problems getting through for Steve the previous week.
And the repliesto my text votes didn't come through until the next day.

If it had been Steve who's votes hadn't gone through, you would've been at the head of the queue shouting fix.

Funnily enough I would've been behind you backing you up. It matters not to me who's votes were missing, it's the fact that they b*lls it up and people would like an explaination.

Was it a mistake? Was it deliberate? Which BTW unless they admit it was a mistake is the conclusion people will automatically jump to.

If this isn't resoleved with a proper explaination, is it worth me bothering to vote on Saturday?

Same here, but was voting G4.

Why I'm not a Steve 'fan' just the prefered choice at the moment and if Steve had been chucked out and the same thread had appeared for him I would of put the same comments.

Kewpee you seem to forget were not all ardent fans just voting for there selection.

I think if anyone wanted to successfully argue this at a higher level, the fact that you've paid for a service that you may or may not have received is a much stronger argument than "it's not fair, he/she would have won if my texts had been counted." The second point may also be true, but I don't think you'd get anywhere with it. I would be interested in what happened if anyone tried to pursue it from a refund point of view (which in turn might lead to a better idea of just how many cast votes went astray).

And you seem to think that just because it was Tabby that left on Saturday, people are only complaining because they are obviously Tabby fans.

Others on this thread have stated that they had problems with votes made for the other contestants. Votes not being accepted, not being able to get through etc, so why cry 'sour grapes'?

As for being an ardent fan, yes I am, but not as ardent as you are being an anti fan.

Have you read the thread title? and most weeks there have been voting problems. Only when Tabby got booted out do we get the complaints and I was replying to posts like this

All of Ireland and the majority of Ireland have completely different meanings. I would say the majority of votes from Ireland would be from Sligo. Sligo people know Tabby and would vote for him. I don't know one single person who voted for anyone other than Tabby.

I believe up to 100,000 votes from the Republic of Ireland were lost for some reason on Saturday night!!! I'm not saying all of them were for Tabby, in fact I also voted for G4. However I think its an absolute disgrace that this can happen.


The same thing happened on FA lots of people voted for Alistair in the final and their text votes were returned, lines closed even though they were sent well within the time.

They don't have seperate lines for each artist. This was explained after Gareth fans said that Pop Idol was fixed. Some people suggested that Will had more lines than Gareth.

The same thing happened to me.

I voted for G4 10 times and my text messages were "pending" until 11 o'clock, when they finally gt delivered. So, they didn't count... I was well upset, because yes ok G4 got through but my text vote didn't contribute to that so in effect I paid for nothing.

Susann is right though. If us English take up your stupid ways of voting, then someone from Ireland would go out every time. Better hope that we wont (although English people seem to have more sense and actually vote for who they like!!!)

Maybe I shouldnt have voted for Vanilla Ice in the farm? :0)

I loooooooooooved Vanilla Ice!!! He was hillarious!

The guy got the least amount of votes!!! He is average for his genre at best. No more than 2 hits for him and no doubt one of them will be a cover version...