John Linton
..or perhaps the question should really be - why do the marketing departments of some communications providers think their target buyers are just plain dumb?
I seldom pay much attention to the advertisements by communications companies but the SMH today had two totally, to me, outrageous examples of treating potential buyers as total morons. They were advertisements by Telstra on page 19 (the front page of the business section) and Engin on the back of the sport supplement.
The Engin ad claimed that a "customer could make free calls by 'buying' a free box" . The only problem with this statement was:
1) The box wasn't free it cost $14.95 per month
2) The box couldn't be used unless the customer signed up for an ADSL service with Engin
3) The box couldn't be used unless the customer had an ADSL modem
4) Calls to mobiles weren't free
5) Calls to international destinations weren't free
6) There was a minimum contract of 12 months
Nothing remotely free about this offer and the end monthly cost to the user is almost certainly going to be far more than any customer could get from any reputable ISP who offered both ADSL and VoIP.
The Telstra ad was just as blatantly misleading as the Engin ad, in my opinion. It, appeared to me, to offer a business user a 24 handset PABX (fully installed) for $19.47 per week plus a $1,000 of free calls. It carefully stated (as required by law) that this cost was based on a 60 month contract at an overall cost of $5,082.66 (don't you just love the "honesty" implied by such detailed figures?). What it didn't state were the costs of the calls under this offer nor any of the additional charges.
The rental cost of the Nortel box and 24 handsets is outstandingly good, if you need a new PABX, and I've never seen a price that could begin to get anywhere near that. It had to be too good to be true.
It was.
I called the number in the ad (and patiently waited on hold for 37 minutes being switched between various polite and helpful people) before I eventually spoke to somone who wasn't exactly sure but believed there were additional rental charges for the handsets and also for maintenance and/or training in using the various features to make configuration changes. After she checked it turned out that the weekly charge was PER HANDSET!!!!!
It got worse:
I also had to pay for the line per handset at $39.95 each per month!!!
It got worse again.
My low cost calls were 22 cents for a local call and 30 cents per minute for mobile calls plus a 30 cent flag fall.
I thanked the very nice lady for her assistance and hung up.
I don't know what sort of business could afford to pay for this 'service' but the actual costs of using it are 4 or 5 times higher than the ad, at first glance, would lead a reader to believe.
Now, while all this is very interesting in its misleading way the REAL thing that struck me was that:
SOME PEOPLE AT TELSTRA ACTUALLY BELIEVE THAT CUSTOMERS ARE HAPPY TO PAY THIS SORT OF MONEY FOR ELEMENTARY TELEPHONE SERVICES!!!
....and, presumably, that's actually the case in terms of business customers still using Telstra for their telephone services.
If that's true then there is an even huger market than I currently think there is for sensibly priced business telephone services.