Misleading ads

If you haven’t seen them yet, then you are definitely missing a lot on juicy intrigues in the telecommunications front.

Simply put, this issue now makes official the fact that the telco war has been raised to a much higher and more vicious level.

Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) has been coming out with advisory ads telling their subscribers to disregard any advertisements, notices or information that they can call other telcos for the same rate of P10 per call.

As they say, when there’s smoke, there is fire. The ad was intriguing enough so I inquired from Butch Jimenez, head of PLDT’s retail business group, to ask what that was all about.

Apparently, Globe Telecom, in particular its wireline subsidiary Innove Communications, sent PLDT a "threatening letter" which Butch labeled as "ridiculous" that on or before July 20, Globe/Innove would come out with ads telling PLDT subscribers they can call Globelines and Globe subscribers at P10 per call.

Butch says he felt the letter was unprofessional, out of line and even malicious, and that he never heard of one company advertising or making announcements to the subscribers or customers of another company.

Worse, he says, the message they would have told PLDT subscribers was "false and misleading," and that in fact, he and others in PLDT have already received e-mails circulating that had this false announcement.

This he says is the second time Globelines/Innove tried to put out a misleading ad. Butch showed me a document from the Adboard admonishing Globelines/Innove and demanding they immediately pull out their "7,100 Islands ad" which it believes maliciously misled the public to think that Globelines/Innove had a nationwide network.

(Innove has just been issued a nationwide LEC authority by the National Telecommunication Commission and it may take three years before the plan to go nationwide can materialize).

Butch has this to say: "I know Jaza and Gil Genio personally and have the highest respect for them. But somebody in their marketing group needs to be reminded that truth is still the foundation of all advertising. They owe that much to the public. And please lay off our subscribers. They have their own to worry about."

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