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From: PCOEN@drew.bitnet (Paul Coen)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Misleading AT&T Advertisement?
Message-ID: <15819@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 6 Jan 91 01:03:00 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 10, Message 3 of 4


        I saw one of the newer AT&T commercials the other night, and
something about it bothered me.  I listened very carefully the next
few times, and came to the same conclusion -- the spot is misleading.
 
        The basic premise is that one of "those other" phone companies
calls just as the career woman is going out for a business trip.  She
tells them to bug off, because she wants to make sure that when she
calls home to say "hi" to the kids she wants them to sound just like
they're "next door."
 
        I could be mistaken, but this seems to be implying that the
default carrier on your home phone is the carrier that INCOMING calls
to your home are carried on -- which is wrong.  It would be much more
useful to have the commercial say that you should dial 10-ATT/10288
from any payphone (she's shown calling from one) to guarantee "good
AT&T service."
 
        Now, the question is that is this a deliberate attempt to make
people feel that if they switch, incoming calls will automatically be
of poor sound quality, or is it just the failure of someone in the ad
agency (or whoever else writes these things) to grasp that incoming
calls aren't normally determined by the default long distance service
of the party being called?  I'd be inclined to believe the latter.
 
        Any thoughts on this?  I could have misunderstood the
commercial, but I don't think that I did.
 
Disclaimer -- I like AT&T for the most part :-).

   The preceeding may not even be my opinions, never mind Drew U.'s
Paul Coen         Academic Computer Center        Drew University