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Wednesday, December 12, 2012

O2 and the iPhone 5: when is a a pre-order not a pre-order?

Mark Bridge writes:

I’ve made a career out of choosing and using the best words… and using mobile phones. Such is the life of a technology writer.

However, I’m not obsessive about language. Lynne Truss has a point - yet her style isn’t my style.

But that’s not really relevant. You’re not here for my musings about greengrocers’ apostrophes. TheFonecast.com is all about the mobile industry.

Last week I pointed out that picking the best bits from other people’s tech reviews didn’t look good when the full version was pretty uncomplimentary. It’s often unwise to use words that don’t mean what people think they mean. Being economical with the truth can give the impression of being deliberately deceptive.

And today I’ve discovered another mobile network guilty of tripping itself up with words.

The Advertising Standards Authority has just upheld a complaint made about O2 UK’s website. A set of FAQ about iPhone 5 availability said “If we get your pre-order before 4pm the day before launch, we’ll get it to you on launch day.”

Unfortunately this didn’t happen for a number of people who’d pre-ordered an Apple iPhone 5. The problem wasn’t a delivery failure. That, to an extent, would be understandable. No, the problem was O2’s definition of a pre-order.

You see, if you ordered the iPhone 5 from O2 before the launch day, you might think this was a pre-order. That’s what regular English usage would suggest. O2 had a different definition. It had a pre-order - oops, no, a Pre-Order - and a Standard Order. If you had a Pre-Order then, well, you had a pre-order. If you had a Standard Order, it meant O2 had exhausted its allocated stock and might take up to three weeks to deliver the phone. Customers with a standard order - sorry, done it again - a Standard Order would have been told they had longer to wait.

The ASA wasn’t happy with that. It said the online FAQ answer gave a misleading impression regardless of what customers were told when they ordered, leading it to conclude the claim was misleading.

In its defence, O2 said the FAQ was only online for nine days and admitted that “in hindsight it appeared that some people making Standard Orders while the FAQ was online may have been confused by it”.

It seems O2 meant well - but its choice of words has left it in the ASA’s hall of shame.

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Categories: Networks and operators, OpinionNumber of views: 13569

Tags: advertising o2 uk iphone

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Opinion Articles

A Sure Signal from Vodafone

Mark Bridge writes:

Today I've been using my mobile phone at home. For many people that’s not an unusual thing to do – but it is for me because, around here, coverage indoors isn’t particularly good. Downstairs it’s previously been non-existent. But this morning everything changed.

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Physician uses cell phones to bring health care to the poor

Natalia Ardanza of voanews.com writes:

In Africa there is another use for mobile phones. Public Health workers in Kenya are now using mobile phones to gather health information from patients in remote areas and upload it to the internet for instant analysis at distant centers. And it is all happening thanks to Dr Joel Selanikio.

Author: The Fonecast
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Making dumb touchscreen phones was a smart move

Mark Bridge writes:

I remember a report from last year that said ‘non-smart’ touchscreen handsets – generally those without a popular operating system – would be bad news for mobile operators.

Conventional touchscreen smartphones tended to result in higher-than-average ARPU thanks to their early-adopting tech-loving users, their web-friendly browsers, their email programs, their app-friendly operating systems and their fast 3G connectivity. However, dumber touchscreen devices – those with a manufacturer’s own proprietary OS and perhaps a clumsier browser – could generate 23% less ARPU than smarter phones. So, if touchscreen dumbphones weren’t good for networks… and weren’t really good for consumers either… manufacturers wouldn’t really bother with them. Right?

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"Hello Nexus One" I say...

James Rosewell writes:

Mark’s been encouraging me to write an opinion piece on the Nexus One for the last few days and I’m finally putting fingers to keyboard to share my experiences. It’s taken so long because this phone has so many features. On a positive note I could go into details about the gorgeous screen, the Android Marketplace that will out-sell Apple’s over the next 18 months, the built-in satellite navigation service and the speedy processor that makes everything run smoothly in real time. Or on a less positive note, the touch screen keyboard that sucks (think carefully about this if you’re a heavy texter or emailer, it’s even worse than the original iPhone), the lack of ActiveSync for Calendars and Tasks, no support for WMA music files or the clunky zoom functions on the web browser.

However I’m going to focus on voice dictation. Nexus One is the first phone I’ve used with this feature.

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The Amazon Kindle prepares to fight the Apple iPhone and Tablet

Mark Bridge writes:

Here’s a curious thing. Firstly, Amazon creates the Kindle. It starts selling the Kindle in the USA with a mobile deal that lets users download electronic books and newspapers wherever they are. Then it starts selling the Kindle to us in the UK, although – hang on a moment – it’s not talking about a UK mobile deal. Instead it still seems to be ‘roaming’ from the AT&T network. Next comes the larger-screen Kindle DX – also roaming away when it reaches our shores. And now Amazon is talking about third-party downloadable applications for the Kindle. Yes, a mobile device with downloadable apps. Hold that thought; I’ll be returning to it.

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