djm@dmntor.uucp (Dave McKellar @ Digital Media Networks) (12/02/90)
From the "Toronto Star", Dec 1, 1990.
Customer puzzled by Bell survey `results'.
By Jack Lakey
Toronto Star
Paul Bergman wants to know how Bell Canada can get the answers
to a customer survey before it was ever mailed out.
Bergman received a letter from Bell about 10 days ago outlining
"results" from a questionare he and other customers of Bell's new
computer communications system had supposedly received.
He thought this was odd for two reasons: He never got a question-
naire in the first place, and the letter was dated Dec. 12 - nearly
three weeks later than the Nov. 21 postmark on the enevelope it came
in.
On Wednesday he got a second letter from Bell, saying that the
"questionare mentioned in the (Dec. 12) letter was unfortunately
omitted." He was asked to fill out the enclosed survey and mail it
back.
"I feel that they just made the answers up," said Bergman, 28, a
project manager who lives in Thornhill. "How can they have results
from a questionare that hasn't been mailed out yet?"
"It seems like a scam, a cheap sales pitch aimed at people like
me, who arn't using their system. It's misrepresentation. They are
fabricating responses.
"Bell is supposed to be motherhood and apple pie," [:=>] Bergman
said. "I feel like I've been taken for a ride."
Bell spokesperson Marilyn Koen said Bergman and as many as 200
other customers mahy have mistakenly been mailed copies of a draft
letter of what a marketing firm hired to conduct the survey thought
the answers would be.
"We are very embarrasssed," Koen admitted, stressing the letter
should never have been mailed.
Bergman subscribes to Bell's "ALEX" videotex communications
system, which provides electronic information and allows users to
bank, shop, book airline tickets, read news and communicate with other
suscribers.
Customers use a personal identification number and a computer
connected to a home or office telephone to access the system. About
14,000 Metro-area subscribers pay up to 45 cents per minute to use the
service.
Bergman said he applied for a number when Bell first started the
service in Toronto, about seven months ago. Though he has computers
at home and in his office, he said he never uses the system "because I
haven't heard a single good thing about it."
But the Dec. 12 letter with the alleged results of the question-
naire tells subscribers that Bell believes they are delighted with
the system.
"People who are regular ALEX users most of all love the conven-
ience of ALEX," the letter said. "They also greatly appreciate the
way ALEX saves them time."
It says people who are subscribers but don't use the system re-
sponded that "they've just been too busy to get around to it. And
isn't this a riddle ... Trying to find enough time to get around to a
terrific time-saving tool."
Bill Kerr, president of KTP Direct, the agency hired by Bell to
handle the marketing campaign, insisted the alleged findings of the
survey "weren't made up," but were the results of asking 60 people the
same questions by telephone.
Kerr said about 2,000 ALEX subscribers who weren't using the
service were to first be mailed a questionnaire, then send the results
a month later, to stimulate their interest in the system.
The draft letter was based on the 60-member telephone survey, he
said.