Historicist: Life in Wartime
Weekend Planner: November 7–8, 2009
Apple advertises its 8 GB MP3 player––some device called the "I Pod Mini"––as having enough capacity for 2,000 songs. Rogers, on the other hand, is marketing its 8 GB Sony Ericsson W580i MP3-playing phone as having the capacity for 10,000 songs!
10,000! That's no problem if you like all your music under a minute and a half, in mono, and encoded at an AM radio–quality bitrate. Otherwise, you might be a little disappointed––you know, more than you would be already if you were a Rogers customer, unable to download with BitTorrent and getting your favourite websites muscled into on your internet account, and paying tons of hidden fees for your video rentals.
Now if we could only figure out what that asterisk beside "8GB SanDisk memory card free" was for. Maybe the clause is missing an en dash, and it's actually supposed to read "8GB SanDisk memory card–free." No more pesky SanDisk memory cards!
Thanks to reader Carlos A. for the tip.
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So, yeah, if you want to listen to songs at a reasonable bit rate, their estimation would be about 8,500 songs too optimistic. Why not measure the tracks at a 24k bit rate instead and say you can have 20,000 songs? Surely because that would be preposterously false advertising.
Also, how much you wanna bet that the phone is locked and the only ringtones and music you can have on it is content you pay for and download directly from Rogers? Note that their "pay per download" option to buy a track playable on both your PC and phone is $1.99 each track—plus a $1 "download fee" (WTF)! And ringtones start at $2.10, plus a $0.50 download fee, but if they're licensed song ringtones (clips from the original songs), they're $3, plus a $0.75 download fee!
So, to recap:
iTunes = $0.99 per full song
Rogers 30-second ringtone of the same song = $3.75
Evil.
I saw this ad about a week ago, and while I'm generally more than willing to bash Rogers ;)... It looks like this one's the fault of Sony:
http://www.sonyericsson.com/cws/products/mobilephones/overview/w580i?cc=ca&lc=en
(look at the 'Promotion' bit lower down the page.)
Of course, I suppose if someone at Rogers had a clue, they have objected 10000 songs stupidity and fixed it. That's probably to much to hope for though.
Both Rogers' text and Sony's are pretty unclear––Sony's says "Get a FREE 8GB M2 memory stick upgrade when you purchase a W580 phone on a 3-year plan at Rogers. You can download up to 10,000 songs on your phone!" It's possible that the "10,000 song" thing has to do with the ability to download songs from Rogers' music store onto the phone, though you wouldn't be able to store them all at once (and if that's the case, then both of the ads are very misleading).
But how do you infer that Sony is at fault for the confusion here, when both companies are saying basically the same thing on their webpages, referring to one-another?
Yeah, my boyfriend and I was pretty flabbergasted by this ad. (We thought perhaps "10 000" referred to the number of songs available from Rogers for download, but that's a pretty sadsack number.) It's so blatantly false that I really hope no one fell for it.
These campaigns are vetted through ad agencies, designers, multiple executives, manufacturers, and the legal department before they see the light of day. Any ambiguity is entirely intentional.
Considering all the hidden fees and shady language Rogers uses, I have a hard time believing this was a mistake. I mean, this is a company that advertises a song for $1.99 when it actually costs $2.99.
It's not Rogers' fault, it's that ditz in the commercial: "The eight-gig music phone, it can hold, like, ten thousand songs, the phone!"
I kind of have a crush on her, though.
I don't know what commercial that is, but I will die a happy man if I never have to see that stupid Bell Wireless commercial with the beaver posting a YouTube video of the other beaver getting a phone for Christmas...so the boyfriend and girlfriend are just standing there in the snow in the middle of the sidewalk watching a YouTube video on her phone?! Plus, they kinda just pop out of nowhere—the whole video is the stupid CG-animated beavers and then there's one second of live-action humans that don't have anything to do with anything, and then back to the CG.
This ad annoys me - I saw it a fewdays ago on the subway and was offended. I like my music at either lossless or 320kbps, and while others aren't so picky, nobody in their right mind is going to play their music at 64k.
.. that said, (*I generalize*) those who play their music on their cell phone aren't the ones looking for any kind of half decent sound.
the asterisk, while having no co-ordinating feature on the ad, would likely refer to the fact you need to sign up on a three year contact and then send away to get said 8 Gig memory card, as that's how they do things.
i got that phone a few months ago, it's a good piece of equipment and no, you don't have to download through them, you can put whatever you want on it. except you can't use mp3s as ring tones, which sorta sucks if you're into that.
in summary: rogers sucks hard, the asterisk is for hidden garbage regarding sending away and term lengths, but sony ericssons are good phones that i find hold up quite well to abuse.
If you want a phone that does everything, get a BlackBerry.
Plays music, texts, best mobile email, and you can make any arbitrary mp3 your ringtone. Of course with any sort of knowledge you can make ringtones yourself for phones like the SE.
I do love how Lostracco makes it seem like this is some new and malevolent behaviour by Rogers. They subsidise the hell out of phone, which is why you sign a contract and they lock the phone. Want an unlocked phone - pay a higher price. Want Rogers to pay for part of the phone - deal with a lock and contract (not that unlocking is exactly hard either, or that locking really means anything in Canada except in terms of not being able to use another provider when you're out of the country - a very minor issue except for those ignorant fools who live in Windsor and Sarnia).
They have to do the (very lame and cumbersome) mail in rebate for free memory sticks thanks to how SE sends their phones (no memory in them), market dynamics (memory is always dropping in price, so having inventory kills margins), supply and retail chain isssues (stocking all Rogers stores with lots of spendy, tiny memory sticks is a bad idea), and their subsidy (incentive to sign up for 3 years). You'd do much better getting an 88xx and buying memory that you can use in all your stuff - but that's cause Sony sucks and is in love with format lock in.
Less Socialist tub-thumping and massive displays of ignorance, more actual Toronto postings.
"If you want a phone that does everything, get a Blackberry"
-Sure, everyone can afford one of those. Whoopity-Doo!
"Less Socialist tub-thumping and massive displays of ignorance"
???
How about less false, misleading advertising, hidden fees and displays of corporate, double-speak bullsh*t?
Anyone catch the story of the guy last week who ended up with an $87,000.00 cell phone bill ?(yes, 87 grand)
I'm with "Lostraco" (sorry, Marc), this ambiguity is intentional. Maybe companies like Rogers didn't invent it, but they are doing their best to perfect it on a grand-scale.
RealityCheck = anything but Reality.
So Reality Check doesn't think that deliberate customer confusion is malevolent? How so?
Hidden fees are completely indefensible—a ringtone that costs $3 plus a $0.75 "download fee" is not $3 (as Rogers advertises); it's $3.75. An advertised $30 monthly Bell Mobility contract plus a $9 "system access fee" does not cost $30; it costs $39. In the U.S., Comcast rolls down their own taxes to the customer as the additional "regulatory recovery fee." If you're a Rogers VoIP user, you get dinged with an additional hidden $4.95 system access fee every month to use the internet bandwidth you're already paying for.
This type of misleading, predatory advertising can not be justified with any rationality and should be illegal. Rogers and the other telcos intentionally lead customers to believe that their services cost drastically less than they actually do, and they've implemented split fees so they can advertise inaccurate lower prices.
No other retailer can advertise an item this way—you don't go into The Bay and buy a sweater for an advertised $38, plus an unlisted $7 "consumer charge" and $5 "marketing charge." I can't believe that anyone feels that these practices can be defended in the very least.
Marc,
It's like that here in the USSA also. I signed on for DSL with our phone company for $24.95.
I drive by the billboards, I see the ads on TV, I've even written letters to our local paper, warning people that the $24.95 morphs into about 60 bucks after all is said and done.
I don't know if you have it up there, but I also love the "early termination fee". I've gotten to the point where I just ask, after everything, how much will my actual bill be or look like?
Our taxes built the "internets", our money built this "series of tubes". Corporations have, and are always finding new ways to sell our own stuff back to us.
"Buy the sky and sell the sky "
This is the story I mentioned earlier...
TORONTO (Reuters) - A Canadian oil-field worker, stunned to get a C$85,000 ($83,700) cell phone bill, has had the charges reduced to C$3,400, but is still fighting them.
Piotr Staniaszek, a 22-year-old oil and gas well tester in rural northwest Alberta, became a figure of international media attention this week when his father went to the press to complain about the size of his son's bill.
Staniaszek's father, also named Piotr Staniaszek, said his son thought he could use his new phone as a modem for his computer as part of his C$10 unlimited browser plan from Bell Mobility, a division of Bell Canada.
He downloaded movies and other high-resolution files unaware of the charges they would incur.
See also the comment trail from the last go-around on this, especially Joe (re: Sony).