at NO COST

Now, I admit that I'm a biased source, because the difficulty of implementing any programming project correlates perfectly with the degree of influence marketing has had on the spec. But I'm pretty sure that the only people I know in sales and marketing who aren't steaming cauldrons of evil are my father and The Franchise. As I see it, every job boils down into one of two descriptions:

1. solve problems
2. hide problems

What kind of people do you think the latter is going to attract?

This has been on my mind lately because of my internet provider, MSTAR Metro. On the whole, I think they're pretty good. They didn't object at all to my wireless router (in fact, so far as I can tell, they don't check MAC address at all), and our connection is quite speedy with very little downtime. If you're in Provo, I don't think you'd go wrong signing up for one of their fiber-to-the-home plans.

That said, back in February, they sent out an e-mail with the following opening:

Dear MSTAR Customer,

Thank you for your loyalty to MSTAR! Not only are you enjoying the world’s fastest Internet connection, but we have also made great strides in improving our customer service department to better support your needs.

I thought, "Hmmm, 15 mbps is quite respectable, but I'm pretty sure I've heard of better, even if we're only talking about residential service." Sure enough, with a little research, I found assertions that 100 mbps is available in South Korea, and 50 is available to some customers in Long Island. I e-mailed this information to them, joking that while I'm very happy with my service, they shouldn't get too cocky. I have yet to hear back from them.

Then last week, they sent out one of their "Did you know" e-mails to inform customers that "Mstar is now upgrading its filtering capabilities for customers by switching to a new, superior Internet filtering program free of charge. The new system will provide top-of-the-line filtering to customers at NO COST." Exciting, eh? "Beginning July 1", it continues, "the old Web Sentinel filtering system will no longer be available. Instead, Mstar customers have the option to choose K9 Web Protection, the most sophisticated and accurate Web filtering available today. Because Web Sentinel will not function after July 1, if you are using the application YOU MUST REMOVE WEB SENTINEL YOUR COMPUTER BEFORE THEN OR YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO ACCESS THE INTERNET."

Now, get this. I checked the K9 Web Protection website--it's free.

In other words, as far as I can tell, they've stopped paying their subscription fees for Web Sentinel and are recommending another locally installed, Windows-only filtering service. That's fine, I guess. But spinning it into "we're upgrading to the most sophisticated and accurate Web filtering available today"? Somebody's looking for a job in the Bush press corps.

I'm curious--do you make a point of avoiding companies who are consistently deceptive, even if harmlessly? Is it even possible?