An odd request from the Advertising Standards Authority [9 March 1998]
In late January a correspondent complained to the ASA about CWC advertising which stated that '1998 is the year of the cheaper phone call': this would not be true if unmetered local calls were removed. He got this rather unexpected reply from the ASA on 5 March:
Further to your letter of 5 February 1998 we are writing to advise you of progress and to ask for further details.
The advertisers deny that there are any current proposals to take away free off-peak calls from former Videotron subscribers.
We would be grateful for any more information you could give about how you learnt that the advertisers might be planning to remove the benefit of free calls. In your letter of 2 February, you refer to being told by your ISP that Cable and Wireless were planning to do this. If you have any copies of emails or letters that you received from your ISP, we would be grateful to see these.
We look forward to hearing from you shortly.
As for evidence of 'planning to remove the benefit', the one hundred and forty A4 pages Cable and Wireless Watch takes up when printed should be good enough; as it turns out, a mailing list subscriber has sent the ASA, as evidence, a letter from Graham Wallace similar to that written on 23 January.
Seriously, if the ASA rejected the complaint the rejection would define the phrase 'any current proposals' as 'any proposals for the rest of 1998 [at least]'. Talk about losing the battle but winning the war ... vague expressions like 'no plans at present', which have been floating around, would be defined.
You may know that CWC's theme tune, Getting to Know You, is a number from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I. Here are four lines from another number, Puzzlement, which describe the current situation perfectly:
There are times I almost think
They are not sure of what they absolutely know
I believe they are confused
About conclusions they concluded long ago
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