Stonewall Defence: an interesting email [31 March 1998]
An ex-Videotron customer has contacted me about the previous news item. Here's what they say:
I think I must be the customer referred to in the item on unlawful unilateral removal of Combined Services Discount. In a company such as CWC that is about to dump one person in six of its staff in next month's review it would not be surprising if the headquarters leaked like the proverbial sieve. In this instance it would be unfair for people to assume that the correspondence leaked from the office of the chief executive, Graham M Wallace. Your report said: 'Apparently the customer's letter went to another member of the CWC family.' My letter went to the company chairman, Dick Brown. It may be helpful to give the exact text of the main point where I urged what the report described as pressing concerns:
"Mr Wallace has totally failed to grasp the issue. I know that my MP will understand. I think you do too, and I hope that you and the non-executive directors as a body can achieve what I stated on 4
February as the goal: for dignity to be restored to what was once a
distinguished corporate name.
Let me remind you of the legal and moral considerations, and they can not remain totally separate. Behind the English law of contract there lies the moral principle that a person should fulfil his promises and abide by his agreements.
I can not speak for all the ex-Videotron customers brought into CWC through the merger process. I do know how recruitment of subscribers was done in South London in the mid-1990s. Customers were encouraged to take the new cable television service and to take the new cable telephone service, in place of the existing British Telecom telephone service, and were promised a discounted line rental for the Videotron telephone service if combined with cable television. The latter offer was printed in the sales literature and cited by the sales team. The sales pitch was particularly strong for customers who wanted to keep in touch with family and friends. In this part of London this often means older residents, frequently elderly widows, whose children and grandchildren are living outside the inner city. These older customers tend to have very restricted financial means. Videotron arrived in our neighbourhoods as the franchised operator, powerful in comparison with the small households, with specific inducements including the lower line rental to take up the offered services, and with a sophisticated sales presentation and with professions of what Videotron called 'total service'. Customers accepted the offer and paid their charges; they were also given modest financial rewards if they brought in other friends and neighbours as subscribers.
CWC bought the contracts in 1997 and on 2 January 1998 and thereafter a Customer Services Director announced CWC's intention to remove the Combined Services Discount - the lower line rental - although this was a breach of the contractual relationship Videotron had formed with the group of customers I have described above. I am not writing as a legal practitioner but as one of the customers affected. When the matter is litigated CWC will have an opportunity to adduce its arguments and the court or courts will rule.
Meanwhile CWC has implemented its breach of contract, and Mr Wallace
seems to think he has only to shout down the meek and the elderly for their dismay and protest to be ignored. I can not be alone in finding it utterly distasteful that Mr Wallace deploys hundreds of millions of pounds, by his own report in September 1997, and can use it to stamp on the rights of CWC's customers, especially the older and needier among them.
The breach of contract may cost an individual customer only a pound or so a month in the first instance, perhaps a large loaf or two of bread per month. Mr Wallace may not know that for some of the ex-Videotron customers in south London that is all the money they spend on bread during the month. These are people who were induced to take the new services with the promise that they would save money. Many are anxious now. The infamous CWC letter of January 1998 carries a cross-heading 'Stay in, stay warm, save money!' This may be true for Mr Wallace in his comfortable home and office. For too many in south London there is cold comfort thumping on the door."
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