So I’m sure you’ve seen the ads all over the place by now. Cingular has wrapped itself in the flag of “a leading independent wireless research firm” and touts the results of this supposed independent study that rates Cingular as having the fewest dropped calls of any national wireless carrier. They don’t exactly mention who this independent wireless company is or how the test was conducted, but hey details like that are of no importance, right?
Well, several media outlets are calling Cingular out on their marketing campaign and accusing Cingular of stretching the truth a bit. And when the identity of the “leading independent research firm” was discovered, the firm apparently wasn’t too happy:
A Cingular spokeswoman said the research company was Telephia Corp. of San Francisco and referred questions about the study to a spokesman there. The Telephia spokesman declined to provide any information, saying Cingular shouldn’t have even mentioned the company’s name to a reporter.
Nice. So after this company allegedly releases a study that makes the real indepdent research firm scratch their heads in disbelief, it turns out they don’t even want their name associated with the study? How reliable can this thing be if the researchers don’t even want people to know they did the study?
And despite it all there are still no details about what the report actually said, how the tests were conducted, nor can it account for the fact that every other report – the ones Cingular chooses not to flout around in full page newspaper ads – tell a very different story.