Three Mobile: Nosy Gets
March 20, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Consider this: you want to buy a new mobile phone. You’re thinking of a rather smashing Sony Ericsson K770i. You go online and have a look round to see what kind of deal you can get. Three Mobile, the newest kid on the Irish mobile operator block, offers you one with a plan for €49 a month.
You check the specs. Decide it’s for you and hit the buy now button.
The phone’s supposed to be for free. You’re choosing a €49er plan. But what’s this unexplained, unannounced ‘administration fee’? Are we on the Ryanair site?
You continue to the checkout. But this is where the real intrusive behaviour happens.
Best practice online forms only ask for information that is absolutely necessary. So for example, on an ecommerce site, you only ask for data that will help to close the sale. If you’re working in an organisation and the marketing department wields a lot of power, you might be forced to add those fields in – but for God’s sake, at least have the battle to make them non-required.
Three Mobile. How Dare You Ask Me For My Marital Status?
And asking for my sex when I’ve just given you my name – I don’t think that is necessary.
Meekly I hang my head and tell the phone company that no, I’m not married. And yes I am a woman in my 30′s. Looking around for a love counselling button, I look further down the page.
What an array of employment options there are to choose from! And as if it isn’t bad enough that I must tell Three Mobile what kind of work I am in, I also must identify how I fit in the pecking order.
Who Wants To Know?
Maybe there’s some cute guy in the marketing department who will ask me out if I tick Skilled and Employed?
They even want to know how long I’ve been employed there.
What if I’ve just lost my job and my work perk of a paid mobile phone? So if I’m not feeling bad enough already, now I can feel worse about myself as I tick unemployed. And if I do that, they don’t want to know. They don’t care how long I’ve been unemployed. Their length of employment dropdown crosses its arms and sniffily looks away.
Those generous guys at Three Mobile are always giving away promotion vouchers. In fact, it’s a requirement that I must have one!
Oh, but I don’t have one. So like a loser I have to click ‘none’ in that required field. Wow, maybe if the guy from Marketing had called after all he might have gotten me one.
Next up I get to tell them where to deliver my spanky new phone. I give them my address. Hhhm, seems like Three Mobile haven’t gotten to grips with the Irish post code system yet – no Dublin post codes listed. But that’s OK because they made it another required field that I must given them delivery instructions.
Dear Three. Please deliver my phone to Dublin 3
But now they want to know more about my living arrangements.
Whether I’m living in a furnished apartment rented, or an unfurnished one. Or worse? Am I still living at home with parents? Gosh that marketing guy will probably dump me if I tell him I’ve just lost my job and have had to move home. Maybe I’ll say I’m living in Other.
Three Mobile you are living in another planet if you think that you can get away with asking such intrusive and unnecessary questions.
- Why do you need to know about my marital status in order to sell me a phone? That is particularly intrusive and smacks of the 1950′s.
- Why do you need to know about what kind of rental accommodation I’m in? Or whether I live in a council house? Will you offer me a more downmarket phone if I tick that?
- Who do you marketing people think you are?
Yes you’re the newest mobile operator. But that doesn’t give you the right to force me to tell you things about myself that you don’t need to know. I can understand how your slimy marketing folk are dribbling down their sheeny grey suits in an attempt to ‘know their customer’. But in the world that we live in, smart companies get to know their customer by establishing trust. They only ask questions about what they need to know and in turn are rewarded with sales. Gradually as time goes by and I have come to know and trust them, I might choose to give them more.
There are other places where I can take my business. And incidentally Vodafone is currently offering a better deal on Sony Ericsson’s.
Tags: Intrusive Forms, Three Mobile
Comments (one response)
The reason why utility companies ask for such intrusive information is because they make tons of cash by selling such information out of the back door to third party marketing companies. You might want to think about that the next time you fill out an form !
Privacy protection act – dont make me laugh, the onus is on YOU to prove that a company is selling your information and the extra rolls of cash they get for asking you for your life story is hardly something they are willingly going to admit to.
There is a global scientific control grid being developed where everything is known about everyone, give it a few years and you will need to give your life story to buy a mars bar.
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