Promotion fails to boost BT Premier

The workings of BT are certainly bizarre. Its confusing customer initiative – PremierLine – has even flummoxed the telecommunications monolith itself.

The Diary received a bulky mailing pack from BT outlining the benefits of the PremierLine service, which cuts the costs of all calls. The service would cost about 24 to join, the mailing revealed. And the Diary would save the princely sum of, er … 24. Having quickly scribbled some calculations and discovered that the net benefit would be, er … zero, the Diary discarded the unwelcome mail-out.

A day later, the Diary received a phone call from an obnoxious PremierLine salesman. The original mailing was misleading, he said. It should have read, pay the 24 to join the service, and save 48 – a net saving of 24, he claimed. The Diary eventually agreed to join the service.

Two days later another weighty mail-out fell on the Diary’s doormat, proclaiming “welcome to PremierLine”. End of story? Not quite.

Shortly after, the Diary received a letter from BT’s head of market management, Judy Dean: “Dear Lord Diary, Thank you for your recent application for PremierLine. However, our records show that this service already exists on your telephone line … Thank you for continuing to choose BT.”