Perlico sending out deceptive flyers to try and win new customers

Got the below flyer in the letterbox this morning. It was only when I got to the very end that I realised it was a Perlico flyer. It was designed like it was some kind of service announcement from eircom which got me to read it thinking my service would be going down or something. I don’t think it is very wise to try and trick potentially new customers and I really think using eircom colours and branding too like eircom’s is in any way kosher. Complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority and ComReg lodged. Win my business with pricing and service not fraud.

IMG_0185

IMG_0186

51 Responses to “Perlico sending out deceptive flyers to try and win new customers”

  1. Darren says:

    That’s seriously poor. How can they expect this campaign to have anything but negative repercussions?

  2. NiallOK says:

    You’re absolutely right to complain – very misleading flier. They couldn’t have made it appear more like it was from eircom (at the top at least) unless they’d put the eircom logo on there. The fonts and the colours used were enough to make anyone think it was an announcement from eircom themselves.

    A disturbing move – and I’m sure that many impressionable people will make the switch, safe in the knowledge, somewhere in the back of their mind, that eircom recommended they do so. Perlico are loking to get more customers not by providing a better service, but by deception – plain and simple. For some reason

    I’d have thought Vodafone were above that, but it sort of reminds me of a red and white flier “3” had out before which used both their and Vodafone’s corporate logos and had the big headline “Vodafone customers – you’re not getting the most of now!”, with a price plan comparison below. It’s a pretty low form of advertising, a desperate enough looking move – but it certainly has been shown to work.

  3. Paul McClean says:

    I’ve been using Perlico “broad”-band for the last 2 weeks in Dublin city centre. It’s woefully bad compared to my Eircom broadband connection in Dundalk. Terrible, actually.

  4. Derek Organ says:

    I could be completely wrong here but didn’t eircom buy perlico out?

  5. Derek Organ says:

    sorry quick bit of google turns up vodafone did.

  6. Organ Donor says:

    I had that shower of bastards ringing me every week in the evening times,nearly shouting down the phone at me and basically calling me an idiot because I wouldnt take their “cheaper” call package..
    Unfortunatly for them ,i work for a provider and get my calls from them,and i informed the manager of this and that if they rang me one more time i would go legal as i am familiar with the data protection procedures.. Hey Presto calls stopped!!
    Every one should go Voip phone where possible as Eircom get absolutely no money from you then..

  7. Daragh says:

    I agree it’s a sneaky trick. Perlico are not the only company using these methods though – the number of sales calls I’ve had in the past asking for the “eircom acount holder” – you automatically think that it must be something important to do with the eircom account and not an attempt to get you to switch to some other service.

    eircom aren’t free of guilt either when it comes to dirty tricks and breaking the rules – they are regularly reported for calling customers to win them back before they are allowed to – Telecom companies are banner from calling ex-customers for 6 months (I think it’s 6) after they switch to a competitor.

  8. Des says:

    Got that this morning as well and thought it looked very eircom-like even down to their fonts. Not being an eircom customer I didn’t read it..

    The small print is quite revealing for one of the offers in relation to the additional call addon for mobiles which really bumps up the normal price.

  9. D says:

    I received another sneaky leaflet from them 5 weeks ago.
    They were offering current customers (paying 30/month) to upgrade to their new 40/month package where you would receive free broadband for 12 months. Turned out, it was just spin. If you have to pay an extra 10 euro/month, that’s not free broadband for 12 months…

  10. Gordon says:

    I got this too last week. I thought Eircom Broadband was finally in our area as Im paying a lot for a broadband out here in the sticks via wireless.

  11. MJ says:

    hehehehehe so BOLD! Am I the only one that thinks it’s hilarious? Taking the piss yes of course, but just LOOK at how much press they’re getting from it! You could almost suggest…mission accomplished?

  12. @MJ I’d say you’re probably one of the few who can find the positives in it alright 🙂 My view is that it’s very deceptive advertising and I’d quite like to see it dealt with appropriately by ASA and ComReg – I doubt the chances of either doing anything useful about it.

  13. Maggots.

    But MJ is right…publicity and job done.

  14. S says:

    This is why we now have two green wheelie bins!

    Just waiting now to see what Imagine! do to botch my Irish Broadband contract and mailshot me with their twoddle….

  15. Ken Stanley says:

    “publicity and job done”

    I’m not so sure I agree with this mentality. A trick like this could work against Perlico. Personally, I’m boycotting them for life due to unsolicited sales calls which ranks them 10 times worse than mail spammers.

  16. I agree with you Ken, for me it’s up there with tabloid headlines ruining peoples lives with inaccurate impression creation.

    But in the same way, it does work, which is why they resort to it.

  17. MJ says:

    Ken! I totally agree with the anti-crank-calling opinion, nothing makes me more mad. I like to mess with their heads when they ring. I found them so irritating in fact that since moving into a new house, I’ve got myself Bband and NO LANDLINE!! The www comes through the tellybox connection and it’s really super, so no need for a phoneline! The only people that ring landlines are coldcallers (more than) half the time. We’ve got great o2 & vodafone coverage so we’re always contactable, and using Skype for local & international calls means I’m 100% happy.

    James! I hear you on that – brand immitation is amusing but not really on. I have actually had to deal with this personally. I rebranded the company I worked for a few years ago and working with some really top people we got ourselves a kickass new image (b2b so not something anyone here would recognise I’m sure!). Some months later, one of our smaller competitors brought out their new brochure. Almost a total replica, right down to the cut of the inserts, a few shades lighter on the pantone reference. I was stunned! I laughed at first, thinking “this must be a joke!” but no! It was real! And after 20 mins of heart-racing annoyance, I started to see the funny side – what did I tell myself? Immitation is the more sincere form of flattery… I convinced myself of it too! And our whole team took it as a compliment, in fact it galvenised us!! Wayhey…

  18. Paul Woods says:

    Hi Everyone, I’m very sorry to hear this feedback on this flyer. Despite the impression obvious from your comments, I’d really like to assure you that it was never our intention to mislead and if there is any impression otherwise, I can only apologise unreservedly.

    I’ve provided comment below and I’d also be happy to invite a group of you in for coffee to discuss further.

    Yes, the purpose of the advert was to target Eircom customers. We wanted to get their attention and simply provide them with the information on our services, so that they can see how they can save a couple of hundred euro versus their eircom charges. The “Attention Eircom Customers” has been used many many times in the past by a wide variety of operators other than ourselves over many years. Our intention of course is to grow our customer base, but with this in mind, we genuinely believe our current package offers by far the best value fixed voice broadband bundle in Ireland and it is in the best interests of these potential customers.

    Yes our marketing team sought to get more customers and mindful of course of your comments, I’m certain their only intention was to inform customers that there really is a genuine, safe and fundamentally better value offer available to them.

    Whereas we are heavily marketing our new offer, we certainly don’t want to mislead consumers – we will take all your comments and will use them to amend our marketing approach accordingly.

    We believe it’s high time to embrace and encourage competition particularly as Eircom still have over 70% market share. As an equivalent, BT in the UK has only about 40% market share due to intense competition.

    We want to be bold and throw the gauntlet down to our competition. In doing so we want to continue to grow the no. 1 alternative telecoms company in Ireland. We will continue our ambition through working with industry to improve network service levels and broadband availability, by working hard to deliver the best possible customer service and by delivering genuine better value for Irish telecom customers.

    Thanks again for all your feedback – we will be using it to amend our future marketing.

  19. Damien says:

    Paul, I have to commend you on responding and engaging with us here about the flyers. It’s a very progessive attitude from a telecoms company.

  20. MJ says:

    *yay* for Marketing (capital M) & listening to customers/potentials…

  21. Paul,

    I’ll give you one thing, you’ve some neck to tell people that the purpose of the flyer above wasn’t intended to mislead.

    “If you’re an Eircom customer, please read the notice below……” the first mention of perlico is halfway down the page.

    Personally, I hope you and the crack tram of counterfeiters behind this little gem get your arses handed to you.

    I suppose you were on Vanilla Ice’s side when he took on Queen and David Bowie. Nice, nice baby………..

  22. Darren says:

    Paul, fair play for replying and getting your point across so well. However, to say your intention was not to mislead is ridiculous. I don’t particularly like eircom, but I equally dislike your poor marketing tactics.

    I sincerely hope you do take the above comments into account when devising future campaigns.

  23. Fair play for defending it but I don’t buy it myself.

    IF by some far fetched set of circumstances the intention was not to mislead, then ye must be fairly slow on the uptake in the old marketing department not to notice that that’s exactly what it would do.

    But having said that, you got my attention, so job done.

  24. JR says:

    In today’s world of hyper marketing all around, trying to get someone to actually pay attention to any form of marketing is very, very hard. 99% of the time I’m spaced out and totally oblivious to all the competing stimuli around me. I have to give it to Perlico for creating a piece that actually gets noticed but at the same time they DON’T HIDE who they are. Sure they don’t scream that they’re Perlico because they want the piece to get picked up and read. And when you turn the piece if you saw a big Perlico somewhere you probably wouldn’t read it either. But once you do read it, it’s clear that it’s from Perlico. Plus the URL of http://WWW.PERLICO.COM is very clear, large and bold at the bottom of the piece RIGHT NEXT to the phone number. They don’t try to deceive that they are in fact Eircom at all. And when I called the number the first thing you hear is “Welcome to Perlico”.

  25. Damien says:

    JR, why do you have the same IP address as Paul?

  26. Daragh says:

    Ooooh, busted!

  27. Ken Stanley says:

    Who shot JR? JR may well have shot himself by the look of things.

    The Eircom-a-like ad is a bit cheeky but hardly a capital crime. I’m really more interested in hearing Perlico’s explanation for their repeated unsolicited sales calls.

  28. Darren says:

    lmao – Brilliant! I love this post!

  29. MJ says:

    *gasp*

    For shame, all previous admiration just went flying out my open window, out into the beautiful sunshine 😉

  30. cgarvey says:

    I’m with Damien on this one. I get Paul’s point about having to target eircom customers, and that’s fine. However, I think the flyer’s use of eircom branding colours, and layout/wording to suggest that this is an important customer announcement from eircom is grossly misleading and should be frowned upon.

    Perlico (who have a purple branding, which has been used on all flyers I’ve seen to date), should be in a position to sell their products on merit, not on deception.

    JR is not the first JR never to be seen again!

  31. AJ says:

    @Paul Woods

    To say it was not your intention to mislead, is in my opinion a best a flawed but well meaning statement from you. There is no closeness to the Perlico brand in this flyer at all, and in fact it was purposely designed to look as much like the Eircom colour scheme as possible without getting into difficulty.

    I am sure Vodafone would not be too happy if someone tried the same with their identity. Perhaps a conversation with your new parent’s legal team would not have gone astray.

    Still, fair play for commenting on a blog at least. That’s a good idea you guys have.

  32. Paul/JR – You’ve made my day.

    Bless…

  33. NiallOK says:

    AJ said: I am sure Vodafone would not be too happy if someone tried the same with their identity.

    Someone did though, as I explained above. ‘3’ produced flyers that had both their and vodafone’s actual company logos on them with a price comparison on their (then) 400 minute per month tariff. The thing was that 3’s tariff was €20 cheaper at the time, so they produced a flier (complete with copyrighted logos) stating as such and saying ‘Vodafone customers! You’re not getting the most of now!’ in a cheeky jab at Vodafone’s main slogan.

    I was working for 3 at the time and when, out of curiosity, I asked about it I was told that it was perfectly legal for them to use the logo as everything on the flyer was factually correct. Also, it was obvious at first glance that the flyer wasn’t produced by Vodafone.

    Perlico here aren’t actually using eircom’s logo, but they’re addressing the flyer to eircom customers and using colours, fonts and a layout which would make anyone familiar with eircom think it’s an eircom produced flyer. What would Paul Woods say about that, specifically – the look of the flyer – it looks like its from eircom themselves, plain and simple!

  34. fish101 says:

    You guys really need to get some lives – com’on. What’s the big deal? So they made the piece look like is came from Eircom which rips people off as it is big time and offers crap service. Seriously people – relax! They’re not hiding who they are – it clearly says Perlico on the back JUST READ!

  35. NiallOK says:

    fish101 said: So they made the piece look like [it] came from Eircom

    Actually, I think that’s the big deal. It’s misleading.

  36. Padraig McDonnell says:

    Who cares? About time a company took on eircom properly. Smart didn’t exactly do it too cleverly and at least Perlico are offering interesting offers lately.

  37. D says:

    @Padraig McDonnell (Perlico Employee)

    Interesting offers lately??

    Please read my earlier comment.

    “I received another sneaky leaflet from them 5 weeks ago.

    They were offering current customers (paying 30/month) to upgrade to their new 40/month package where you would receive free broadband for 12 months.

    Turned out, it was just spin.

    If you have to pay an extra 10 euro/month, that’s not free broadband for 12 months…”

  38. fish101 says:

    Hey NiallOK – since you’re able to blog I’m assuming (big assumption here) that you CAN READ. Read the thing and you’ll see it’s from Perlico. And if you (or anyone else) can’t read then the “attention eircom customers” on the front won’t mean anything to you.

  39. MJ says:

    Mee-Ow! I have to duck for all the flyin’ poo!

  40. g says:

    It would seem perlico are still sending out these fliers as I got one yesterday.

  41. Paul Woods says:

    Good morning,

    We have not sent out any new flyers. Likely that our distributors have just completed delivery.

    As I noted in my original response we certainly didn’t want to cause confusion and have amended our marketing accordingly.

  42. […] of the complaints were about pricing issues and dodgy terms and conditions as well as this famous deceptive flyer but one was about the fact that Perlico billed their 1Mb broadband package as […]

  43. johnmryan says:

    wonderful marketing, I say!

  44. Kevin says:

    What makes me laugh Paul use to work for Eircom. Head of Sales it was.

  45. Aoife says:

    As a previous customer of Perlico and once again a customer of Eircom, I have to say that Perlico constantly attract customers through deception and false advertisement. I mean, how desperate must a company be, that they have to compare themselves to another telephone company all the time and constantly say things like ‘Attention all Eircom customers’ and ‘much cheaper than Eircom’ ??
    As ”the amazing” telephone company that Perlico claim to be, they shouldn’t have to constantly bring up Eircom in their ads and instead, just advertise themselves and what they a have on offer instead of looking like the jealous underdog of the bigger telephone company.
    Have any of you ever seen an advert from Eircom that has even mentioned another telephone company??
    No , that’s because they don’t do it. They don’t need to advertise their company in that sort of way.
    It really makes perlico look bad when they do this and the misleading prices as well really don’t help. I was with Perlico because they promised me broadband and Eircom at the time couldn’t so I was pulled into a 12 month contract for my calls and Broadband and never once did my broadband work, even though I was paying for it for three months!! S

  46. Aoife says:

    oops…pressed enter by accident..
    anyway, what I’m trying to say it that Perlico are not half as good as they make themselves out to be and Eircom, although they may not be the best one out there and do have their faults also,,they are still a much better, more reliable and trustworthy telephone company than Perlico!!

  47. Joe Bloggs says:

    What makes me laugh here is the fact that this discussion starts off with

    “It was designed like it was some kind of service announcement from eircom which got me to read it ”

    So the whole thing here is “which got me to read it ”

    This is their sole intention, whether its mis-leading or not
    or right or wrong or not

    It got you to read it

    Objective complete, enough said
    That is marketing

    Get the person to read and thats 50% of the battle

  48. Peacemaker123 says:

    Well said!