Abusive language
A master stroke in marketing is to be able to invent words and reshape the language. Kleenex would be an example.
Phone companies have achieved something in this regard with their re-definition of the word “free”. It all started with wireless phone plans I suppose, but now it applies to landlines too, and now even VoIP services and Cable providers have picked it up and run with it.
What’s really amazing to me is how the media and press have simply let it slide and now echo it with abandon. Even in articles that are being critical, we see statements like “Wireless service usually comes with free long-distance, an added incentive to switch, but remember it’s not free if you go over your minutes.” Wait a minute. Do you realize what you just said?
Using this exact logic, I’d like to give you free money. I’ll give you free dollars for $50 per month. You can spend my dollars anywhere you want and use them anywhere. You get 50 free dollars with my plan. If you use more than 50 dollars, each additional dollar is just $4.99 each.
Do you like my offer of free dollars?
The above referenced article warns about the overages, but doesn’t call the phone companies at all on their abuse of the word free and what’s happening when you use fewer than your allotment of minutes. In fact, they just use the word exactly the way the phone companies want us to.
In my free money plan, what happens when I only use 23 of my free dollars? Well, I really spent $2.17 per dollar. It’s the same thing with minutes. If my plan is $39.99 for 500 minutes, I know all about the risk of going over, so I’m going to be very sure I don’t go over. If I only use 100 minutes, than I actually spent 40 cents per minute! My best case is to use EXACTLY 500 minutes, and to get my best possible rate of 8 cents per minute, but when does that ever happen? And how is 8 cents per minute free again?
What they’re really selling us is minutes at a certain price and requiring us to buy a minimum amount (minimum size chuck). There is nothing free about it.
No matter how you slice it, they are not giving me “free long distance” and I’m simply astonished that no one in the press or media ever calls them on it. We simply repeat this abusive use of the word “free”. As a good friend pointed out, what I’m really buying is an option to use mobile minutes, not the actual use.
