"Only" 19,000 people and counting...
When I was young, and my heart, was an open book (they used to say....) I was treated to a workshop by some of the country's leading PR experts. I was working for a major telecoms equipment manufacturer after a spell at Tesco, who also taught me a lot about customer relations.
I was introduced to the 1 in 10 concept: that for every strongly dissatisfied customer who bothered to send you feedback, there were another 9 equally dissatisfied but hadn't got around to telling you. And these weren't just the grumblers, but the people who were likely to take action and stop using your product or service. Not only that, but they were likely to tell at least 10 other people how dissatisfied they were with your service, and these 10 other people would be at least aware of your product's deficiencies.
Currently very close to 19,000 people have spoken out on the Number 10 website against ISP profiling for the sakes of advertising.
If the PR types were close to true, and I firmly believe they are, after all, how many people are even aware of the No 10 website(?) then there are a further 171,000 dissatisfied people out there who do not like being tracked by their ISP for whatever purpose.
And it also means that around 1.9 million people have heard something bad about BT/Phorm from the 190,000 dissatisfied customers.
Next time I hear Drayton et. al telling me that the people protesting against Phorm are extremists and few in numbers, and that "only a very small percentage" of our customer base have signed the petition I swear I'll tell him where to go, and get fired in the process.
The fact is that a good proportion of tech literate customers are aware of what ISPs are up to and are voting with their feet. Big companies like BT are losing focus on core business. They are focusing on deals to attract customers rather than reasons why customers want to stay.
SHORT TERMISM DAMAGES BRAND STRENGTH!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
