tech

NTT regional units ordered to stop misleading IP phone ads

5 Comments

The Fair Trade Commission has ordered the two regional units of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp to stop their misleading advertisements for their fiber-optic Internet Protocol telephone services.

The FTC's latest business improvement order for NTT East Corp and NTT West Corp followed a similar order issued for the same two regional telephone firms on telephone number directory services in March.

This was the first time in the country's telecommunications industry that the same companies were reprimanded by the fair trade watchdog twice, industry people said.

According to the FTC's investigation, NTT East and West distributed in February-November last year some 4,000 flyers and direct mails to promote the "Hikari Denwa" IP phone serives, and the FTC found that a third of them were implying that the services were cheaper than they actually are, a practice that violates the product labeling law.

In one of the most serious cases, NTT East handed out flyers in Niigata Prefecture advertising that its IP phone service was offered at a bargain with monthly basic fees of 997.5 yen, compared to 1,680 yen for fixed-line telephones. But the indicated price of 997.5 yen did not include the costs of using fiber-optic lines that amount to some 2,600 yen to 5,500 yen.

The two phone operators should fully review their ads from consumers' viewpoint, the FTC said.

© JCN

©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.

5 Comments
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Slightly misleading... but technically speaking... it can be seen as foggily correct... It's really a grey area. Not like labelling food at 100y and asking 200y for it... More like label at 100y, sold only with a plastic tray for 100y more... Dodgy... but nothing worse than a car salesman.

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I hate this company and I hate their lying business practices. Where I live, they have been blitzing my apartment block with their flyers for months - until I phoned them and said I would contact the police if they didnt stop. Recently they sent a young saleswoman, very aggressive, who illegally enetered my apartment block and would hardly take "no" for an answer, even though I repeatedly told her I was not interested in her company@s services. Eventually, I just closed the door in her face.

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...a third of them were saying as if the services were cheaper than they actually are...

Who the hell translated this sentence from Japanese to English?! And who's the editor who okayed it for print? This is absolutely god-awful English: "...were saying as if..."?!

That's not English.

That's teenage lunchtime gossip slang that could only be made worse with a "and he was like" or "and I was like," completed with perhaps a nice "and the FTC was ALL bugged with NTT."

Cripes, JT. Get it together.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

Oh, who cares LFRA? When most people read, they don't even notice stuff like that because we're reading for gist, not for grammar.

JT is a free site and some stuff is probably translated by volunteers, eager for the practice. I'm guessing professional translators cost more money than JT has?

If you don't like it, go to another site that translates Japanese news into English for free.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Bloody NTT have been calling me for months to change lines! I tell them no every time and they don't take NO for an answer! They are driving me crazy!

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