Is your job stressful? Probably. But at least you can take solace in the fact that you’re not a comic book supervillain. Seriously. Those poor villains. They have to be masters of deception for a living — while being incredibly easy to pick out in a line-up. Whether they’re wearing clown paint, have two faces, or rock a bald head with an expensive white suit, they want recognition for their devious deeds.
Here in real life, we don’t have to worry about supervillains. Thank goodness, because we have more significant problems to tackle. Instead, we have to worry about real-life masters of deception —the ones that don’t want recognition. They don’t even wear matching t-shirts that identify themselves. How rude.
So how do you identify real-life deception when you encounter it? Well, we don’t know how to catch all of the deceivers in the world. But when it comes to ISPs, you can tell a lot about a company from their marketing materials. If their mailers include *asterisks accompanied by fine print (otherwise known as disclaimers), that company may be trying to deceive you.
Jim Connolly sums up the problem with *asterisk usage in marketing well:
If a business owner feels they need to hide something behind an asterisk, there are always better alternatives. The most effective alternative is to make the product or service as good as you said. This eliminates the need for an asterisk. Plus, it simultaneously pumps more value into your offering, making it more attractive and giving you a huge competitive advantage.
You may be asking, “Why would any company use an asterisk if they know that it may dissuade potential customers?” That’s a great question. The only answer we can think of is to avoid lawsuits or trouble from the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC requires that businesses be as transparent as possible with their advertising. So, many providers blinded by corporate profits may think it’s perfectly legal to fib — as long as they confess their falsehood in the fine print.
ACE Fiber doesn’t have any reason to stretch the truth. We fully agree with Jim Connolly when he writes, “the smartest brands aim for honesty and transparency at every opportunity,” and that’s why we at ACE Fiber “refuse to hide the truth behind an asterisk.”
Unlike other ISP providers in our area, we’re here to tell you all you need to know from the start of our relationship with you. We’re the only provider of fiber-to-the-home to the ENTIRE community, and you won’t find any disclaimers in our contracts or marketing materials.
Hopefully, now you can imagine why it’s easy for us to say that we have a lot more sympathy for comic book supervillains than the real-life masters of deception out there. After all, supervillains practically never get an origin story — they’re lucky if they get a decently fleshed-out history. So, of course, they’re misunderstood!
Local businesses have a real responsibility to the citizens in their communities. That responsibility includes complete honesty and quality service with no disclaimers attached.
We’re not superheroes, but we promise you that we’re here to uphold our responsibility to Alcorn County by providing its citizens with light-speed fiber to their homes. We’re here to help — no matter how many real-life masters of deception try to stand in our way.
