Altyrian View

“Your kidding me write?  People definitly don’t listen in schools these days.”

Ouch, that hurts to read. But what hurts even more is how common glaringly wrong misuse of language is on the Internet. And according to the BBC, mistakes matter. As a matter of fact, these mistakes could be costing companies lots of money.

“If you project this across the whole of Internet retail, then millions of pounds worth of business is probably being lost each week due to simple spelling mistakes,” says Charles Duncombe, director of the Just Say Please Group.

It’s all about credibility. If you can’t spell or correctly punctuate a sentence, you run the risk of losing business. Be sure to proofread your work! It’s also a good idea to have someone else read your work to make sure that you aren’t overlooking silly mistakes.’

Today, someone filed a class action lawsuit alleging that AT&T is overbilling customers for data usage. You can read the whole story. Regardless of how this turns out, AT&T has given us the absolute worst response to a crisis:

“Transparent and accurate billing is a top priority for AT&T,” an AT&T representative has responded, speaking with MacNN. “In fact, we’ve created tools that let our customers check their voice and data usage at any time during their billing cycle to help eliminate bill surprises. We have only recently learned of the complaint, but I can tell you that we intend to defend ourselves vigorously.”

Defend ourselves vigorously?! How about assurances that the billing is correct, and if not, it will be corrected? How about some idea that they are looking into the issue? Nope. AT&T, if you are going to bill us for usage, at least make us feel good that the billing is accurate.

Might be time to think before responding to the media.