CarPinocchio

“Carphone Warehouse will continue to retain its core customer values of independence and impartiality, and offer customers the most appropriate network proposition”

What a load of tosh…

Everyone knows that CPW push the products from whatever network pays it the most commission. I’d love to be a fly on the wall when O2 and Orange sit down to negotiate their next quarterly contract. It does not take a genius to figure out who is in the best negotiating position for the first time for years and years…

I’ve also heard that the internal CPW spin on the loss of Vodafone contract business is that Vodafone walked away because CPW refused to give them preferential treatment.

Replaying the CPW/AOL conference calls and thinking about the Broadband Wars end-game, I kept coming back to the a reply that Dunstone gave about a question of BSkyB churning the AOL base along the lines of “you haven’t seen what we have to offer yet” – I wonder if AOL had an IP-TV product in its’ labs which TalkTalk plan on launching?

In my opinion, the best coverage of the AOL deal was in today’s Guardian where they are comparing the TalkTalk strategy with easyJet who despite loads and loads of complaints manages to be highly profitable. I would also focus across the channel to our French Friends, where Iliad also are profitable, sell at a discount and have tons of customer complaints - a sort of “forget the quality, look at the price” strategy.