Tell us what’s on your mind

BT’s Smart Hubs are modern abominations

I live in one of the towns (Dursley in Gloucestershire) that has rejected BT’s Smart Hubs (pictured below), and I’m glad they have. Dursley is a beautiful old market town, while these Hubs are modern abominations that belong in a seaside arcade. They are hideous.

Also, what’s the point of providing internet access when everyone has phones? The answer is that it’s an excuse just to show adverts on the screens. That’s the real reason BT wants to erect them. It’s about making money, not providing a community service.

Geoff Burgess

You pay to watch ITV ads, then again to remove them!

I don’t know how Rob Barnes can describe paying £59.99 a year for ITVX Premium as a bargain (Letters, Issue 712). What he didn’t mention is that he’s already paid £174.50 for the TV licence. It’s true that none of this goes to ITV, but you still need it to watch any live TV in the UK. In effect, he’s paid £174.50 to watch adverts on ITV, then another £59.99 to remove them! What madness.

Chris Holt

Never trust ‘lifetime’ claims in adverts

As a retired company lawyer, I was interested in your criticism of VPNSecure cancelling its “lifetime” subscriptions (Issue 712, page 21). I regularly had meetings with marketing executives trying to persuade them not to use that word in its adverts. They brazenly admitted that the public would assume it meant for their lifetime, even though there was no legal guarantee of this. It was cynical in the extreme.

Thankfully, towards the end of my career enough companies were being sued over misleading lifetime offers that the word became less popular with reckless marketing departments.