A shocker: CEO gives bad information to business reporter

David Pogue of The New York Times writes Thursday on his Circuits blog about how the CEO of Cubic Telecom gave him long-distance phone rates for a story that turned out to be much lower than what the company posted on its Web site that it would charge for a new phone service.

Pogue wrote, “The company’s Web site hadn’t yet gone public. I asked its chief executive several times if I could see the Web site in his beta form, but he never did give me access.

“So I sent him a list of sample calls I wanted his per-minute prices for. He returned the list with his prices filled in. They were incredibly low, around one-tenth the price you’d pay T-Mobile or AT&T.

“But when his Web site (maxroam.com) finally went live, the same day my review appeared, readers immediately started sending me e-mail—sometimes very angry e-mail—letting me know that the Cubic prices online did not match the examples in my story.”

Later, he wrote, “I’m not exactly sure how the problem could have been avoided—in 20 years of reviewing tech products, nobody has ever deliberately misled me on hard facts like prices—but I thought you should hear about it from me.”

Read more here.