Several criticisms were made on the basis that 40% of companies were not adopting the internet as an effective means of communication. Many sites made simple promises to customers and investors but failed to carry them through.
This indicated that standards for dealing with customers over the internet were considerably inferior to those adopted through other mediums such as telephones, faxes and letters.
When Rainier requested basic investor information from the FTSE 100 companies, 29 could not even be reached by e-mail via their web sites. Moreover, of those contacted, 20% including the National Grid, P&O and Telewest did not respond within 3 months.
Similar results were obtained when the same exercise was carried out on the Fortune 100 companies. Highly regarded firms that failed to respond within the 3 month period included American Express, Motorola and Walt Disney.
The managing director of Rainier, Stephen Waddington, reacted to these results by commenting, “However you choose to cut the data, this situation is a shock and quite appalling... you would think that by now the world’s largest companies would have developed an effective internet communication strategy”.