CANADIAN TIRE EXPANDS LONG DISTANCE CALLING PLAN
By Adnews Staff
Toronto-based Canadian Tire Corp. enhanced its long-distance calling services this week and is now marketing the service to all Canadians. Under the new plan, customers will be able to call across Canada for 10-cents-a-minute on evenings and weekends. Calls to the U.S. during the same time period will cost 20-cents-a-minute. In addition, Canadian Tire offers flat rates on international calls. Until now, the retailer offered its long-distance calling service only to Canadian Tire credit card holders. Customers' long distance calls would be billed to their Canadian Tire credit card. Now, anyone can subscribe to the service, with their long-distance calls being billed to their Visa, MasterCard or Canadian Tire credit cards. The retailer is promoting the service using flyers, inserts in its credit card statements and its Web site. Other advertising plans have not been finalized, Telecom Services general manager Ron Simone told Adnews yesterday. The flyers and billing inserts were created in-house with the help of Devon Direct of Pennsylvania. The Web site ads were created by Sierra Creative Communications of Toronto. Canadian Tire entered the long-distance calling market in July 1996.