Warning: this column may go up as well as down

PRESENT TENSE:EIRCOM IS running some funny TV ads at the moment. Not funny as in amusing, but funny in that they make you jolt up on the sofa and yell at the television "hold on, Eircom customer service is NOTHING like that".

The ad’s central character is a young goateed customer service rep, who in some light-bathed heaven for call centre operators, sups on his coffee, twiddles his pencil or doodles while explaining to giddy customers the joy that awaits them should they sign up to one of the company’s packages.

As usual, some information pops up at the bottom of the screen for a short time, informing viewers of the length of contract and where to find the terms and conditions. But it does not have the one disclaimer that you might expect: “Actual customer service may not match this depiction.”

If the ad had featured some amusing situation in which a person contacted Eircom, and was answered by an automated message telling them their problem was fixed, even as they held the severed wire in his hand, then it might be accurate. If that person was kept holding on so long that they had time to knit a jumper before being answered, then it might be realistic. If the customer ultimately ended up flinging the phone against the wall with such force that it smashed into shards so small he’ll spend years finding them in the carpet, then it might be recognisable as something that might actually happen.

Okay, so Eircom is not alone in its reputation for not being great at customer service and its reputation is built on anecdotal evidence. No doubt it has many fine members of staff, many happy customers and is constantly striving to improve its service. (There’s my disclaimer right there.) Still, it is brave of any large company to use its customer service as a selling point, and arguably brazen in Eircom’s case – especially if you have actually suffered through its sometimes Kafkaesque approach to customer service.

My own story – and many people have one – involves a moment of near madness in which I attempted to rejoin them only to enter a maze of claim and counter claim that, if I hadn’t given up and gone back to the phone company I was trying to leave in the first place, would have continued until the telephone became obsolete technology.

Of course, Eircom is currently trying to attract new or returning customers. For many companies, the new customer is far more important than the existing one. They tend to entice people through the gates of customer call centre heaven, and once in they then leave them on hold for several hours.

It is always arresting when a company sells as a strength something it’s notorious for being weak on. It’s like Ryanair doing an ad campaign in which a passenger pushes his seat back to a horizontal position while a Polish supermodel feeds him grapes. It’s like AIB running ads in which they show surfing instructors getting bank loans. Oh, hold on . . .

It’s a reminder that modern advertising still attempts to get away with Jedi mind tricks even in an age when so many are weighed down with disclaimers. Radio ads remain the kings of the disclaimer. Not being able to flash them up on a screen means that they must instead employ voice actors whose primary ability involves being able to read-legal-disclaimers-at-double-speed.

These get longer and longer with each passing year. And you hear them so often that they may actually be more useful at imprinting the brand-name than the ad itself. I’m sure that people must occasionally wake up in the middle of the night, shouting “RaboDirect is licensed by the Dutch Central Bank!”

The disclaimers on television ads were something of a story this week thanks to Cheryl Cole’s hair, which it turns out hadn’t been given its bounce by the shampoo she was selling but by a woman in Minsk, or somewhere, who preferred pounds to pigtails. For the ad, Cole’s hair was “styled with natural hair extensions” leading to a surprising amount of uproar from some members of the public and press who somehow still held dear to the notion that beauty product commercials were paragons of truth and integrity.

Instead, we live in the age of terms and conditions and disclaimers, all appearing on the screen at almost subliminal speeds. They’re there to prod advertisers into something resembling truth, or at the very least to remind the public that what they’re watching may bear little relation to it.

Still, some are shocked when duplicity is revealed. And may continue to be, even beyond the point at which all ads star and end with a single, lingering, giant disclaimer: “Don’t believe everything you see.”