"Broke, dead beats!"

Telus removes "errant text" from its website
Postmedia News July 29, 2010 A Telus retail store is seen in downtown Montreal, June 21, 2007 in this file photo. (Photograph by: Shaun Best, Reuters)

Telus tells its online visitors "the future is friendly." But for a few moments Wednesday the telecommunications giant used "broke" and "dead beats" to describe consumers.

A wider audience became aware of the Telus post, which was quickly taken down, with the help of the social networking site Twitter — where dozens of users tweeted about the incident.

The company also apologized.

"As soon as this came to our attention we immediately removed it," Telus spokesman Jim Johannsson said in an e-mail to Postmedia News. "The errant text does not represent Telus' policy or our view and we apologize for the error."

According to online postings the words in question appeared on a webpage that offered to explain why consumers needed a credit check. The response was: "You may be broke, therefore highly unlikely to pay your bill. We just don't want to lose money, you dead beat. You know how it is . . ."

The company, which has millions of customers, did not offer an explanation about how the incident happened.