ASA pulls up broadband provider over advertising
January 2, 2008
The UK’s advertising regulator, the Advertising Standards Agency, has pulled up another broadband provider over advertising. Talk Talk has become one of the latest providers to get into trouble with the Advertising Standards Agency, and this followed complaints made by rival communications giant BT.
The complaint came after Talk Talk broadcast an advertisement that claimed consumers could get broadband for free, and then compared the cost of this free broadband service to the cost of the broadband service from BT.
However, BT officials complained, stating that the advertisement was misleading. This is because Talk Talk already offered a package with no broadband service called Talk3, which involves signing up to a 12 month contract. However, the package that offers the free broadband requires consumers to sign up for 18 months, and according to BT officials this means that in effect the broadband does not actually come free because consumers have to sign up to a contract that is 6 months longer than the norm.
The ASA considered the case and found that Talk Talk had breached advertising rules, although it did state that it thought the provider had acted in good faith.
In a statement the ASA stated: “We considered, however, that in order to describe the broadband element added to Talk 3 as “free”, TalkTalk would have to be able to demonstrate that they had added it as an extra element to an existing product at no extra cost or burden on the consumer.
Because the contractual agreement of ‘Talk 3 with free broadband’ was more onerous than that of its call plan only predecessor Talk 3, we considered that that package should be classed as ‘new’. The broadband element was, therefore, an intrinsic element of a new package with an 18-month contract obligation.”
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