Red faces all round at the Carphone Warehouse today, when it announced a £12 per month unlimited data plan that included a handset, 200 call minutes and – most surprisingly – no fair-usage policy.

The company’s UK trading director Mark Eastham underlined the surprise element of the all-you-can-eat package with a press statement, stating: “There’s no small print or fair-usage policy, so when we say ‘unlimited internet’ access we really mean it.”

The only problem was that a quick trip to the site to check the availability and, perhaps, even, place an order revealed the dreaded asterisk right next to the “Unlimited MB” column in the feature list. The asterisk led to the familiar footnote: “subject to fair-use policy.”

Some mistake, surely? According to Carphone Warehouse, the confusion arose because the software used to put its site together couldn’t be altered to remove the asterisk from the template without changing pages for every phone and deal on the site. Unlimited data? Computer says “no”.

The company says the site will be updated overnight, and although the asterisk will remain in place there will be a footnote to the footnote highlighting that the fair-use policy doesn’t apply to this particular Talkmobile package. Utterly confusing.

Carphone Warehouse should obviously have got that caveat in before launching the product, but it shouldn’t detract from what genuinely looks an attractive offer.

Apart from making the company look foolish, the mixed message highlights the usual attitude of the mobile carriers to unlimited data – it’s such an alien concept that even when a company wants to give it away, it trips over the industry’s default terms and conditions.

I’ve been hunting for a new flat for months now — so long, that no-one around the office even pretends to listen to my various estate agent complaints anymore.

As my search invariably focuses on online listings and websites, the one thing that gets my back up more than anything is adverts for flats that don’t exist or have long since been let, or ads that use photos that aren’t remotely accurate (as in, of entirely different, invariably nicer places).

Why advertise places that don’t actually exist? Because then desperate, frustrated people like myself call these scammy estate agents, who try to pitch a not-as-nice, out-of-budget flat instead (that’s usually what happens to me, but more serious money-stealing scams exist too).

For the past month, faced with such soul-destroying lies, I’ve been slamming the phone down, angrily biding my time until 1 March.

You see, in the past, there’s been nothing I could do about these dodgy online ads. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) wouldn’t take complaints about free marketing materials posted on sites such as Gumtree and Facebook, or about claims on a company’s own website; the watchdog only handled paid-for advertising.

From today, however, that’s all changed.

The ASA has now extended its remit to include marketing claims on websites, social networks and listings sites. In other words, as of today, my rage can now be used to fuel official complaints, rather than frustrated tears. After weeks of being screwed around by dodgy ads, I’m bitter and angry and ready for revenge: I now have the watchdog’s handy online form bookmarked and ready to fire.

And yes, the ASA’s punishments are usually a weak slap on the wrist — please take down the offending ad, and we’d really very much appreciate it if you please don’t do it again. That won’t help me find a cheap-but-cheerful place to live, but in the very least I can now waste dodgy estate agents’ time by making them answer to the watchdog, just as they’ve wasted my time trudging out to flats that aren’t as pictured or calling up for details of others that exist only in a parallel universe.

The ASA said it’s hired new staff to deal with the expected increase in workload, and I fully intend to give them plenty to investigate…

Since the Monaco Grand Prix a fortnight ago, F1 presenter Jake Humphrey has traded in his normal clipboard for the Apple tablet. Now whenever Jake’s on screen, he’s seen brandishing the iPad, with the Apple logo embossed on the back of the device being beamed to millions of viewers worldwide.

The BBC has strict rules on product placement. Everything from the brand name of “sticky-back plastic” on Blue Peter to the carefully masked food labels on Masterchef are expertly concealed. Admittedly, it might seem a bit rich complaining about branding in F1 coverage, where the cars are smothered in sponsors’ logos, but that’s entirely beyond the BBC’s control. Should it really be allowing its presenters to wield the iPad, with no effort at all being made to conceal its identity?

I’m clearly not the only person to have spotted Humphrey’s shiny new toy. In his latest Behind The Scenes video blog, he answers viewer questions on why he’s using the iPad – although deliberately avoids mentioning it by name, lest anyone work out what this mysterious new giant iPhone is.

“The reason I use this is because I think it’s the new way of working on television,” said Humphrey, while demonstrating that it’s now used to store his script and keep him up to date with the latest tweets from F1 viewers.

A BBC spokesperson issued a similar line when we asked them if the use of the iPad constituted product placement. “This product was chosen as it provided the most appropriate technology for the job – enabling Jake to update twitter and emails live on air, and view his script and all the information he needs online in one place,” a spokesperson said.

That’s all well and good, and I honestly can’t think of a device better suited to that purpose (although I hope he’s got the clipboard on standby in case the iPad fails, or else we’ll have to listen to more of Eddie Jordan’s drivel). But is it too much to ask for the BBC to pop a strip of masking tape over the Apple logo, and treat the iPad in the same manner as the tub of Flora on Ready Steady Cook?

That’s right, Microsoft has rolled out the second television spot in its Vista-marketing blitz, and good news comedy chums, it’s even more surreal than the first one. Again there’s no mention of Vista, but then there simply isn’t time as Bill and Jerry move into an everyday ordinary home to experience the life of normal people. Anybody familiar with the antics of shortlived Nickleoden wonder show Pete & Pete will feel right at home in this latest slice of Microsoft madness, in which cause, effect and logic are rather wonderfully torn asunder.

I blogged unashamedly of liking the first commercial, but this second one is utterly brilliant. There are some truly corking lines within its fractured whole, and I find myself thoroughly engrossed by the antics of television’s latest odd couple. Even Jerry Seinfeld, who I’ve never “got” is acutally making me chuckle, and ten years too late I find I’m no longer a social pariah.

In my earlier post, I argued that the early adverts aren’t so much an attempt to sell Vista as simply reshape the public perception of Microsoft as a company, and nothing in this latest ad convinces me otherwise. Bill Gates continues to play the buffoon to Seinfeld’s straight man, a role he is uniquely suited for due to his decision-making distance from the company but also immediate synonymity with the brand.

I’m also charmed by the bravery of heading in exactly the opposite direction to the one we all expected. It would have been so easy, and so futile, to have engaged in a tit-for-tat campaign against Apple’s incredibly smug, if succesful, Mac vs PC ads. And Microsoft would have lost, badly. I can’t help but feel that just a couple of years ago it was a trap the company would happily have fallen into, lured on by a lack of imagination and genereal fear of swimming in new water after years of playing it safe in the shallow end.

But something’s changed. Whether that’s Ballmer influence or Bill Gate’s new lease of life since leaving, I don’t know, but as an attempt to change the corporate status quo it’s one of the more remarkable I can remember. And made all the more enticing because it’s grown up. Scripted comedy displaying wit and imagination, rather than Apple’s now trademark brand of playground namecalling. In many ways it’s the best rebutall it could have summoned.

The Microsoft site claims that “very soon, the campaign will turn toward communicating specifically about Windows brand and the products that carry the Windows flag” which is undoubtedly the testing ground for the ads. It’s always awkward watching a celebrity flog something they know nothing about, and I very much doubt Seinfeld’s quiet years have been spent in pursuit of his McSe.

But I truly hope they pull it off. I’m enjoying my ride on the Microsoft train immensely and I really don’t want to see it come off the tracks.

I had the pleasure of popping into PC World on Saturday and, once there, I was handed a leaflet detailing some of the store’s current special offers. I didn’t think anything of it – I even shoved it in my pocket as I went to buy some BD-R discs – but I was in for a surprise when I had a look at the brochure after a couple of minutes.

That’s because it wasn’t actually a leaflet at all. The hapless employee had handed me an internal memo that described the ‘Weekend Top Deals’, how they’d been promoted in a variety of national media, how they’re being advertised in-store and, most intriguingly, the reasons why the chain of shops – one of the UK’s biggest, actually – is putting its marketing money behind these particular products.

Take the Sharp 46X20E 46″ digital LCD TV, for instance. Wander into the store and you may be led to believe that it’s a superb product and that it’ll provide many hours of viewing pleasure for your family.

A closer look, though, reveals that there must be a surplus in a very large warehouse somewhere. “This stock must go!” demands the brochure, following on to specify that the salespeople must “sell through all boxed stock, and your display model.” I just hope that they tell the unlucky bloke who’s bought an ex-display TV that it’s been prodded and poked by dozens of prospective buyers and offer him a suitable discount.

Even more revealing is the tale of the HP TouchSmart IQ500 – a product that’s currently sitting in the Labs and is making quite an impression at PC Pro thanks to an intuitive touchscreen interface and some stylish design. Is that why it’s on sale for such a good price?

Not entirely, according to the leaflet. It’s available for a price that, apparently, “makes great margin!”, ensuring a healthy profit on every unit sold. I’m sure that every store emphasises its most profitable products, but it’s not often that we’re given evidence of such blatant profiteering, even if it is by accident.

The worst thing, though? It’s the fact that this particular national chain spells ‘back to school’ as ‘bak2skl’. Oh dear.