ASA clamps down on BT's bragging

 

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By Matthew Sparkes

Posted on 8 Oct 2008 at 10:30

The Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) has ruled that BT misled customers by claiming to be the "Best Performing Broadband" supplier.

An advert from BT claimed that, "for the second year in a row, an independent survey has named BT Total Broadband as the best performing ADSL provider."

However, it was not made clear in the main copy of the advert that it was voted best among only ADSL suppliers by Epitiro for the period of January 2006 to January 2008.

It was because of this ambiguity that rival ISP Virgin Media filed a complaint with the ASA, suggesting the advert implied BT had been awarded the title of best performing ISP in general, not just amongst the ADSL suppliers.

The company also suggested the advert failed to make it clear that a BT landline was required in order to get connected with BT broadband.

The ASA ruled that the term "Best Performing Broadband" was ambiguous, and required that BT qualify it with ADSL in future.

"Without immediate qualification, the ad was likely to mislead," explains the ASA adjudication, although it failed to uphold the complaint on the issue of land line charges.

"We considered that consumers would be aware that a phone line was necessary to enable a broadband service, and it was not misleading to include this information in the footnote unless consumers had no choice over who provided their phone line."

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