BT cautioned by ASA over best broadband claims
Thursday 09 October 2008
BT has been cautioned by the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) after a published campaign advert claimed that; "for the second year in a row, an independent survey has named BT Total Broadband as the best performing ADSL provider." It was not clear that Epitiro conducted the survey for ADSL suppliers only, for the period of January 2006 to January 2008.
In response to the published advert, rival ISP
Virgin Media filed an official complaint with the ASA stating that BT had wrongly suggested that they had been awarded the title of best performing ISP in general, rather than just ADSL. Virgin Media also pointed out that it was not made clear that customers required a BT landline in order to receive a BT broadband service.
The ASA upheld the complaint made by Virgin Media and has ordered BT to make the category of ADSL broadband clearer in the future. The ASA adjudicator said: "Without immediate qualification, the ad was likely to mislead." However, it was also mentioned: "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."
