back to article BT's 'unbeatable' Infinity broadband ads banned by ASA

BT has been collared by Blighty's advertising regulator, the ASA, which upheld four complaints brought against the telco giant. It ruled that BT's Infinity ads as shown on telly, published in the press and run online were misleading. The watchdog added that none of the commercials should appear in their current form again. …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. StrictlySocial
    Thumb Up

    Good

    Along with their misleading 'fact's they will hopefully they can also scrap that stupid storyline.

    1. Blunderbuss
      Coffee/keyboard

      Re: Good

      I'd avoid BT simply for their crappy ads, even if I didn't already know their equipment / speeds / customer service / pricing were rubbish.

    2. Intractable Potsherd
      Thumb Up

      Re: Good

      The subtext to the current ads seems to be "only a total wanker would use our product". A strange message to put across, I think.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Crappy Ads?

        Crappy Ads?

        One Word: Maureen Lipman

  2. TheWeddingPhotographer

    4 times faster

    I take the advertised speed is aspirational - that is it is up to 4 times faster than the speed they actually deliver

    What makes me smile is that the ASA only do something when they are pushed hard. They ought to me monitoring and squashing this sort of thing themselves

  3. Da Weezil
    FAIL

    Oh look another wrist slapping exercise by the ASA AFTER the ad has finished its run... what is needed is a proper regime which can either pull ads as soon as there is a complaint... or impose huge fines... because as this stands the whole thing is a farce and has no consumer protection or deterrent value at all.. the companies do as they please and the regulator tuts and says "naughty... don't do that again" while the companies laugh knowing that they got the warped message they wanted out there with pretty much zero consequences.

    1. qwarty

      Or broadcast an apology with equal prominance/airtime to the original ad.

  4. Charles 9
    Flame

    Truth in Advertising

    What should REALLY happen is that ANY form of advertisement can only speak the clear, unadulterated truth (to use the American terms, "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you <Insert Deity Here>". All testimonials must be for TYPICAL results, and all claims about performance must be conservative and/or state the worst case prominently. If you can't sell your product on its own merits...then you probably shouldn't be selling your product, natch?

    1. My Alter Ego
      Thumb Up

      Re: Truth in Advertising

      Exactly. Rather than an ickle fine, the ASA should be allowed to prevent the company from advertising for a period. That'd learn 'em.

      Actually, a better idea would be that they for a period they have to run adverts apologising for misleading customers, eg.

      A person standing in front of their logo, saying "We apologise for misleading customers about product X". That's it, no additional information so they can't promote their product.

      1. Atonnis
        Thumb Up

        Re: Truth in Advertising

        As good as it sounds on first thought - any advertising time is advertising time - and done the right way, someone coming on apologising can easily be made to be satirical or even warm the hearts of the right demographic.

        Better to force them to write to every customer to tell them that they can have their line removed without contract termination if they so wish, and that they are only in future going to charged them for the bandwidth they actually receive on the carrier.

      2. Charles 9

        Re: Truth in Advertising

        No, it's better that they not be allowed to sell the product being advertised for a certain period. A false ad about a product means the product is forced off the shelves for a few weeks. And a false ad about a COMPANY? Well, what you said AND being forced to pay a cut of your global revenues, with the proceeds to go to a fund to compensate people defrauded by companies who go under when forced to compensate them.

    2. Giles Jones Gold badge

      Re: Truth in Advertising

      Have you seen the film Crazy People with Dudley Moore? he plays an advertising executive who does just that, creates adverts with the honest truth in them, they ended up working really well too.

      I'm guessing BT's honestly approach would lose them business though.

  5. Lee Dowling Silver badge
    FAIL

    Did there need to be an investigation?

    "BT" - "Unbeatable".

    Surely, unless the words "in bad customer service" or similar were suffixed, there's a case for false advertising just on those two words alone.

    I work in a private primary school. We run two ADSL2+ lines, that are frequently flaky enough that I had to fashion a load-balancer and remote-reboot equipment to make them work anywhere near reliably (and we have 3G backup). We enquired about BT Infinity and similar products. We were told they weren't available.

    Just as a clue: We are 30m from the exchange (I could literally through an Ethernet across the road without struggling), a large business user (we easily fill 2 x 24Mb lines for the working day, and at night with backups if nothing else), in the centre of a large town inside the M25, and they can't sell us a product that they're pushing on TV nationwide.

    You do have to wonder exactly what they consider their customers to be. I'm assuming the answer is "other ISP's that can't run their own lines", rather than the people who actually pay for their phone lines.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Large business?

      So you have one more line than a residential property, but yet consider yourself a large business. You truly are circulating in the upper echelons of business IT good sir.

      1. Blitterbug
        Meh

        Re: Large business?

        Showing your ignorance there, AC. One extra line for upward of one hundred users (sometimes several hundred) in the education sector is not unusual, in my experience. But you would class such environments as a small business? A very, very strange post.

    2. Danny 14
      Thumb Down

      2x24Mb lines filling for a primary school? holy jesus. At a large secondary school circa 2400 kids we only run 2x20mb lines (with an 8mb backup) running off a good old vigor 3200. what in gods name are you pulling down? I suggest a caching server (squid! squid! squid!).

    3. MrZoolook
      Flame

      Next to exchange

      Quote: Just as a clue: We are 30m from the exchange (I could literally through an Ethernet across the road without struggling), a large business user (we easily fill 2 x 24Mb lines for the working day, and atnight with backups if nothing else), in the centre of a large town inside the M25, and they can't sell us a product that they're pushing on TV nationwide.

      The reason they won't sell it is most likely because, being so close to the exchange, you should get next to top speed. They won't be able to deliver that however because their crumbling network simply is incapable of supporting it, but they can't then use your distance from the ecvhange as a factor in it being unobtainable. Thus thier lies would have been uncovered very quickly.

      With this ruling on the table now, you might find they will be 'able' to supply it, and at a huge discount since it isn't going to be advertised anymore.

      1. SYNTAX__ERROR
        Boffin

        Re: ASA ruling

        The ruling is not that they are not allowed to advertise the product again ever, I'm not sure where you got that idea from.

        It just means they can't show those particular adverts again. Their message however has still been communicated to potential customers, and they have probably had their money's worth out of the run already.

        So really all they have to do is pay for a new advert to be made.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        @ Mr Zoolook

        "Any more" is two words.

        Think about the meaning of the words you write.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Unbeatable?

    "invisible" would be more accurate for most of the country, given BT's apparent "any cabinet but yours" policy.

    I only wish Ofcoms misleading use of "average" in relation to UK speeds fell under the ASA remit so they could put the kybosh on that too.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Considering the pigs ear job of repairing the road they dug up outside my house to install fibre last week I'm not surprised the reality of their packages fails to meet the advertising lies they put out.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    this is regular piss-taking

    tactics by ALL companies. They make up a claim, they know very well it's just bull. So what They know the competition is watching closely. So what? They know they will get a slapped wrist. But then, so what? The adverts have been aired, you can't take it back, the slap is just that, a slap, no penalty. So... until the next ad, bye!

  9. Oliver Mayes

    I'm still waiting for them to stop Virgin from touting their 'fibre-optic broadband'. This is quite clearly just a length of coax running into my house, not fibre.

    1. Blitterbug

      coax

      You're probably on a FTTC link, so some of your path is fibreoptic anyway!

      1. BentleyRaccoon
        Stop

        Re: coax

        They can't justifiably claim their offering is "fibre-optic broadband" when the fibre portion ends at the street cabinet, surely? Given that individual customer lines arguably start at the cabinet, what you're paying for is a copper coax link to a fibre-optic network.

  10. JetSetJim
    FAIL

    They should have used "Unbeatable*"

    After all, they're allowed to use "unlimited*".

    Shame on the ASA for the lack of consistency

  11. b166er

    For a moment, I thought that said BT, Unbearable

  12. Steve Evans

    That's just the start of it.

    As an infinity subscriber, those adverts really do annoy me. They continually wank on about how good the wireless coverage is. It's bollox. I'll admit my original type A Home Hub 3 had a very good signal, the only problem is that after a few hours of use it would suddenly stop routing IP packets via the wireless. The AP would still show, but anything sent via it would just vanish. Reboot required.

    After a friend went to infinity and didn't wish to use his newer type B Home Hub 3 (he has a Fritzbox) he gave it to me... Hurrah, no more wireless lock ups, but the signal strength is noticeably worse. So much so that I've deployed my old ADSL vigor to act as an 802.11G access point and disabled the one of the Home Hub 3.

    1. SYNTAX__ERROR
      Thumb Down

      Not only is it really annoying

      that they have to invent snazzy-sounding names for standard well-established products like a router, which confuse both me and nontech users alike;

      but every "HomeHub" I have had the misfortune to come across has been flaky as hell.

  13. Imsimil Berati-Lahn
    FAIL

    All part of the plan...

    It's a simple marketing ploy which has, regrettably, worked in this instance.

    1) Tedious broadcast media campaign containing LIES carefully designed to needle and irk the competition.

    2) Competition complains to ombudsman about said LIES.

    3) Ombudsman upholds complaints, insists that already finished campaign not be broadcast again.

    4) Press reports of upheld complaint ensure that twenty times more people get to hear about the product than the original campaign would have reached.

    This is why the ombudsman is circumspect about upholding complaints. Because they could very well be part of the original intention to court controversy and gain publicity as a result.

    Previous commentators are quite correct that the ASA needs teeth.

    Frankly the "punishment" they are able to administer has the same effect as being caressed by a natural yoghurt, to paraphrase Vince Noir.

  14. Velv
    Go

    And what about BTs claim in their adverts that theirs is "the most reliable wifi in the country"?

    Apart from the fact half the connection relies on the client device so they have zero influence on it, there is no way they can claim their wifi is more reliable than anyone else given the multitude of models and manufacturers of wireless kit in the marketplace.

    They really need to substantiate their claims or shut up.

    1. Desk Jockey

      Reliability

      Forget wifi, as correctly pointed out this is dependent on the kit used which BT are only nominally responsible for or in my case (Infinity user with another ISP) totally nothing to do with them.

      The reliability of their so called premium network is shocking. I have seen the message from BT Wholesale on my browser saying the web is down a few times too often. I went with another ISP to avoid this problem. Instead I find that both the ISP and I are powerless to stop BT fucking things up. At least I have someone else with a direct line in to help me whinge, but it does not compensate for their unreliability and shows that infinity customers have no real choice...

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Holmes

    I Don't Believe It!

    What, an ISP not being truthful about the speed and quality of it's products?

    What is the world coming to?

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I'd like to see something along the lines of

    "When 100% of the UK, including Hull and the Highlands and Islands, can get 8M if they want it, then you can roll out higher and higher in your favourite areas."

  17. Neill Mitchell

    Virgin can't really complain

    This download race is a lesson in spin. Virgin say they have the best broadband and Ofcom agrees, but avoid the entire issue of upload speed. It is not mentioned anywhere on their "Hooray, were the fastest" page. Nor is it shown in the T&C's.

    Worse still, even their call centre staff can't tell you the upload speed you are going to get. They just tried to upsell me to 60Mbit, but when I asked what the upload speed was, the operative didn't have a clue. She said the information "was not coming up on her screen".

    The only place it is mentioned is their traffic page in a confusing table listing upload speeds. There are two speeds listed. A 10:1 figure for each package and a 2nd default lower one. Again, the call centre person didn't know what the 10:1 option was or how to get it. I suspect you only get offered the 10:1 upload speed if you are tech savvy enough to cajole them for it. It is certainly not the speed you get by default, even on the expensive high bitrate packages.

    Upload speed is increasingly important in this hyped cloud era. Yet even the 60Mb Virgin offering is only 3Mbit upload as standard. That's only 384KBytes/sec. Quite how you are supposed to put you life in the cloud at those kind of speeds is beyond me. It would take weeks just to upload all my 18MP photos.

    What is particularly annoying is Virgin is fibre, not copper ADSL, so these pathetic upload speeds are achieved through artificial throttling.

    So, if upload is important to you then BT Infinity 2 may give you a much better overall experience. Trouble is their TV offering is a joke and Virgin know it. I threatened to switch to BT Infinity and was told that if I dropped my Virgin broadband and phone, then my TV package would double in price taking the combined cost to 10p greater than I'm paying now. They have this all worked out and had all the numbers to hand.

    Let's also not forget that Virgin's "We're doubling everyone's broadband, aren't we great" campaign is masking a 10% hike in every customers package price. I just don't need 60Mbit, and I also certainly don't need a 3rd price hike in a year (hence my call to them). By the way, they have obviously been trained up to handle complaints about the price hike and are clearly under strict instructions not to haggle as they normally do. Bottom line was "fine, go with BT then".

  18. VinnyR
    FAIL

    Yet again the UK is behind on customer service

    I lived in India for a couple of years and tried to get an 8mb connection. The ISP would not sell it to me as I was too far away to get that speed. Even when I told them that I would be happy with 6mb, they said I could only buy the 4mb package (next one down) as otherwise I could report them afterwards!

    Note that I almost always got the full 4mb when I ran speed tests.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. MrZoolook

      Re: Yet again the UK is behind on customer service

      With respect, all our customer service departments are located IN India, so I am totally not surprised they have better customer service over there...

  19. ADJB
    Coat

    Advertising Razzies

    I think it's about time to introduce an advertising version of the Razzies.

    To be shown live, at prime time, on the BBC (no advertisers to upset so long as you don't count themselves, gratuitous product placement, puff pieces for show "guests" ect ect) a Saturday night special (take that as you will) awards show.

    Some of the categories could include :-

    Best usage of a word or words not in the OED. (Cosmetics should have a chance here)

    Best misuse of a real word or words. (Unlimited comes to mind)

    Best use of meaningless statistics. (8 out of ten cat owners.......)

    Most gratuitous use of small print on a TV ad. (** This is the best you can hope for in perfect conditions, zero gravity and a full vacuum between 3.15 and 3.17 on the 57th Sunday after lent)

    Most misleading headline price. (£14.99 a month rising to £25 a month after 30 seconds so long as you take our other products and services which will cost a minimum of £75 per month)

    Least actual information imparted. (Most adverts really)

    Advert content least related to product being sold. (Most ad's again)

    No doubt there are many other worthy categories but it shouldn't be difficult to fill a two hour show. I do wonder though if of the companies or PR bunnies would turn up for the presentation of there "Golden Turd of Lack of Truth" statuettes.

  20. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. BentleyRaccoon
      Pint

      Re: In defense of BT, but not their adverts.

      You didn't already have a DSLAM for your pre-Infinity lines...?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: In defense of BT, but not their adverts.

      Great so you're getting about 512kbps down and 160kbps up? Nice, welcome to 2001

  21. Robinson
    Thumb Up

    BT

    Been with BT for six years now. Only twice had a problem and on both those occasions nice Indian man on phone told me to power-cycle my modem (in other words it was the fault of my craptastic modem).

    They aren't the fastest or the cheapest, but I can't complain.

  22. Keep Refrigerated

    Unbeatable vs Unlimited

    Unbeatable = misleading

    Unlimited = must be achievable by at least 10% of users

    OK, Got it!

    Not that either word can be prevented from use, given that the ASA is merely an efficient self-regulatory arm of the ad industry and doesn't actually have any government sanctioned dentures.

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    hand slaps

    ok, so BT gets its hand slapped by the ASA, that's good news, it really is.

    So when can we hear that BT has been bent over the garden fence and screwed within an inch of its life with a telegraph pole by OFCOM!!

    its not just the adverts that are crap and misleading its the whole damn company.

  24. darklord
    FAIL

    Ive recently got cause its that or nothing here, Virgin should be had as theyve not put any new fibre in since 1997 in the south. so how can they complain when there services are not even available here. ASA havent upheld that argument and i get 39.6 meg thank you very much before i was only offered 300k by virgin.

  25. Benjamin 4

    I think that they should be required to provide a minimum speed to all houses of 5% of the maximum speed of their highest (domestic) package they offer. Might help to curb excessive dreaming on advertised speeds, while ensuring that people actually get a working connection, not a connection that limps along at 0.5mbit/s on a good day and regularly dies on a bad day.

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    BT aren't as bad as some say.

    I read a lot of people slagging poor old Beatie off, and I'm sure they sometimes deserve it.

    I would like to add before I state my possibly unpopular opinion I don't and haven't ever worked for Beatie, and nor am I gaining in any financial way for what I'm going to say.

    Now I currently live about 4 km from my local exchange, and regular DSL, even of the ADSL2+ variety tops out at about 2Mbps download. ( I was on O2 broadband )

    Beatie are obviously not silly where they decide to roll out their not-quite-infinite FTTC broadband, hence Beatie rolled it out in my area almost 2 years ago.

    Virgin, well more precisely the cable operators of the mid 1990s that eventually became Virgin, never got to wiring up my current area with coax-fed-cable-tv ( which is now magically "fibre-optic" ). So I'm in an area which is un-virginable ( apart from when they borrow/unbundle Beatie's 1960s copper lines back to said exchange , 4 km away ).

    Hence for me Beatie is the only game in town, and whilst 36 Mb/s down and 7.5 Mb/s up, with a 300GB download "fair usage" policy is certainly not by any stretch of the imagination "Infinite" , it is certainly "not too bad" . That makes it currently *unbeatable* for me, especially when there isn't any other affordable competition. ( I can't afford to pay for a private fibre optic connection to my house )

    Does anyone know how Virgin magically converts co-ax to fibre optic ? Because I haven't seen them digging up the roads in the old area I used to live, where once upon a time I had what was NTL coax-cable TV. Maybe they've discovered some magical new physics that changes copper to silicon dioxide and then connects it up with all the necessary equipment. If Virgin are anything like NTL used to be, then they are full of xxxx (deleted), and highly disorganised with the billing dept not knowing what the technical engineering dept are doing. But that was nearly some 10 years ago. At one point NT-Hell were direct debitting me for a service I didn't have, and when I cancelled the direct debit (which they should have done), they then sent debt collectors after me. Tossers.

    Beatie for all their issues, and maybe they aren't that cheap, have never hit the depths of disorganisation that NT-Hell did.

    O2, when I lived only 1.5km from the exchange, on their ADSL2+ were actually also quite good at 10Mb/s download, and a fair bit cheaper than Beatie too.

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like