Plusnet has recently fallen into some trouble as a certain member of public claimed that the small print on one of the ISPs ad campaigns was not visible enough.
While most of us will urge the complainant to buy new glasses, he did have a point – advertising is often misleading.
Most of the times we see unbelievably cheap prices plastered all over the advertisements, and we often think they are too good to be true. They probably are.
However cheap might a broadband bundle or product be, the price of line rental will always be there – arguably hidden in the small print.
The Plusnet example is one of those cases, as the UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) stated:
“We understood from the small print that broadband was only available at £6.49 if the customer lived in one of Plusnet’s “low cost areas” and that the price was £12.99 from month four otherwise.”
One might argue that this small print information was of vital importance. The deal was not all flowers as the ad wanted customers to believe.
Plusnet got lucky at this instance, as the campaign had finished at the time of the complaint.
Another attack on misleading advertising was led by Virgin Media. Stop the Broadband Con urged ISPs to stop writing unrealistic speeds on their ads and stick to the truth, why write “up to” 20Mbps if speeds can reach only a tenner on a good day?
Of course, consumers are not that naive, hopefully they don’t believe everything they see.
But what about the things that they DON’T see?