ASA Questions BT’s “Anytime” Claims

BT has had a number of complaints against advertising of its Anytime service upheld by the ASA. Complainants were unhappy with the fact that despite advertising that suggested customers could surf the internet as much as you liked for a fixed price, there were restrictions on the offer and heavy users were penalised.

Objections were made to adverts appearing in leaflets, magazines and on internet banner ads. The leaflet stated: “Surf the net whenever you want for just £14.99 a month” and went on to say that the whole family could surf “whenever they want, as often as they want”. The magazine advert said: “With BTInternet Anytime you can have the internet whenever you like, as often as you like for a mere £14.99 a month” and the banner was along similar lines.

BT claimed that the reason for naming the service “Anytime” was to distinguish it from other BT services, such as pay as you go. They said that the claims were based on users being able to log on at any time during a 24 hour period, seven days a week, as oppose to being able to stay logged on for an unlimited amount of time- for this users were meant to use broadband access services. BT said that it did not have unlimited bandwidth available and had therefore imposed a restriction where a 16-hour online connection in one day constituted unattended use and users were warned to change their use of the service. They added that the leaflets were no longer used and that packaging had been amended to warn of the restrictions.

The ASA noted that users were disconnected from the service after two hours but could reconnect immediately, but considered that consumers could infer from the advertisements that they could access the internet for any length of time, without limitations. It welcomed the changes made and warned BT to make sure it did not make similar implications in future material.

ASA: 020 7580 5555 www.asa.org.uk

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